Johnny Dark Restoration Book - The Black Woodill Wildfire

31 When Was The Car Built? The first Woodill Wildfire debuted at the November, 1952 Petersen Motorama and was one of at least three built in late 1952 and early 1953. This first Woodill Wildfire was of a different design than the later more famous design – a distinction which we delineate as either Series 1 (early design) or Series 2 (later design) Woodill Wildfire. The first Series 2 Wildfire appeared to the public in the July 17 th 1953 issue of Motor World Magazine – as shown below. Given a reasonable estimate of 4 - 6 weeks to build this first car (fit, finish, and prototyping could take shorter or longer) we estimate that the first Series 2 body was produced by the end of May, 1 953. Serial Number: Based on the work of Woodill Wildfire Historian Emeritus – Frank Cornell – we are lucky to have a four page copy of the serial numbers of both the cars and kits that Woodill sold. This list was shared directly to Frank by Howard Miller who was the Foreman for Wildfire and the person most responsible for producing/building all Woodill Wildfire sports cars and bodies. Using this list, we can look up the serial numbers of Woodill sports cars to identify the year that the body was produced. Less than twenty “ Series 2” bodies / cars were built prior to the magazine cover car appearing in July, 1953. Point : Assuming the Johnny Dark Wildfire was built before Labor Day (September), 1953, this leaves just over twenty “ Series 2” bodies produced. The Johnny Dark Wildfire would have an ID/VIN from this list of approximately 20 possibilities.