All images credit: Mecum Auctions

Last week we shared with you the former Sox & Martin 1968 Plymouth Barracuda Super Stocker once owned and driven by Ronnie Sox that’s headed to the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction next month — a car that, for a short period of time, was owned by colorful drag racing figure Billy “The Kid” Stepp. As the story goes, it was Stepp who purchased the now rare and original Hurst-built racer from its original owner, Bill Vanwey, and then turned around and sold it to Sox in 1969.

Despite parting ways with that particular car, it wasn’t the only BO29 code Barracuda that Stepp owned and raced, and as we’ve discovered, that very car can also be had for the right price in 2014, as it’s slated to cross the Mecum Auction block in Kissimmee, Florida in late January.

Historians will describe Stepp as one of the most edgy and unique characters in drag racing history. A genuine outlaw, Stepp has been labeled “the most famous mobster, gangster and notorious hoodlum the Miami Valley (Ohio) has ever known,” as written by Crusin’ Times John Shapiro, while Daily News writer Wes Wills, who followed much of Stepp’s off-track exploits wrote, “Bill’s major call to fame is that he probably lived the most charmed life of any mobster in the history of the United States.”

Before reaching the national stage in 1970 when he formed his first Pro Stock team, Stepp campaigned this real BO29 ‘Cuda, one of an estimated 70 such cars built in 1968 that was prepared by Hurst for racing competition with fiberglass fenders and hoods, lightweight steel doors and front bumpers, trunk-mounted fuel cells, full roll cages, stripped-down racing interiors, and of course, the 426 cubic inch race HEMI power plant (M-code VIN) with dual Holley 4-barrel carburetors on a cross ram intake manifold. 

These cars were prepared for the NHRA’s Super Stock A/Automatic division (they now compete in Super Stock A/Hemi) and dominated their competition, leaving them with a division within Super Stock virtually all their own.

Stepp’s machine, finished in a sinister all-black paint scheme with a black interior befitting of it’s owner and his dark lifestyle, also sports aluminum motor mounts, dual 6-volt batteries, and electric fuel pump with a pressure regulator, tube headers, a heavy-duty Torqueflite 3-speed automatic transmission, Cheetah SCS ratchet shifter, and 8-3/4 rear end housing with heavy duty brakes, coil over shocks, and a multi-link suspension setup, Auto Meter gauges, and aluminum wheels wrapped in Goodyear rubber.

Like the Sox & Martin machine, this ‘Cuda is a truly rare — and subsequently quite valuable collector car — and that fact is made all the more true in this case what with Stepp’s infamous history.