Vintage shots from days gone by!

Al Hubbard's dragster at Kingdon in 1954. Take note of the strip of peach pits drying on the ground behind the men.. Courtesy of Don Jensen



Dave Sorenson with his Ardun-powered Sorenson & Brown CFD at Colton in 1962. Courtesy of Dave Sorenson



Art Chrisman smokes the tires at Vaca Valley Raceway in 1958. Courtesy of Don Jensen



Art Malone (right), at 1963 NHRA Winternationals. Courtesy of Mel Bashore



Austin Texas Drag Strip

 

Austin A 30



Austin at Austin Drag Strip




Austin Drag Strip Texas



C & O Austin pickup




Caddo Mills Texas

 

"License and Registration, please" Let's hear it for the CHP...

 

Hi Steffen,
Dare I suggest that Car 11 is European?
(Only joking!!)

 

Shall I delete the pic?
At least it's a Saab!

 

Walt Arfons "Wingfoot Express" rocket car. This was 1965 at the Salt Flats. Bobby Tatroe was the driver. A very interesting design. I was on Craig Breedlove's "Spirit of America" jet car team and saw all of the runs that this rocket car made. In many ways, it had features that made it a better car than our jet car (we both had the same sponsor, Goodyear).

Walt on the left and Bobby on the right. A very sleek design with almost no flat panels on the top to cause aero lift at 500+ mph. Power came from 15 JATO bottles in the back end of the car.

They made trial runs with and without the rear fenders. The problem was that the car was underpowered. A JATO bottle put out 250 lbs. of thrust, for 12 seconds. With 15 bottles, that was only 3,750 lbs. of thrust. As a comparison, our jet car had a J-79 engine with an afterburner and put out about 15,000 lbs. of thrust, and staid lit as long as Craig held the throttle down. Walt tried to "stage" the bottles so they all didn't go off at once, to assist in acceleration, but it didn't help.

So, the next plan was to install additional bottles, aiming back at a slight angle, 5 on each side. This bumped up the power to 6,250 lbs. of thrust, still way short of what it needed. Bobby would stage the car at the beginning of the "measured mile" and just hit the button. This whole thing about the JATO bottles was a major issue with the sanctioning body, as the rules for LSR cars was that the power had to be "throttleable" by the driver. In other words, if the driver took his foot off the throttle, the power would go off. Of course the JATO bottles would not do that. Once lit, they burned at full throttle until the fuel ran out (about 12 seconds). At first, the car was not allowed to run, but Walt being Walt, installed a 3/4" boiler plate bulkhead behind the driver, and then attached dynamite in the front of each bottle. The theory was that if Bobby needed to, he could press a button and the front of the bottles would blow off and the thrust would blow out forward and backwards, thereby cancelling itself (I kid you not).

The final run. Because of some electrical problems, all 25 bottles did not ignite, some did, others didn't. Some fell out of the rear of the car under acceleration, as there was nothing holding them in place unless under thrust. As can be seen in this photo, even some of the side mounted bottles did not ignite, which could have been catastrophic for Bobby. Uneven thrust on one side versus the other side could force the car to turn sideways.

A noble experiment, but we eventually set the LSR that year at 600.601 mph.

 

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We did this in Germany 40 years earlier.


.

 

If there are no photos, it didn't happen.

 

I can not post the pics because it's a foreign car! Sorry.

 

Sorry @Bomb - here is the story! A year ago it was legal to post it:

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/worlds-first-rocket-car.1035744

 

It's an Opel so it's almost American because it's GM.

 

No. This was 1928. GM bought them unfortunately 1 year later - 1929... Sad but true.

 

A check of the CT DMV web site shows this as an current, active plate number. Doesn't say what type of car or who, just that it's in use and not expired.

 

Little tweaking .... couldn't stand looking at the bad color ... lol

 

Back when we called top fuel cars AA/FD's.

 

See the name on the dealership, This might be collusion with the Germans, I don't know Steffen ,but it might come to impeachment. I really hope not.