It is always cool to find big dollar vintage speed parts for sale on places like eBay because these things cut one of two ways. The first way is that the person selling the stuff is a crackpot that thinks they are sitting on gold when they are actually sitting on a pile of metallic dookie. That is the annoying way and we mock those people. That’s probably in bad taste but we can’t help ourselves. This tunnel ram is not one of those things…not by a long shot. This is the second way, meaning that the parts have some wild history, some contact with fame, and are basically unique among anything else on Earth. If we told you that this tunnel ram was either built by or for Mickey Thompson in 1969 and it was bought directly from him and stayed with the whole family until today would you be impressed? That’s the story.

In case you think that this whole business is the creation of some gifted eBay ad writer, you’d be wrong. In a roundabout way the story of this intake manifold and the car that it was bought to be installed on has been told in the pages of Hot Rod magazine. The seller even links to the story of buying the thing and adding it to the car. The tunnel ram worked as well because the the elapsed times of the Boss 429 it was installed on dropped into the 11s from 12-second area. Unfortunately there was a problem.

The car was street driven and the tunnel ram was not exactly great for visibility on the street nor was it great for drivability. It was shelved for a single Holley manifold and never saw action again. But we’re jumping ahead.

The owner of the Boss 429 had a friend who was somehow connected to Mickey Thompson and he told him to visit Thompson’s shop because he had heard that there were Boss 429 parts for sale. They went to the shop and actually bought this thing straight from Thompson. It is in the identical condition that it is in now. The thing has been cut, welded, and worked on a bunch. We’re not sure if this welding and work was done to repair the thing or if there was some hot toddy experimentation going on. As you an see below the thing comes complete (no carbs) and it includes for fuel lines and linkage as well. The most important thing it includes seems to be a verified history with the greatest hot rodder that ever lived.

You can’t make this stuff up…right?

Here’s a link to the story that tells the tale about the Boss 429 and this intake

Check out the images below and then hit the link to see the eBay ad –

eBay link: This Boss 429 tunnel ram has some really serious Mickey Thompson history