BLACK GHOST - ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE

On the one hand, I tend to agree with Tony. It's clearly not a street badass and that it's an original car. Sure, it could have been modified, but it probably wasn't. If there is truth to the story, then it's on a smaller level. One does not need to be the fastest car around to be famous.

Back in the early 2000s in Colorado Springs, I was heavy into the street racing scene. My piddly '99 Mustang didn't even have a blower yet at that point, but it had some bolt ons and I had my fun with it. One night, an older guy in a drop-top Mercedes SLK 32 AMG pulls up beside me and gives me a little rev. Of course, I'm all like, "Oh yeah GERMAN BOY! I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT AMERICAN MUSC..." And the light turned green and that damn SLK was gooooooooooooooooooone. Whooosh... parted my hair and left me there making sandwiches. Now, even if it were stock, it would have still beaten my barely 300hp Mustang... but this thing fired off like it was a 10-11 second car. Mine was good for 13s.

The moral of this story is that this particular SLK became widely known in the community for absolutely embarrassing everybody it ran. There were faster cars around for sure. But every time this guy beat somebody, he beat it bad and rubbed it in all the way past 120mph until you couldn't see him anymore. I only ever saw it on the road twice... and never at Bandimere up in Denver. The local rumor mill has it that the guy killed everything he raced and did it until he died of old age sometime around 2005. Likely no truth to any of that story, but there's a lot of SLK 32 AMG owners who got a lot of crap in traffic from other muscle cars looking to bait them into racing because every silver SLK we saw, we'd hunt it down and try and run it to see if it was "Darwin." The particular SLK got that name due to it having that Christian fish bumper logo with the feet on it and "Darwin" stamped underneath. That car was famous.

The Black Ghost could have also been famous if he was a smart racer. He'd have known how fast his car was, the same way I know how fast my stock Redeye is. If I wanted to try and get famous, I'd hunt down young, impressionable teenagers and drag their Miata's ass at every opportunity. Get a rep for bullying other cars... maybe pick on some obviously modified Hondas and Subarus that still don't have a snowball's chance in hell... just to get on some YouTuber's highlight reel. If both Tony and Gregory Qualls are right, then that's what Godfrey was doing. He was probably picking on other stock-like Chevelles, Torinos, Firebirds, and GTOs. Of course he wouldn't have beaten the Silver Bullet. He didn't have to. If you beat 400 Chevelles and other muscle cars, you'll get some notoriety for it. If you're running something that looks like a 318, 383, or 440 Challenger and absolutely destroy a Boss 302 Mustang, it doesn't matter if it's stock or not. If you can whip everyone you target, you don't need to modify the car and a 426 Hemi car, bone stock back then, was a helluva car to sneak up on the competition. Mr. Qualls, I think, may have been playing the sleeper game to great effect.