Connie Swingle built Swamp Rat 7-A in the Fall of 1963, right after we got the tubing bender. He only ran the car a few times before crashing at US 30 in Gary Indiana. Swingle just took the drive train and torsion bar out of the car and left the body and frame there at US 30 to make sure I wouldn't make him use some of the wrecked parts for his new car, Swamp Rat 7-B. In the early nineties, I was attending a Goodguys event at IRP and a man came over and asked me if I wanted the cage from a car of mine that crashed at US 30 in 1964? He told me, as a young boy, he watched Swingle leave the bent chassis there at the dumpster and he sawed the back half off after he left, he said he had kept the cage in his bedroom for 30 years! I brought the cage back to Ocala and Jim Hunnewell and I rebuilt the SR 7-A back to a running car. It is on display in the Drag Racing Museum.
