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

great tow bar shot ^^^^^^^ Tommy....

 

Cripes, I love this thing!
Thanks Tommy, got any more shots of the A&G car?

 

Wasn't this Jim Kirby's old car?

 

Exactly what I thought Dave. Sure looks like Jim's Willys.

 

Kind of cool.

 

I would love to buy Holly's roadster for 5 grand!! It never made a straight pass, but damn, I loved that car.

 

Hello,

Back in 1960 we caught on to the streamlined, red B/FD of Hank Vincent. The fed was one of the first fully enclosed bodied dragsters in racing. Mickey Thompson, Ed Cortopassi’s Glass Slipper, Dragmaster Dragliner, Jocko’s first streamliner were all predecessors, but this SBC powered dragster was also voted the Most Beautiful Competition Car at the 1959 Oakland Roadster Show. The major sponsor was Hubbard Racing Cams. We just happened to have filmed the “Top Banana” racing action at the 1960 Bakersfield Smokers Meet in March, just months before the tragic ending for this beautiful dragster. It was a sad ending for such a cool looking and sounding car.

Jnaki

 

Capital City Speed Shop was owned by Charlie Johnson and Noah Canfield.
Noah was a good friend of mine and they both drag raced a number of different cars.
Jimbo

 

Dean, you're right on that...it almost never went straight, and was too heavy to accomplish the reason Holly built it: to beat the Speed Sport Roadster...but it was sure fun to watch. Holly lived in what we called "upper Pasadena," where the wealthier folks lived, I lived in "lower Pasadena" where they didn't live.....

 

Junji, another great video, I was also at the '60 meet (I think Dean Lowe was also there) and remember the Top Banana very well, first time I had seen it with a blower. The Bantam-bodied competition coupe next to it belonged to Eldon Dye, who used a body from a Bantam pickup-- first ran a carburetored Cadillac, painted maroon, before this version. Dye later partnered with Don Hampton on a twin-Chevy powered Fiat-bodied coupe.
...and, after looking at the video again, Top Banana is racing Johnston & Flores in the injected Chrysler car with the long headers.

Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Dave,
I thought this coupe was the early 58-59 Dye coupe at Lions. Then they went to the blue paint in 60 at Bakersfield?
Thanks,
Junji

 

Junji, yes, same car...only competition coupe that I remember with the Bantam pickup body, you can tell it's the same by the extended body in front of the cab and the drag link....(interesting photo at Lions, the building in the background were Navy housing for the families of the sailors at the Long Beach Naval Station and the Naval Shipyard (both since closed)... these poor folks got to listen to blown fuel engines every Saturday night...sometimes the meets lasted beyond midnight...probably not a lot of fun for a family trying to get kids to sleep!)

 

I wonder how many of those kids grew up to be racers.

 

Hi Dave and SF,
Yes, those buildings were the housing projects that always heard the drags. They were the closest homes on the east side of the Lions Dragstrip. The prevailing winds always came from the west and blew right across the drag strip and farm field into those homes. We were luckier as our house was about 1.5 miles away. I went to school with a lot of kids from those project housing buildings. There is a cool baseball diamond inside of the building complex. In 1955, during a Jr. League Baseball Tournament, I was the first one to hit the left field building on a long fly ball. (Almost took out a second story window.)
There weren't too many kids that were interested in hot rods as there was no place to work on them. They just had car parking slots and no garages. It was and still is a very "tough" neighborhood. After all, it was the Westside of Long Beach.
Junji