a 16 year old kid won this contest give away car, and only got one ride in it, in the back seat, and never saw the car again... his dad arranged for the contest to give the family a Polara wagon instead of this dragster

 

Keith Black worked his magic on the 340. Carl Schiefer reworked the A-833 manual transmission and installed a Schiefer Rev-Lok clutch assembly.

The paintwork was performed by George Barris.

Exhibition wheel stander extraordinaire Bill Shrewsberry handled the driving chores to round out the team. Shrewsberry’s great reaction times at the Christmas tree and his swiftness with the 4-speed placed him in the class finals. The Black prepared 340 ran just a few hundreds over the class record all day. However, in the finals, at the ’69 NHRA Springnationals in Dallas, Texas, he was beat by a Pontiac with 60 more cubic inches

The giveaway portion of the project ran into a snag right from the beginning. The winner of the Swinger was a 16-year-old kid named David Outlaw. David filled out a Cragar Swinger Contest form while accompanying his mother, Odis, to a local tire store. Cragar and Dodge quickly awarded his mother the winner.

With great fanfare, David and his mother met all the officials from Dodge, Cragar, NHRA, and other project sponsors, including “Miss Hurst” Linda Vaughn. After the “grins and grips,” David was relegated to the Dart’s back seat while his mom took the driver’s seat and “Miss Hurst” rode shotgun. After an uninspiring drive down the quarter-mile, the Dodge officials informed Mrs. Outlaw the Dodge would be stored until arrangements were made to ship the Swinger to Florida.

David would never ride in the Dart again. Upon his father’s return from his Air Force deployment in Thailand, Mr. Outlaw learned of the Swinger. Not needing a race car, he quickly made arrangements for Dodge to keep the Dart while providing the Outlaw family with a new Polara wagon.

Dodge sent the Swinger to Garland Dodge in Dallas, and the race car was summarily sold (financed) to Jimmy Crank sans a warranty. Crank drove the unmuffled Dart on the street for a brief time before restricting it to race duty at a few AHRA events. Finally, in the early ‘80s, the Swinger was relegated to Crank’s garage, where it rested for the remainder of the decade.

     

https://moparconnectionmagazine.com/gallery-always-a-winner-with-classic-industries-and-cragar/