History Drag cars in motion.......picture thread.

Tommyd:

Where did you find the photo of John Lopiano's 33 Willy's?
John lived just up the street from me back in the late 60's and early 70's when he was building the car in his parents garage. One day he was tuning the engine with Antone Addessi they rolled the car out of the driveway and made a pass up the road with it. I think John was also friends with K.S. Pittman if my old memory is correct.
That is the only picture of the car I have ever seen other then when I would walk over to his home and checked out how is project was coming along. John worked for many years at the Bee Line Automotive shop in Stamford, Ct.

Thanks for posting it and please let me know where you found it.

Jimbo

 

Was it this car, or another? My dim memory is that the Nunes and Dillon car crashed on its first run, this obviously ran before as it was a record-holder.

 

First, a couple from the George Klass Collection:




T

Roadster on the left was Tony Nancy's original 22jr. that ran the Sparks & Bonney blown flathead...after Tony sold it, the new owner fitted it with a Potvin-blown Olds. This is San Luis Obispo, probably late '50s


I don't have the name of the owner of this A/MR, but it was unique. The driver sat in front under the "hood," notice the plexiglass window above the Moon decal. The car was Lincoln-powered, engine in driver's compartment.

The rest is random stuff, don't have captions for all of them:



Pretty sure this has been posted, but it was a significant car. Gene Adams blown Olds, in a C/C that formerly ran a blown Cad...Leonard Harris drove...the engine would later go into the Albertson Olds sponsored TE-440 that Leonard drove to victory at the NHRA Nationals:


Leonard with the trophy...Gene Adams cut off the upper frame rail, against the strong advice of Chassis Research's Scotty Fenn, didn't seem to affect performance. Leonard would die later at Lions in another dragster that he got into to help the owners solve its handling problems. Some consider him one of the best natural drag racing drivers ever...pretty strong claim but he was very good.



No ID, pretty early drag racing, the "OG" stood for "Open Gas," the category that the tracks put the gas burning dragsters in.


No caption on what might have been a colorized photo...I think that this is San Diego's Bean Bandits. They ran both this roadster body but also cloaked this twin flathead in a 29' sedan body, complete with fenders.


Big...no idea why some of this is yellow?? Maybe from a Pennzoil ad?


No IDs here, anyone?


Really small shot of Cimino and Groves (think I got their names right this time)...this car was a regular at San Gabriel, sponsored by Durfee Motors, which I think might have been in El Monte? When they went from unblown to blown, they just took the port injectors and put them on a homemade manifold on top of the blower.


I'm guessing that this is Hoyt himself. He ran several strong running gas dragsters out of Atlanta



No ID, probably mid to late '50s, Pomona

This is all from me for a while, off to the Middle East

 

Just found this two minutes ago. I think it was this one?

 

Jason Malmsten posted it on the "Old School Drag Cars" facebook site. He has a ton of Gasser photos. Cool to hear some background on it.

 

Never saw this photo before.

 

What the...who the...when the...dang, be safe wherever you're going!

 

296ardun. Gonna miss you on this site. Be safe.

 

^^^ Ditto for what Nitro and Tommy said.^^^

 

296Ardun.....hope it's for fun.....will miss ya !.....he's another from George Klass site I saw today....hope it hasn't been posted.....

 

Close. Nick Cirino owned the roadster sponsored by Jim Steele's Durfee Auto Parts. The shop was on Durfee Ave, about 1/2 way between Garvey Ave and Rush st. in El Monte. Jim is long gone, but the shop is still there.

 

Aussie?

 

Yep, Aussie. Joe Pirotta and Charlie Caruana's Cortina. It had an injected small block Ford at the time of this photo (early 70's) and now is chopped, candy blue and blown 427 SOHC powered.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=09J_tSqK-vc

Roo

 

off Don's site.....

 

Dean ? off Don's site....

 

Thanks for that info!

 

Nope, not me.

 

we will miss your contributions to this thread greatly while you are gone.
Stay safe brother.