The evolution of making horsepower is fun to track. The ideas that were good and made it to the big time made people and companies millions. The thousands and thousands of ideas that were good and just didn’t quite make it over the hump are even more numerous. We’re kind looking at one of those ideas here. This is a Ridge Runner Ram and it is basically the first tunnel ram intake designed for small block Chevy engines and sold in “volume”. Massachusetts native Ralph Ridgeway, a very successful modified production drag racer invented the piece and worked to develop it with a guy named Carl Debien.

Their early examples used the base of the fuelie intake manifold installed on Corvette small blocks before they kept tweaking and changing to come up with the design below. This cast design is really clean and has bene apparently kept in good nick for its entire life. We’re guessing that this one dates to about 1968 which is when the nice cast and proper versions hit the streets as best we understand.

The big problem that Ridgeway had in terms of making a mint on these pieces was the fact that the Edelbrock TR-1 debuted a few months after his hit the market and with that company’s massive budget for advertising and promotion, it became far better known.

The guys who used these intakes on race cars loved them and Ridgeway was a killer in C/MP having held the class national record for a period. While likely not a great street manifold, this thing would be completely bad ass on a small, high winding, drag race motor for sure. Not cheap, not common, and not looking like everything else, this intake is certainly capable of being the centerpiece of anyone’s vintage small block build.

eBay link: This Ridge Runner Ram is an awesome and could be yours