Tale of the Whale
The Story of the Legendary Shammoo
Eighteen years ago, Stillwater Design, manufacturer of the Kicker brand of automotive aftermarket audio gear was looking for vehicles to use as demonstration platforms to help promote and showcase their product line. They were to be shown at auto and trade shows across the country to express their motto of "Living Loud." They purchased three identical black 1993 Chevrolet Caprice wagons to become those platforms.
Immediately, all three vehicles had their interiors totally gutted, even to the point of pulling the dashboards off. The goal was to have the vehicles ready for the winter show circuit, and specifically at least one available for the SEMA show in January of 1993. The installation staff at Kicker realized they were working on cars as big as whales, and comically gave two of the three corresponding nicknames. Vanity license plates ensued immediately thereafter with those nicknames on them, Moby and Shammoo.
And the legend began. Here's one of the few photos in existence that show all three vehicles together. You can barely see the caprice grill just outside the garage> which one s which? Who knows . They're triplets!
Each vehicle rebuilt differed somewhat while work progressed, The learning curve of installation and new ideas improved with each vehicle. The vehicle designated for touring as the West Coast demo car was Shammoo. It was reported by the crew who built it, as the being the last and best of the three of the triplets. Documents from the archives of the build crew at Kicker that indicates beyond the original purchase price, an additional $65,000 was budgeted for each vehicle for exterior body changes, custom interior and of course, the latest in audio gear from Kicker.
Along with custom center consoles to be used as a command and control center, state of the art video and audio gear, (for its time) was added. There were three matching sets of custom bucket seats stitched up by Griffey Upholstery of Knoxville Tennessee, one set for for each vehicle. Interior trim used matching fabric as well. Rolls of Dyna-mat were added on every surface uncovered to cut unwanted vibration of the final audio aspect of the project.
Additionally during construction, each vehicle also had the exterior customized, based loosely on what Moon Equipment was doing to Caprice wagons at the time. Kicker had the the cars de-badged, de-chromed, the roof rack removed, a new chin spoiler and grill added, and the rear gate filled with the license plate lowered to the shortened fiberglass rollpan. Bell front spindles with a two inch drop and Bell shocks were added at the corners. A set of Boyd Coddington Tomahawk Wheels were added to round out the changes. Studio photos were taken of Shammoo and were used as promotional post cards by Kicker.
Shammoo made it to the SEMA show, in January 1993, and from that point all three vehicles began their careers touring, seen at auto and trade shows for the next few years across America.
As part of its touring path, an opportunity occurred to include a visit by Shammoo to the famous Bonneville Salt Flats. This great photo resulted.
As Kicker's audio line changed with new products released, Kicker moved on to other demonstration vehicles, and sold off all three of the triplets. The asking price per copy was $35,000. In the Summer of 1997, Shammoo was sold to one of Kicker's West Coast factory reps, Naeseth & Solaas in Bellevue Washington. I've spoken to Dale Naeseth, who was also kind enough to pass along stories of Shammoo. Dale stripped the original system out of the car, and refurbished it with the latest Kicker gear, including square Solo-Baric speakers and cascaded amps. He reports the refurb was done by one of his best accounts, Innovative Audio. Along with the purchase price of the car, another $25,000 was put into the car for that system.
After a few years of use by Naeseth & Solaas as a promotional tool, it was sold to one of their audio sales and installation accounts, Sound Hound Stereo in Boise Idaho. Owner, Bill Thies at Sound Hound reports the most fun was watching the look on customers faces when the woofers hit, and quarters were fired several feet off the roof. An additional “tail” from Bill included the death of a squirrel who had the misfortune of touching his tail and paws across the terminals for a bank of five batteries. Bill reports the shop smelled like fried chicken.
This is one of the photos that showed up on Ebay.
Note the license plate.
Here's were I come into the story.
Way back in the seventies I was active in the local vanning scene as a member of the Western New York Van Association. I owned a series of custom Dodge Maxi-vans,. The last van had all the body seams removed, welded closed, and smoothed, Oval stain glass rear window, fiberglass front end, nautical themed interior with a hard wood floor. A friend thought all that body work was seemingly meaningless. Another said it was “Meaningly Seamless” which became the club's nickname for the van.
I enjoyed the personal expression that vanning offered back then and was again looking for a vehicle to re-express my character. In other words, the kids were grown up,I was getting older .
I was having a midlife crisis. Probably because of my vanning heritage, my initial choice was looking for 1933 Willys panel delivery, that is until my son showed me a picture of a custom Caprice wagon that was black, de-badged and lowered. I thought “WAY COOL!” The search was on.
I found Shammoo for sale a few months later on Ebay. The big audio system was gone, removed though. It went unsold, bids under reserve price of $6000. I contacted the owner in Boise, and bought Shammoo for $4500. It was shipped to Rochester NY, but the radiator was damaged during loading. It arrived on January 24,1994 during a snow storm. It was washed the following day, a few pics taken and put into storage until Spring. A new radiator was put in to replace the one torn up.
That year I drove it around town, being
totally cooler than anyone else on the road. My son and and I took it to watch the races at Watkins Glen that summer, but the transmission was acting strange on the way home. Upon checking, the fluid was pink like a Strawberry milkshake from McDonalds. The new radiator proved to be defective,allowing pressurized water to get into the transmission cooling line that ran through it.
About that same time, GM came out with a new transmission, the 4L65E. I'd been seeing a few articles about it. Essentially, internally it was a beefed up 4L60E with new input and output planetary gear clusters that sported a fifth gear in the ring. It allowed handling of about 25% more torque, than could the stock 4L60 unit. It was rebuilt with those gear clusters along with a Trans-go high performance kit, additional bands of Kevlar,and a “Beast sunshell”. I added a B&M Mega-shifter right afterward as part of the changes. (What the hell, what's a few more hundred bucks!)
In the long run, although the ECM did have a performance chip in it, and as cool as I thought it looked, it still had essentially a stock 350ci TBI motor in a very heavy car. There was no “OOOHH” factor when the hood was opened.
Everything was painted black. I wanted something better looking with some balls. I did a lot of research, and decided upon going to a 400 block with a highly modified Tuned Port Injection system.
Both the block and TPI are well suited to produce lots of low end torque, which is what's needed to move a heavy vehicle off the line, and satisfy the butt-o-meter. The limitation was that a stock system would fall on it's face at high rpm. I did everything I could to get more air in. I added ported siamese'd SLP runners, a lumpy 230/236 cam, 1.6:1 roller rockers, headers,and 58mm dual blade throttle body. 36lb/hr injectors and a bunch of other stuff that my wife has no clue about. (and God help me the day when she does) I documented my work online on the NAISSO forum.
I knew going into the project, that the stock ECM would be an issue and that massive ECM re-programming would need to occur. No over the counter chip existed to handle to the proposed changes. I researched and found an interesting replacement chip set intended for TPI'd Corvettes and Camaros ECM's called a PROMinator. It has more memory slots, and has a rotary switch to allow eight different programs to be stored in the ECM. Essentially, as reprogramming progressed, you keep the prior seven for when you screw up the newest one. I had a long hard learning curve ahead of me to be able to reprogram on my own, which is still an ongoing process. The result is, the more I learn about it, the ballsier the results become. Currently, Shammoo will throw you into the seats when you stomp on the gas, but really needs posi-traction and gear changes to hook up well off the line.
The result of all this work was the epic thread on the NAISSO, site entitled “The TPI Swap That Ate My Brain and Left Testicle” (Archived Part 1 was lost in a site crash) It still holds the record for longest, most read topic. (and likely most hated and sworn at by some) Although the engine started after the initial TPI swap, it was not for long. I had oil all over the place. I documented my mistakes, of which there were many, wrong manifolds, wrong distributors, too many beers , Ozark Sasquatches in thongs, sveral sheep and a visit by Paris Hilton who stopped by the garage to do her infamous “Radiator Polishing Dance.” The rich bitch scratched the paint all to Hell with the buckles on her freaking boots! (Don't tell my wife that either. She gets jealous and doesn't know Paris still wants me so bad!)
Shammoo spent the next few summers and winters sitting, missing the first two Wagonfests only forty miles way, while trying unsuccessfully to get it running again. The short story is that the main ignition line to the key had been hacked and crimped into so many times over the years for audio, video and security systems and Lord knows what else, that there was only a few strands of wire intact by the time it got to the coil. I needed a Niagara Falls full of current, but only had a leaky toilet that kept crapping out. When I finally figured it out, it was rewired with a huge primary wire to the key and coil. (check out all that Dyna-mat and the new huge freaking wire)
It immediately fired up. It was a momentous occasion for me, nearly three years of frustration, torment and aggravation were lifted off my shoulders. The blind could walk again and the lame could see, or something like that. The moment deserved more than just the simple remark of my wife “Don't ell me I gotta listen to that crap all Summer now that your freaking lawn ornament finally started.” (
So much for triumph meeting reality) The final announcement came to the forum world as the epic story, “A Tale of the Whale” found on the Impala SS forum here:
http://www.impalassforum.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=227377&highlight=tale+whaleAfter it's long reconstructive surgery, the new heart and lungs of the beast were in and working, and shown here, under the hood. Its truly roars.
Since that time, I've overcome ignition issues, where GM HEI modules kept frying out, due to being in the distributor, under the cowl and above hot headers. That was overcome by moving the module out of the distributor, and adding a fan from a computer, to make it a remotely mounted, thermostatically controlled, fan cooled module found here. I ran a contest to win free beer to anyone going to Wagonfest 2010, by identifying what it was, prior to the event.
Since then, I've added “freaking loud” Doug Thorley side pipes, eliminated the AIR pump, changed the front bumper, and installed a Nordskog Digital dash.
I am currently working on a new Custom center console that can be seen in the “Shammoo Update” thread found on this forum. Cold weather and a broken foot have slowed the process. Future plans include adding a posi-traction differential and 3.42:1 gears, the mechanical fan delete (dual electric install coming) repairs of interior upholstery, lots of interior lights and a ceiling Console, and maybe '59 caddy tail lights, a Mini-Cooper hood scoop, and finally, a total repaint.
Over the years after my purchase, I once spotted an E-bay ad for one of Shammoo's brothers, the East Coast car. Thought briefly about buying that as well. The southern car was last known to be in Ohio. In both cases, the custom seats were a dead give away as to their heritage of being one of the triplets. (If you ever spot one of them PLEASE let me know)
I want to publicly thank Ron, Charlie and Dan at Stillwater Designs (Kicker) Dale Naeseth of Naeseth & Solaas, and Bill Thies of Sound Hound Stereo for giving of their precious time, memories and sharing their first hand knowledge of this vehicle's history. In answer to my many questions and E-mail inquiries, they were kind enough to send photos and historical documents to me from both corporate and personal collections,
some of which you see here. Additionally, Kicker sent an unsolicited framed photo montage to me that had been gracing the halls of the corporate offices for many years. My sincere gratitude is to them.
One of the things I've come to realize over the years about Shammoo is that among B-body wagons, it actually does have a unique history. It wasn't ever the typical family wagon, didn't haul kids in the third row seat, didn't haul groceries home or flowers at funerals. Over the years, it's had over $120,000 thrown into it. Folks on a few forums, here, and at Wagonfests have offered up the phrase of it being “legendary.” I've slowly come to agree. My belief is that I have the rare privilege and honor to own a unique part of Automotive Americana history. It has seen a very colorful journey through eighteen years, four ownerships, and four states.
Originated by people at Kicker in 1993 with a sense of humor, only one name has ever graced its license plates. Only one ever will. It will forever be the legendary killer whagon, the "Prince of Whales".
SHAMMOO
Home 
Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:23 pm
1000 RPM @ 60 lol