Ron Stephens sent me an edited version of his original email, which I have copied below...
Hello Fiero Club: I tried to go in through your message board - in order to respond from Detroit on your Smokey Yunick Fiero article. If you're interested... I worked for GM Advanced Product Engineering (I was an APE...) as a Prototype Fabricator back in the same era where Smokey was trying to introduce the radical new technology of the Vapor Motor to GM. That was the Roger Smith era - and yeah, I see all kinds of potential problems. I once asked one of the old-timers around the garages at the Warren Tech Center - just what does it take to win one of GM's awards for a contribution to engineering. He looked around to make sure no one was listening, and leaned forward to say that - It sort of depends on just WHO you are. -For example, he said, they gave one major award to someone who actually had the idea that you don't need TWO PARTS in order to bolt a vibration dampener to the end of a Chevy crankshaft. You could conceivably put the washer and bolt which are normally used - together! You could use one part instead of two - and who would have thought...
Smokey was known to refer to those he didn't have much respect for - as SOB's. -To their faces, usually. He was outspoken, indeed. "See you sons of bitches later", he said to Ford officials at Riverside raceway, their being there for official testing of the Mustang. This was the day Lloyd Ruby had done spectacular laps in the now-famous Smokey Yunick Camaro.
Put a dynamic person with a mind like Smokey Yunick - together with the kind of people who ran General Motors back in the day. -No, no chance there for compatibility. And if one of those company officials tried to explain to Smokey just why his design would never work in the real world of making cars - then Smokey would most likely take his work/design back out of the vehicle - and send it back to GM. And he could just possibly let it sit in a corner for over 20 years untouched. This scenario seems to explain things nicely, the situation which led to the end of the Vapor Motor project. The only problem is, I have a GM-designed Saab out in the driveway that I have to warm up for over half an hour before I can drive it.
But the fact is, that out of all the people in America that Smokey could have willed that priceless work of art and design to - the actual experimental Vapor Motor - now that says something, also. -The fact that he left the entire project with a very capable racer like himself. It wasn't that Smokey didn't care about it - the design. It was just that he couldn't get through to GM management. But then again, neither could the film maker Roger Moore - either. It all makes sense - because that's just what Smokey would do - what happened to his radical new technology and design. It got parked. And then it got left to one man in America - who probably did exactly what Smokey knew he could, and would do. He got it running - and running well according to the very-professionally written article of yours on the story behind this project, and now with a real road test behind the wheel of the originally-designed vehicle.
Smokey has been vindicated by this article - no doubt about it. This design is an important milestone in the evolution of the internal combustion engine, and GM missed it completely. And all this makes perfect sense - from what I know about all parties involved.
Your article about this project vindicates Smokey - as if any of us needed to be convinced he was a brilliant man. -Like the time he showed up with little holes drilled in his headers at Daytona. Everyone was ready to put little holes in theirs - too, just as soon as they could figure out why he had done this. It turned out that Smokey was the first to put a pyrometer right into the exhaust flow - to check fuel distribution through the intake manifold at speed - by checking the temperature in each individual exhaust. Incredible.
But thank you for this article, and for your effort to enlighten Detroit by way of Daytona beach, and now garages in the South. We need this up here, desperately. We need all the brilliance and inspiration we can get - no matter where or who it comes from. We need to learn - not preach. We need to change our thinking and our ways - long ago. When we give awards for making a new-shaped bolt - and Smokey's designs get parked... Thank you all, for vindicating all of us. All of us trying up here in the Motor City, trying to make things work better in this world.
Ron Stephens
