Rare parts in unexpected places

[MJN]

Our local area car club was founded in the late 50's and started off with a small group of guys and a hopped up '53 Studebaker they took drag racing. The car is still part of the club and gets brought out for a few shows each year. Now the story goes that in 1959 they dropped a bored out 370 Pontiac into the Studebaker. A few years later they purchased a rare experimental Pontiac dual quad intake manifold from another racer, Arnie Beswick. The car was setup with two 4-barrels and raced until 1973 when it was parked in a barn. Then in 2009 the car was brought back out and trailered around to shows. In 2011 the club was contacted by an engineer from Detroit who had found out about the intake manifold on this car. Apparently only between three and six manifolds were produced and in between the two 4-barrel carbs there was supposed to be a 1-barrel carburetor. The 1-barrel was to be used for idling which allowed the two 4-barrels to be tuned for racing. This is supposedly the only working example of this intake left.
Its kind of amazing that in our little town of 6,000 people something this rare has been hiding out.