History Putting a Face with a Name: Cars and Drivers in the 1950s

Here's the rest. I ***ume the last one is of a later street roadster he had.

Mick

 

Thank you so much for sharing these photos. When I spend a chunk of time in deep research on a person, I sort of get really involved in their lives. To then get the gift of some more images like these, is like a Christmas gift of sorts. I've examined each minutely to see what else it tells me. I was especially interested in the Mas Okumura truck used as a tow for Muck's roadster. I've been compiling drag racing results for Nisei drag racers in the 1950s. The involvement of Japanese Americans in dry lakes racing is well known, but their activities in drag racing is little known. So, I'm at the beginning stages of research to tell their stories. I haven't found Mas Okumura being involved in drag racing, so I became curious about him. I think he may have been Masanaga Okumura, a WWII vet who died in 2017 at age 96. I also love the color photo of Muck, seated in his roadster #22G, with his four buddies at Saugus. That is a great photo and shot of a young Steve Muck.

 

I imagine many states have similar digitized photo collections - in Minnesota the historical society has a large collection of photos of all kinds of places and people at mnhs.org, and photos in their collection that aren't yet digitized can be reviewed in person at their facility. Automotive related pictures (especially hot rod related ones) aren't as common, but I've found a few gems by browsing around and playing with search keywords. No matter where you live it's worth investigating what your state has available.

 

Bert Kesler and Dean Gammill
and Their Funky Flip-Top Crosley Rear-Engine Sidewinder​

This photo appeared in the August 1957 issue of Hot Rod in an article en***led “Sidewinder from Mattoon.” In bold print directly above this photo, the staff editors wrote: “About the time you know you’ve seen it all, up pops . . . .” The article text then goes on to describe this unique race car: “In search of a stable ch***is with the least drive train friction, Bert Kesler and Dean Gammill positioned Olds V8 transversely in tube frame, eliminated driveshaft by coupling the engine to the axle with two huge gears. Thus the name ‘Sidewinder.’”

I first stumbled on this runty Crosley when I was compiling my pre-1971 rear-engine dragsters website. It’s a real pip-squeak. This rear-engine Crosley coupe was the very first sidewinder drag car in drag racing history. Owners Kesler and Gammill hailed from Mattoon, Illinois.



My rear-engine dragster website is called “Early Rear-Engine Dragsters: A Sampling of Cars and Drivers before 1971.” I created the website in attempt to demonstrate that Don Garlits was hardly the first person to race a dragster with an engine in the rear. Not by a long shot. On that website, I identified and wrote about over seventy rear-engine dragsters that I found in the decade of the 1950s alone. There were also many more in the 1960s, too. I have already written profile stories about several rear-engine drag racers on this “Putting a Face with a Name” thread. They include Hollish Brothers, Stan Lomolino, Ed Garlits, Bill Willett, Emmett Cull, Manuel Coehlo, and Creighton Hunter. Now, Kesler and Gammill, with their rear-engine Crosley will be another pair of racers from the ‘50s to write about.

I guess I have a thing about the rear-engine cars. Whatever. They are part and parcel with my fascination about drag racing’s first decade. I could write about these racers and their cars until the cows come home. There is an almost unending supply of them—and so little time.


Bert Kesler and Dean Gammill were business partners in a speed shop in Mattoon at least by 1950, if not before. They rented a building owned by Clarence Scott to run South Side Speed Shop. Unfortunately, a fire in late April 1950 destroyed the hot rods in their shop. In this photo, Dean Gammill inspects the damage to his midget race car. The young men were able to remove all the motorcycles in the shop during the fire, but all the hot rods and race cars were a total loss. The fire caused an estimated $3,000 damage. This photo, with the ***le “Hot Rods Burn Up in Mattoon," appeared in the Decatur Herald & Review (4/27/50).


The fire was personally disastrous for both men. They needed to find other jobs to make a living. Gammill found employment in a Mattoon camera shop. In this photo, he is seen at the counter of the camera shop, selling tickets to an appearance of the Harlem Globetrotters at the high school gym. It was a benefit to raise money for the Mattoon Little League baseball program. The photo was printed in the Mattoon Journal-Gazette (12/20/54).


Bert Kesler was married with a family to support. He got a job driving and maintaining school buses in Mattoon. This photo showed him making some engine repairs on a district school bus. It was printed in the Mattoon Journal-Gazette (8/21/53).


Kesler and Gammill started their racing careers with stock cars. They raced at the nearby Coles County Speedway in Charleston in 1949-52. The oval dirt track at Charleston was convenient for them, being just 18 miles due east of Mattoon. This speedway racing program cover dates to 1950.

Kesler began racing stock cars in 1949. At the race on August 8, 1951 at the Charleston oval, stock car racing fans elected Kesler to reign as “King for the Night.” He sat in the press box during the race, chowing down on a chicken dinner with all the t*******s. He was awarded a $50 wris****ch and third place money for each of the night’s races, in lieu of him not competing. The newspaper report of this race stated that he was just an “average” stock car driver who raced about three nights each week at various cities on the circuit. At that point, he had demolished six cars in the space of three years of racing stock cars.


In addition to running at Coles County Speedway, Gammill also raced at Illinois oval tracks in Mount Vernon and Urbana. This is a 1951 program cover from a race at the Champaign County Fairgrounds oval track in Urbana. Kesler also raced at other Illinois oval stock car speedway tracks in Macon and Lincoln.


In November 1953, the Blockbusters Hot Rod Club was formed in Mattoon. Gammill and Kesler were vice-presidents of the club when it was first organized. The club was comprised of almost 40 members in its first year of operation. They had a club house located east of Mattoon where they worked on their cars and held barbecues and parties.

One of the primary goals of the club was to secure a place to race. Members had to go far from Mattoon to race their cars. Bert Kesler drove to a race held on November 15, 1953, near St. Louis to run his stock ’51 car. The race was sponsored by the Automobile Timing ***ociation of America (ATAA). He got a first-place trophy for Cl*** E stock cars, turning 80 mph.

In this photo, members of the Blockbusters who raced at the 1955 ATAA “World Series of Drag Racing” event held at the Lawrenceville Municipal Airport, posed for a photo in front of their race cars. They are, from left: Jim Zike, Bob Chaney, Harold Hornbeck, Jack Ganley, Gene Harpster, and Bert Kesler. Chaney’s roadster is on the left behind the car club members and Kesler’s altered Crosley is to the right of Chaney’s roadster.

The 1955 “World Series” event was the second national event put on by the ATAA. At the first event in 1954, also held at Lawrenceville, Blockbuster member Bob Osborn was the sole club member to win a trophy. He had a channeled ’32 Ford coupe powered by a ’53 Dodge engine.


Although Kesler and Gammill no longer had the resources in their speed shop to build a race car, they got a ’39 Crosley into which they dropped a Merc flathead engine. In this car, they situated the engine smack-dab in the center of the frame, with the driver sitting right behind it. They had the novel car ready in time to race at the four-day 1955 ATAA “World Series” event held at the Lawrenceville Municipal Airport from August 17-21. When they raced the Crosley at the “World Series,” they had replaced the Merc flathead engine with an Olds V-8.

They named the diminutive car “Lil Stinker.” With 25 members of the Blockbuster car club entered in the Lawrenceville event, the Mattoon Journal-Gazette sent Warren K. Moody, their staff photographer, to take photos and report on the race. Lawrenceville was not far from Mattoon, just 85 miles southeast. The newspaper devoted full-page coverage of the race, illustrated with eleven photos in its August 27, 1955, issue. Although the quality of the digitized photos from this newspaper reproduced here are admittedly poor, they do***ent the accomplishments and activities of the Blockbuster racers. In this photo, Kesler is seen kneeling next to his “pet.” That is how photographer Moody phrased it in the accompanying descriptive text. Kesler’s “pet” referred to the “Lil Stinker” skunk painted on the hood of the ’39 Crosley.


Kesler bolts off the line for a speedy run at the 1955 “World Series” event. For a national event, there was limited bleacher seating. Spectators lining the track were also very close to the racing strip without the protection of any barriers whatsoever.


Kesler, sporting an impressive beard, accepted the Grizzly Brake Linings trophy for winning the A/A cl*** at the ATAA “World Series of Drag Racing” event at Lawrenceville Municipal Airport from 1955’s Miss Illinois USA, Diane Daniggelis. His speed of 117.493 mph established a new record.


Bob Chaney was another Blockbuster member who raced at the 1955 Lawrenceville race. His roadster was powered by a rear-engine ’48 Merc flathead. Lawrenceville was his first outing for the new car. He broke the previous year’s record running in the Open Cl*** but lost during an elimination round. On July 10, 1955, Chaney clocked 100.80 mph at Rankin Drag Strip. In 1956, he put his Merc engine in a ’30 Ford roadster and ran in the A Hot Roadster cl***.


Earlier in the year, Chaney raced a different car, albeit also a rear-engine “job.” His roadster was one of the rear-engine cars that I included in my rear-engine dragster website. This is his entry on my website. The Mattoon Journal-Gazette (5/17/55) printed this photo of Chaney in his modified roadster after running in a race at Lawrenceville on May 15, 1955. Chaney won his cl*** with a time of 14.2 seconds.

The caption under the photo said that Bert Kesler was at the Lawrenceville spring race with a new “rail job,” but he had the misfortune of blowing his transmission. Was Kesler’s “rail job” possibly the ’39 Crosley minus its body? I don’t know. Such is the challenge of writing about cars and drivers in the 1950s with limited do***entation.


There is video footage of the 1955 “World Series of Drag Racing” event attended by Mattoon racers Bert Kesler and Bob Chaney and other Blockbuster club members. Neither Kesler nor Chaney appear in the video, but there are some cars that both may have raced against in the footage. One of the racers at the event was Jack Ensley. He was from Indianapolis and was a member of the Lawrenceville Hot Rod Club. He raced a Kurtis-Kraft sports car, winning the X/A cl*** with a speed of 102.47 mph. He won two trophies at the event. He can be seen at the 4:42 minute mark in the video. He was on camera for twelve seconds. He is seen grabbing the brake handle, cigarette dangling from his lips, as he p***es the cameraman on his way to the starting line to make a run.


After his cl*** win at the 1955 “World Series,” Kesler raced his Olds-powered “Lil Stinker” ’39 Crosley a couple of times at drag races held at Parks Metropolitan Airport, across the river east of St. Louis, in Illinois. On October 16, 1955, he set a new strip record in his cl*** of 116.3 mph. Dean Gammill raced in a ’27 Ford Model T at that same race, taking a trophy in his cl***.

With his success at the 1955 “World Series” race, Kesler, with Dean Gammill as his pit crew, decided to tow his “Lil Stinker” ’39 Crosley to Daytona Beach to race in the ATAA-sponsored drag races during Speed Week in late February 1956. They were sponsored by the New Car Dealers ***ociation of Mattoon, which helped pay for their journey and stay at the event. “We’ll be entering two events,” Kesler said, “the quarter-mile drags and the one-mile acceleration test.”

Kesler clocked the second-fastest speed of the drag race meet. The drag races were held on the sand at night. He won the Holley Carburetor trophy for the fastest speed in the coupe-sedan cl***, clocking 109.091 mph. He used a 1949 Olds V8 in his ’39 Crosley.


Near the end of Speed Week on Saturday night, February 26, 1956, the National Guard was called in to quell a riot involving thousands of rowdy, rock-throwing hooligans. The lawless incident drew the attention of the public in newspaper headlines across the nation. This is a page from the Orlando Sentinel (2/27/56) showing photos of some of the riotous activity. Many people got the mistaken idea that it was the racing hot rodders who were involved.

When Bert Kesler returned to Mattoon after his record-shattering performance at Daytona Beach, he was interviewed by Al Drattell, sportswriter for the Mattoon Journal-Gazette. Although elated at his own success, Kesler was more interested in telling what happened and who was really involved in the riot—and it wasn’t the racers.

“The incident that took place had absolutely nothing to do with the ATAA organized drag races,” said Kesler. “During the time that they [the riots] happened, we were holding official drag races at another part of the area and to our knowledge, none of our men were involved.” At the end of the organized races on the beach, Kesler and Gammill heard that they would have trouble getting back to the mainland. “There are four bridges leading to the mainland, and we managed to get over the first one. When we got safely across and back to our room, we heard the details about all the things that were happening. The drag races weren’t involved in any way, and we want the public to know that.”

This Daytona Beach riot did nothing to help improve the public perception of drag racers and racing—it hurt it. In the 1950s, organized drag racing faced an uphill battle to change its public image. Wally Parks and the NHRA spent considerable time and effort in public relations work to that end.

I can speak from personal experience about that. My parents viewed my interest in going to the drag races at Pomona and Fontana with displeasure. In their minds, drag racers were nothing but a bunch of grease monkeys and ne’er-do-wells. In our clashes over the subject, I used to counter their comments with ridiculous come backs. I used to see **** Taylor, a Pasadena dentist, racing a Corvette at Pomona. On that flimsy piece of evidence, I used to tell my parents, that from my view, it was doctors and lawyers who I saw racing at the drags. They got a good laugh out of that. I know that some medical doctors raced their fancy, expensive sports cars at the races occasionally, but I’d be hard-pressed to identify any lawyers who raced. My arguments were weak and ineffectual. Just the laughable blathering of a dumb teenager guided more by p***ion than sense.


Kesler was partial to Crosleys. After his win at Daytona Beach, he put his ’49 Olds motor into a 1946 Crosley in the summer with intentions of racing it at the NHRA national championships in Kansas City, Missouri. This photo of Kesler’s second Crosley drag car appeared in the August 1957 issue of Hot Rod. Kesler is on the left, Gammill on the right.


Kesler and Gammill got their rear-engine sidewinder Crosley completed in time to compete at the 1956 U.S. Nationals in Kansas City. Although they didn’t take home any trophies, they garnered a lot of attention. No drag racer before them had built a dragster or drag car with an engine mounted sideways. They were the first.

I clipped this photo from a frame in a movie that was taken of the 1955 race that can be viewed on YouTube. It is en***led “1956 NHRA National Championship Drags Kansas City.” The Crosley makes its first appearance in the film at the 5:25 minute mark. It can be seen for ten seconds, parked in the pit area. Its second appearance begins at the 15:12 minute mark, being towed back to the pits after a run. That segment lasts for seven seconds.

This footage is important in that it is the first color photo that I found of the race car. There have been several black and white photos of the car that appeared in hot rod publications, so there has always been a question about the color of the car.


Lacking any extant color photo of the car, Jungi Nakamura (Jnaki) took a best guess that the car may have been painted dark purple and yellow. It looks nice with those colors—and maybe should have been painted that way. But, as the 1955 YouTube video shows, it was painted midnight blue and white.


As I was finishing my research for this profile story, I stumbled on a color photograph of the Crosley on Facebook. The metadata accompanying the photo mistakenly identifies it as a photo taken at the 1955 ATAA “World Series.” That is incorrect as Kesler raced his ’39 Crosley at the ’55 “World Series” event, not his ’46 Crosley. I don’t have a Facebook account, so I got my youngest son, who does have an account, to send it to me. This further confirms the car’s paint colors and was a great research find.


This photo of the Crosley sidewinder appeared in the January 1957 issue of Rodding and Re-Styling. The photo was taken at the 1956 ATAA “World Series.” It appeared in an article en***led “Roundup of the Rods at the World Series of Drag Racing,” by Al White. The caption under the photo read: “This odd creation is the Sidewinder, owned by Dean Gammill and Bert Kesler of Mattoon, Illinois. Dean and Bert have run machines at all these World Series events. The complete rundown on the Sidewinder’s unique running gear will appear in next month’s Rodding and Re-styling—don’t miss it!”


As promised in the previous issue of Rodding and Re-Styling, Kesler and Gammill’s ’46 Crosley sidewinder was featured in an article en***led “Geared to Go” by Al White in the February 1957 issue.


The August 1957 issue of Hot Rod featured Kesler and Gammill’s ‘46 Crosley sidewinder in an article en***led “Sidewinder from Mattoon.” There were numerous photos of the unique car in the article, some of which have been preserved and shown here in their original photographic form.


The caption under this photo that was published in the August ’57 Hot Rod reads: “Engine compartment hood happens to be rear section of coupe, swings up and clear. Part of the all-tube frame can be seen. 330-inch Olds sports Effingham cam, tube pushrods, magnesium rockers, JE slugs, Grant rings. Quarter-mile speed: 103 mph.”


The caption under this photo that was published in the August ’57 Hot Rod reads: “’40 Ford gearbox (turned sideways to simplify shift linkage) and hydraulic clutch piston are shown. Hefty gears give 4:1 ratio in high. Swing arm bearing pivots on axis of drive from gearbox, insuring gear mesh during normal wheel travel.”


The caption under this photo that was published in the August ’57 Hot Rod reads: “Still barely recognizable is a ’46 Crosley two-door body with aluminum nose. Willys front axle is drilled for lightness, controlled by torsion bars, home-built shocks.”


The caption under this photo that was published in the August ’57 Hot Rod reads: “Solid rear axle rolls in large bearings welded to a swinging arm (identical to a motorcycle rear suspension unit). A leaf spring is seen below axle. Notice safety wheel clamps attached to backing plates.”


The carbureted sideways-mounted Olds in the Kesler and Gammill Crosley coupe used a set of gears to drive the rear axle. It has the distinction of being the first sidewinder-engined car in the history of drag racing. Later sidewinders used a chain, so this drive setup was also unique in that respect.

In 1957, the ATAA “World Series of Drag Racing” event moved from Lawrenceville to the Quad City Drag Strip in Cordova, Illinois. Kesler raced his sidewinder Olds-engined ’46 Crosley in the A/A cl*** at that event and won with a speed of 116.88 mph on August 25, 1957. His number for that race was 79.


This is a 1946 Mattoon High School yearbook photo of Dean Gammill, taken when he was sixteen years old. After high school, he became an electrician. He got married to Patricia Latch at Daytona Beach during Speed Week in 1956. They moved to Norwalk, California, in 1959. He became the owner/operator of an electric company in Whittier, California. He and his wife divorced in 1980. Dean Paul Gammill died in 2005 at age 75.

After graduating from Mattoon High School, Kesler got married in 1943 to Nina Ferguson. He served in the Army for two years in World War II. He worked for the Mattoon school district as a school bus driver and mechanic for all his working life. John Herbert “Bert” Kesler died in 1973 at age 50.

These two men from Mattoon paved the way for later sidewinder dragster drivers/owners/builders including Jack Chrisman, Paul Nicolini, Harry Duncan, Joe Mailliard, Lowell Lister, Oscar Taylor, Chuck Jones, and a number of others.

 

I have a copy of that issue of Hot Rod. I remember when I first turned to the page with the sidewinder Crosley and I wondered where they got the gears from. I could imagine them going through some industrial junkyard looking for machine parts and coming across them in a pile of rusty s****.

 

Harold Dawson and His Shifting Orbit of Racing Partners
and Santa Ana Drags Compadres​

The Santa Ana Drags holds the distinction of being the first commercial drag strip in operation. One must always be careful in designating what is first in this or that. It is important to phrase it correctly. This is how I phrased it in my Drag Strip List entry for the Santa Ana Drag Strip: “the first do***ented timed, supervised drag races in history were first held at the Orange County Airport in Santa Ana in 1950.”

This photo shows the starting line at the Santa Ana Drags in about 1956. It looks like there may have been at least eight staging lanes pulling right up to the starting line. There was no buffer space behind the cars at the starting line and those in the staging lanes directly behind them. The other cars waited their turn to race directly behind the car leaving the line right in front of them. This setup wouldn’t fly today, but Santa Ana needed to run it this way to give enough room for stopping on the top end. Their setup for racing was dictated by the available configuration of paved ground at the airport. The middle of the starting line/staging lanes, with a fire extinguisher and other starting line equipment, is just to the right of the waiting ’56 T-Bird in line on the left side of the photo.


In this 1955 aerial view of the Orange County Airport, I have outlined the pit area in the white rectangular-shaped area in the bottom right. The starting line, visible as dark burnt rubber marks on the runway, was north of the pit area. Thus, the direction of racing was from north-easterly to south-westerly.

My family used to drive by this old airport on our way to the Corona del Mar beach from our home in Claremont. That was back in the 1950s. On our drive to the beach, the airport didn’t stand out for me as much as the blimp hangars did in Tustin. This was back in the days when freeways in California had names, not numbers. There was no 405. Near us were the San Bernardino Freeway and San Diego Freeway. That’s what we called them. Now they have numbers because there are so many freeways in Southern California. I’d get lost today.


As you can see, the old Orange County Airport is on the southern footprint of today’s John Wayne Airport. As far as I know, no one has heretofore pinpointed its exact location on today’s landscape. This kind of location-pinpointing is what I’m attempting to do for the old bygone drag strips in all fifty states on my Drag Strip List website. With no remnants left of so many of the old historic drag strips, I’ve felt it was very important to accurately establish where they once were. I use old aerial photos and USGS topographic maps that show where the old strips were to then pinpoint their exact location on today’s landscape. I’ve plucked this pinpointed location image of the old Santa Ana strip from its entry on my Drag Strip List website.


I have written about other Santa Ana racers before. In connection with the story that I wrote about Creighton Hunter, one of the men who started the drag strip, I wrote about Santa Ana’s beginnings and reasons for its demise. Others I’ve written about with racing backgrounds ***ociated with Santa Ana include Charles McCandless, Jack Hart, and Ray Rucker. Harold Dawson is another whose drag racing roots go back to Santa Ana’s first year of operation. He also had a revolving partnership with an everchanging band of racing ***ociates residing in the Santa Ana area.

This photo of Harold Dawson, from the Don Tuttle collection, is part of the American Hot Rod Foundation (AHRF) website archives. The caption with the photo reads: “Harold Dawson is shown here with his 1934 Ford Sedan equipped with a custom nose (thank you, cardboard and tape) that hid a 274-inch Mercury inside the mess. Harold ran the car on Alcohol and turned 108.53 in ’50 at Santa Ana. In ’51, he upped his speed to 111.11 mph.” Several of his cars used the racing number 666.


Harold was just a slip of a guy, only 5’8” tall and 150 pounds soaking wet. He graduated from Santa Ana High School in 1939. After graduating, he landed a job as a clerk in the mail room at the Santa Ana Register newspaper. He took cl***es at Santa Ana Junior College but enlisted in the Army in 1943. He was discharged from the Army in 1945. He filled out and signed his WWII draft registration in 1942. He worked at Northrop Aircraft at the time he filled out his draft registration card.


After the war, he returned to the newspaper and worked as a pressman. In 1947, he married Wanda Mae Popnoe. This photo, taken at their wedding, was published in the Santa Ana Register (8/1/47). They divorced in 1973.


In 1947, there was a paper shortage, making it necessary for the Santa Ana Register to purchase newsprint on the open market. That made it very expensive. They paid $49,000 for 200 tons of newsprint to supplement their regular supply of paper. This photo of Harold Dawson moving some of those expensive rolls of newsprint with a forklift was published in the Santa Ana Register (10/6/47). The caption under the photo reads: “A portion of the 280 rolls of French newsprint purchased by The Register is being stacked in the warehouse by Harold Dawson, ***istant pressman for The Register.”

Dawson, a blue-collar worker, and married with a family to support, started racing in the first month that racing started at Santa Ana in July 1950. He started out racing the family car in what was called the Stock or Light Sedan cl***. He took home ten cl*** trophies in his first season of racing at Santa Ana in 1950. Except for his final trophy win in the Light Sedan cl*** on December 12, 1950, he raced without a partner. For that race, he teamed up with Ollie Morris, who later would go on to be almost unbeatable with his “Smokin’ White Owl” rear-engine dragster.


Dawson continued racing his family sedan at the start of the 1952 season at Santa Ana. Another Santa Ana guy, who was the same age as Harold, was Les Harvey. Both were 30 years old. By later drag racing standards, that was an older age to start drag racing. However most guys had delayed starts in racing because the war interrupted the normal activities of life. By trade, Les Harvey was a machinist.

By April 1951, Harvey and Dawson hooked up as partners in what Santa Ana cl***ified as a Fuel Strip Coupe. Running such a car was more expensive than racing the family car, so blue-collar family guys usually needed partners to make their racing hobby work financially.

Santa Ana had cl*** categories that were different from the named categories at most other sanctioned NHRA tracks. The Strip Coupe-Sedan fuel cl*** at Santa Ana stipulated that cars in that cl*** “can be chopped, channeled or belly-panned. Any two of the three modifications. Noses allowed. Can be cut out and gutted. Must have roll bar. Must have flywheel covering and safety hubs.” Drag News (4/15/55) listed the rules, quoted here, for the Strip Coupe Fuel cl*** at Santa Ana.

This photograph published in Drag Sport Illustrated (8/9/65) originally appeared in the Santa Ana Register (7/2/51). Appearing in the photo from left to right are Harold Dawson, Betty Partridge, and Les Harvey. On July 1, 1951, Santa Ana held its first anniversary meet. Dawson and Harvey received a trophy for getting the top time of the day—120.48 mph. In those early years, the emphasis was on speed, so the top time award was held in higher esteem than top eliminator. However, Dawson and Harvey also got top eliminator honors at that race.

Interestingly, the caption with this photo in Drag Sport Illustrated asked, “What ever happened to Dawson and Harvey?” That question was posed sixty years ago. I subscribed to Drag Sport Illustrated back then—and now, sixty years later, I’ll be answering their query. Admittedly the answer will be coming a bit late, but I now have the resources and abilities to tell what happened to Dawson and Harvey.


This is the modified flathead powered T coupe that Dawson and Harvey raced at Santa Ana. They first joined as partners at a race at Santa Ana on April 15, 1951. At that race, they set a new strip record in the Strip Coupe cl*** with a speed of 116.88 mph. This photo shows the coupe being pushed to make a run at a Russetta Timing ***ociation meet in 1951. They were timed at 143.42 mph. That looks like Dawson (wearing shades) pushing the car.


The American Hot Rod Foundation (AHRF) obtained this photo from Leslie Long. It is one of the photos that Long sent them from the Don Tuttle Collection. The caption with the photo reads: “Les Harvey’s Strip Coupe started life as a Model T before the top was radically chopped. In June 1951, a 274” Mercury Flathead powered the car to its fastest time when it ran 125.00 mph at the Santa Ana Drags. The car later ran at Bonneville with a different owner.” It was the June 3, 1951, race where the coupe turned 125.


Les Harvey filled out and signed his draft registration card in 1945. Although he was unemployed at the time, he worked as a machinist by trade. Lester Leroy Harvey died in 1983 at age 62.


Dawson and Harvey teamed up as partners for nine months, from April through December 1951. Thereafter they ran their own racing coupes.

This is one of the coupes that Dawson ran briefly without a partner in 1952. He totaled the car after crashing into Jarvis Earl’s Buick-engined Chevy coupe. Both drivers came out of the crash OK, but this car was destroyed. Most fuel coupes of this era looked like this. They were rough-looking. Most sported full fenders with carbureted engines running on fuel. That’s a nice shot of Harold at the wheel.

Many of his early cars sported the “666” number. The number “666” is widely used as a symbol of Satan or the devil, harking back to a Bible scripture (Revelation 13:18). I’m going to don my amateur psychologist hat and speculate that, as Dawson was short in stature, he may have had a little man complex. To compensate for his short size and light weight, he may have used that devil number “666” to convey an image of macho toughness—sort of a don’t-mess-with-me persona. However, he only used that number “666” in his early racing years because later he didn’t need to inflate his image with the guise of an evil symbol. His resume did the talking. He racked up a lot of wins and garnered a deserved reputation as close to unbeatable in whatever cl*** he was running in.


Harold Dawson teamed together with two other men from Santa Ana—James Warden and George Morris—to build a roadster to race at the Bonneville Nationals in 1952. The 1952 Nationals was the fourth annual event on the salt, and it drew hundreds of compe***ors from across the country. This photo, published in the November 1952 issue of Hot Rod, shows the line of cars waiting their turn to take a run. I’ve been to Speed Week many times and this scene has been reenacted repeatedly every year. It never gets old.


The Dawson-Warden-Morris Cl*** C Fendered Roadster won its cl*** with a speed of 139.96 mph, twenty miles per hour faster then their nearest compe***or. There were seven cars competing in their cl***, drawn from the states of California, Utah, Oregon, and Wyoming.


Harold leans against the team’s fendered fuel roadster at Bonneville. It is called the “Drag Race Special.”


Ollie Morris (left) and Harold Dawson (right) raced this roadster in 1953. When Santa Ana opened in 1950, Morris left track racing for drag racing. In late 1952, Morris teamed up with Calvin Rice to run a Cl*** D Roadster. Then Morris and Dawson built this hot-running B/Roadster that they began racing in January 1953. Phil Burgess wrote, “To save weight, they removed the firewall, which led to the occasional oil bath.” Note the Potvin Cams sponsorship hand-lettered sign painted above the “666” number. Pretty laid-back operation.

The Santa Ana Register (6/28/53) wrote: “Harold Dawson and Ollie Morris, rather than use the big 400 cubic inch overhead engines in their Cl*** B roadster, stick to the 268 cubic-inch variety, then really go to work on tuning it up to a fine point. They get results, too. They hold the Cl*** B roadster record at 128.85 with that system.”

Ollie and Harold only raced together for a couple of months. Ollie had another race car that he began working on with the help of Bruce Terry—the “Smokin’ White Owl” #606 dragster, which they had ready to run by mid-1953. And did it ever run!


Harold had his eye on another young lad who appeared to be an up-and-comer—Bill Matz. Matz was twelve years younger than Harold. He had graduated from Tustin Union High School in 1951 and attended Santa Ana Junior College. This is his senior photo in his high school yearbook.


But Matz was a level-headed guy who was serious about drag racing. That stood out for Harold, so they formed a partnership. Matz had been involved with Bill Sanders in a rear-engine car. Santa Ana cl***ified it as a Cl*** D Roadster. In the lexicon of Santa Ana, a D Roadster on fuel was essentially a dragster. The Orange County drag race rules stated D Fuel Roadsters were “frame jobs. All out. Must have roll bars. Must have flywheel covering and safety hubs. If driver sits over rear-end it must be covered.” I know, it gets confusing. When we think of roadsters, we certainly don’t picture dragsters. But that’s Santa Ana. They marched to the beat of a different drummer—and that drummer was C. J. “Pappy” Hart.


The May 1953 issue of Auto Sport Review had an interesting article, en***led “Two Drags in a Day,” comparing the differences between racing at a track like Pomona and racing at Santa Ana. The author of the article, John Viertel, went to both drag strips on the same day. “The strip there [at Santa Ana] is not a non-profit venture of the hot rod clubs, as at Pomona, but a business undertaking operated by C. J. Hart and Frank Stillwell,” Viertel wrote. “It is very businesslike and fast-moving, the atmosphere is a little rougher, and less attention and care are devoted to safety. The crowd is allowed to get somewhat closer to the strip, and more extreme machinery than at Pomona is permitted. . . . Rules are simpler and briefer.”

He commented on Santa Ana’s different cl***ification naming system. He wrote that D Roadsters were “all-out. And all-out means all-out! Here you saw the Rail Jobs, the ‘Thingies’—the most extreme form of the hot rod: an engine and four wheels, held together by the barest of frames, engine set well back from the front axle, a seat, with a roll bar behind it, a fuel tank. Period! And the mixtures they burn are pretty atomic, too. Whenever one of them took off the whole starting area smoked like a rifle range. These frightening-looking monsters have been able to accelerate to the incredible speed of more than 135 m.p.h. in one quarter of a mile. But on this day, they were all defeated by Bill Sanders and Bill Matz’s rear-engined dragster which has a well streamlined ****pit ahead of the engine.”

So, Harold Dawson saw some opportunity and potential in taking young Matz as a driver for his Cl*** D Roadster, i.e, all-out rear-engine dragster. The first time out in their new partnership, they clocked the meet’s fastest time with a 129.10 mph clocking on April 12, 1953. But the partnership was short-lived as Matz enlisted in the Army after three straight cl*** wins.

He served in the Army from 1953-55, as an engineer on Guam. After returning to the States after his Army service concluded, Matz got together with a couple of guys to build an A Fuel Roadster to race at the first NHRA U.S. Nationals at Great Bend, Kansas. He and Jim Warden and Bob Lewis, both of Santa Ana, built the ’29 Ford roadster and Clark Cagle, of Lakewood, supplied the ’41 Ardun-Merc engine, running on nitro.


Their fuel roadster appears briefly two times in a YouTube video, “Vintage Drag Racing, First Ever NHRA National Event in 1955.” The first appearance of the roadster shows it driving through the pit area. That begins at the 5:38 minute mark and lasts 4 seconds. The second appearance of the roadster shows it returning to the pits after making a run. That begins at the 6:18 minute mark and lasts 3 seconds.

William Carl Matz, Jr. is 92 years old, still living in Escondido, California. I have his email address and will reach out to him upon completing this story. It would be nice to get in touch with him.


In 1954, Dawson teamed up with Burrell Wilson, a 27-year-old Santa Ana resident to build a screaming ’32 3-window fuel altered coupe which they called “The Tortoise.” But unlike the hard-shelled terrapin, this tortoise could really haul!

Burrell Wilson appears in the YouTube video of the “Santa Ana Drags” produced by Don Tuttle, the longtime former announcer at the drag strip. It’s a great video. Burrell Wilson appears in the video beginning at the 40:37-minute mark. The camera follows him for nine seconds as he walks up to a group of guys surrounding a dragster. Don Tuttle added commentary: “This fellow walking up to it with the striped shirt on, that’s Burrell Wilson. He built the engine in the car that they won the world championship with in ’55.” The car that won the “world championship” was Cal Rice, from Santa Ana, in the Riley Special. The engine powering Rice’s dragster that Wilson built was a 274-inch Merc flathead.


There are several pieces of video footage of “The Tortoise” fuel coupe. There is a lengthy segment in the “Santa Ana Drags” YouTube video produced by Don Tuttle. It shows Dawson and his crew pushing the car to the starting line, then leaving the line and going down the track. The segment begins at the 33:31-minute mark and lasts for 28 seconds. Don Tuttle adds some interesting comments during the video. “This car run by Harold Dawson in the blue denim outfit here, number 666, which is also the sign of the devil,” Tuttle said. “Back in the old days, Harold had a friend who was a chemist and they experimented with nitrous oxide. He had a bang tank on it. And when they hit it, it dumped a whole tank of nitrous oxide, if they needed it. Here he is running against a GMC ’34 run by Frank Iacono. They had quite a feud, those two, every time they came out, it was just a guess as to who would win.”

One of the important things about some of the contributions to Jalopy Journal are the recollections of guys who have shared their first-hand memories of the old days. One contributor to Jalopy Journal recalled those Dawson-Iacono feuds: “Ike Iacono also ran a fenderless ’34 altered coupe with that same orange paint job and a Wayne head GMC at the Santa Ana drags around ’53-54. He was usually quickest in his cl***. Ike was a real nice, kinda quiet kid with real thick gl***es, but his dad, who was always along, was a real hothead. The Iaconos were commercial fishermen from San Pedro, and I think his dad ran a purse seiner, so the story went. Ike’s number one compe***or was the little yellow, fenderless, chopped and channeled ’29 [sic] A, 3-window altered coupe running a flathead 3/8/x3/8 Merc called “The Tortoise” owned by a couple of Santa Ana locals I knew, Harold Dawson and Burrell Wilson. Once when Harold whipped Ike, Pop got ugly and he and Harold duked it out in the pit area.”


Photos of Dawson and Wilson’s fuel coupe appeared in a couple of issues of Drag News. The first photo appeared in the June 24, 1955, issue. It illustrated a race at Santa Ana held on June 19, 1955. At that meet, they lost an extremely close race to Glen Pingry driving the Voigt Automotive Chrysler fuel dragster. Wilson had been leading the whole way until the last hundred feet when he was nipped right at the finish line, losing by a foot.


While Wilson and Dawson had confined most of their racing to Santa Ana, their home track, in the latter part of 1955, they began going to Lions. This photo illustrated a race at Lions on November 27, 1955. It appeared in the December 9, 1955, issue of Drag News. The text of the article describes another incident in the ongoing conflict between Dawson and Ike Iacono: “The ‘B’ Comp C/S entry of Reath & Mailliard Automotive driven by Harold Dawson racked up the second record when he edged out Ike Iacono’s potent GMC entry in the trophy run. Dawson’s speed of 126.76 and 11.46 ET drew an engine displacement protest from Iacono, but a check revealed it to be in cl***.” Dawson set a new strip record with his 126.76 mph run.

On June 23, 1956, Dawson ran the quickest time ever turned in the B/Comp Coupe cl*** with a blistering 10.89 seconds. His fastest speed in the coupe was 131.57 mph.


Dawson and Wilson stayed together with “The Tortoise” screaming 274-inch Merc flathead fuel coupe for a couple years, from 1954-55. It appears that the partnership ended in about October 1955, when Wilson left and Dawson ran and drove the coupe by himself.

Burrell Ray Wilson died in 1993 at age 65.

After taking on the driving chores himself for a few months, Dawson got Don Little, of Santa Ana, to take over the driving chores in June 1956. In late August they towed the coupe to the 1956 U.S. Nationals at Kansas City.

Phil Hobbs took this photo of the Reath & Mailliard coupe at the 1956 U.S. Nationals at Kansas City. The photo is in Don Ewald’s “We Did It for Love” (WDIFL) subscription website. It is a great resource for old photos. In the caption accompanying the photo, Hobbs wrote, “As I remember it, this coupe of Reath & Mailliard was runner up to Mel Heath at the 1956 Kansas City NHRA Nats. Seems like they hurt an engine on the previous round, put in a smaller one so they could run more pop (flatheads of course!). Looks like Joe and Del Reath in the background.”

Joe is wearing the sungl***es and his wife, Del, is looking at the work progress being done on the car. That certainly looks to me like Joe Mailliard standing in front of them (and between them in the photo). The short buzz butch-style haircut is the identifier. Although his back is to the camera, that looks like Harold squatting down to close the hood. Gerald Dyer was also a member of Dawson’s pit crew.

Hobbs misremembered what happened at the ’56 Nats with this coupe. Mel Heath defeated Bob Alsenz, driving Kenny Lindley’s “Miss-Fire II” to win top eliminator honors. The B/C coupe in this photo was owned by Harold Dawson and driven by Don Little, of Santa Ana. Little beat Homer Matthews of Texas to take the trophy in B/Comp Coupe cl*** with 11.76 at 120.80 mph. Dawson’s B/Comp Coupe was powered by a ’46 Merc flathead. It set a national record with 123.11 mph.


This is a clip of a frame from the YouTube video en***led “1956 NHRA National Championship Drags Kansas City.” The film quality is good. There are two appearances of Dawson and Wilson’s #303 fuel flathead “Tortoise” coupe in the video. The first one shows the coupe leaving the line and viewed as it runs past the camera and down to about half-track. It turned 123.11 mph on this run. That segment begins a the 12:58-minute mark and lasts 8 seconds. The second appearance of the coupe shows the coupe in the pits with blue-shirted crew members ****oning down the hood. It looks like Dawson with his back to the camera in the foreground. We get a very brief glimpse of him as he turns away from the car and goes off camera to the right. That segment begins at the 16:42-minute mark and lasts for 7 seconds.


Another YouTube video en***led “1956 Kansas City Drags 8mm Film r082” shows “The Tortoise” parked in the pit area at the 1956 U.S. Nationals at Kansas City. The video quality is good. The coupe appears once in the video, beginning at the 2:27-minute mark and lasts for 7 seconds.

On October 14, 1956, Santa Ana hosted a special fuel coupe invitational race attracting some of the hottest fuel coupes in the nation. Harold Dawson installed a new 355-inch ’56 Cad engine in the Reath & Mailliard-sponsored coupe. Don Little, doing the driving, lost to Ike Iacono in the first round of eliminations. Thereafter, Don Little joined Ken Lindley to drive the “Miss-Fire II” blown Chrysler Hemi dragster. Harold Dawson seems to have bowed out of drag racing at this point.

Harold Eugene Dawson died in 1991 at age 70 years old. Donald Raymond Little died in 1999 at age 68.

 

It never fails. As soon as I put one of these stories to bed, I stumble on something that would enhance the story. Generally, I just throw up my hands and say, "Well, that's too bad." But in this case, I'm not going to just let this one go. I just stumbled on a photo of the Cl*** D Roadster, i.e., dragster, run by Harold Dawson and Bill Matz. I hadn't found a photo of that race car before finishing the story--and it is worth uploading because it fills in a visual gap in the story. Also, it's pretty cool. I found it in Drag Strip Illustrated (7/27/65). Don Tuttle had shared it with DSI.


The caption accompanying the photo reads: "Back in the days prior to Sorrell, Ewing, and Kruse, whenever you needed a little custom body work done, you simply took out a little cardboard and masking tape and had at it. This creation by Bill Matz, which was called a D roadster in those days, hit a high of 136.98 in 1953 using Harold Dawson's potent flathead engine."

After Bill Matz went into the Army, he let some other trusted friends drive the dragster in his absence. In September 1953, he got a leave of absence from his Army service and returned to his Tustin home. While there, he took the reins of his old dragster and ran it at Santa Ana on a meet on September 27. The Santa Ana Register (9/28/53) reported: "Tustin’s Bill Matz returns to Army life this week after a scoring a drag racing ‘sweep.’ Matz celebrated his Army leave by winning not only his Cl*** D roadster division but also the fastest time-of-the-day in yesterday’s regular program at the Orange County Airport. It was his first drag racing compe***ion in six months. Matz hit 136.98 mph in annexing the Cl*** D roadster division, and then beat out Tommy Augar (61 cycle) in the ‘fastest’ runoff.”

 

Todd “Doc” Rawleigh: Doctor of What? Maybe Drag Racing?
​

Everyone who had even a p***ing acquaintance with Todd “Doc” Rawleigh was certain that his “Doc” moniker was nothing more than a nickname. If he was a doctor of anything, it might have been a Doctor of Drag Racing. Even that may have been suspect. In drag racing, he was more of a research doctor than a practicing fellow. He liked to dream up different stuff and experiment. This photo is a case in point. I found it in Drag Sport Illustrated (9/12/65). It is an early iteration of his experiment with two front-mounted blowers. When it first debuted at Colton on September 28, 1957, Drag News reported that Todd had been toying with getting more boost by mounting two GMC blowers, one on top of another. Drag News (10/5/57) reported: “Rawleigh has been working on his theory of a 4:71 GMC blower pushing air into a 6:71 GMC blower shoving air into the big Olds engine, for a long time.” He called this first dual-blown Olds dragster “Plumber’s Friend.”

The caption in DSI accompanying this photo read: “When the idea of supercharging struck Todd Rawleigh he didn’t mess around and went the full route. His Olds powered ‘Hot Beef Spl.’ Featured a pair of front mounted blowers, and although it produced gobs of horsepower it also had as many problems and was never really successful. Note the size of those zoomies.” He ran his exhaust pipes clear out each bank, up over the rear tires, and out past the tail. The guy sure liked pipes. While not the greatest of dragster names, “Plumber’s Friend” was descriptive of this racing concoction.


In the two months between late September and late November 1957, Rawleigh got Joe Itow to build him a dragster ch***is. Itow did quality work out of his shop and it was a big improvement for Rawleigh’s dragster experiment. In the two months between late September and late November 1957, Rawleigh got Joe Itow to build him a dragster ch***is. Itow did quality work out of his shop and it was a big improvement for Rawleigh’s dragster experiment.
In the two months between late September and late November 1957, Rawleigh got Joe Itow to build him a dragster ch***is. Itow did quality work out of his shop and it was a big improvement for Rawleigh’s dragster experiment.


The first win for the Rawleigh & Itow A/FD came at Colton on November 24, 1957. Rawleigh turned 10.44 seconds at 150.50 mph for a top fuel eliminator victory. In the run for overall top eliminator of the meet, Rawleigh faced the gas winner, Ted Cyr. Unfortunately, Rawleigh red-lighted on a smoky launch. A blown head gasket in Rawleigh’s motor gave the TE win to Cyr & Hopper. This blurry digitally-scanned photo from my Drag News scans illustrated the article about this Colton race in Drag News (11/30/57).


Rawleigh ran the Olds engine with the dual blown setup for almost a year. “He put a lot of engineering into this setup,” Dave Sorenson wrote. “Notice the ducting, complete with pop-off valve to the custom intake. And the belt drive for the smaller top supercharger.” Notice also that he has shifted to weed burner style headers. That’s a big improvement in overall looks.


Rawleigh claimed that the 354-inch Olds engine dynoed at 700 horsepower on alcohol. One guy remembered that the blown Old dragster was a “wicked sounding thing.”

Rawleigh undoubtedly raced other cars before this dragster, but nothing that brought him any attention in drag race reports. I spend a lot of time researching drag racing results in old newspapers from the ‘50s. It’s always fun to stumble on the name of a drag racer winning a trophy in the stock cl***es who later becomes famous nationally driving a dragster. I never found any wins by Rawleigh in old newspapers prior to his first wins with his blown Olds dragster.


At one point, Rawleigh fashioned a nose for his blown Olds dragster for an attempt at streamlining. No matter what changes he made, his times always stayed around the mid-nine second and sub-150 mph range.


This photo was taken by John Moore when Rawleigh ran his blown Olds dragster at Bakersfield. This may have been sometime during the first half of the 1958 season. Although it was officially called the “Herbert Cam Special,” Don Ewald surmised that it may have been Bernie Mather who dubbed it the “Hot Beef Special.” As a drag race announcer, Mather had a knack for expression and description. He certainly could have seen something similar between those two mated blowers and a hot beef sandwich, thereby coining it the “Hot Beef Special.”


At least by mid-August 1958, Rawleigh talked Louie Senter into sponsoring his dragster. The blown Olds-engined Ansen Automotive Special, with Rawleigh driving, won A/FD honors at Colton on August 16, 1958, with a speed of 156.52 mph. However, Rawleigh lost to Tommy Ivo in the top eliminator finals.

In this photo, you get a glimpse of Ansen’s name having replaced Chet Herbert’s name on the side cowl of the dragster, although he still ran a Chet Herbert cam. You must give Rawleigh credit for the whole blower setup and workmanship. The crank-driven bottom 6-71 pumps to the second stage top-mounted 4-71. The belt-driven 4-71 also derived its drive from a lower pulley bolted to the front of the crank. It’s also a credit to Rawleigh’s persistence in running with this system for as long as he did. There are several places where potential problems could arise. For one, the injectors seem to be in a likely location for ingesting debris. The stress on the crank and front mains must have been considerable. One wonders how much heat buildup there was in the induction tubes. It could have benefited by inter-cooling. It could have been any or none of these matters that caused Rawleigh to decide to go a different route.


The successes that fuel dragsters were having with the Chrysler Hemi motors may have been the tipping point and reason that Rawleigh decided to change out his Olds dual blown engine for a Chrysler. His Itow ch***is was built to accept either engine. The July issue of Hot Rod printed this photo of Rawleigh with his dragster, in the process of replacing the Olds motor with an unblown Chrysler. The article featured photos of several dragsters preparing for the forthcoming Nationals that would be held at Oklahoma City in 1958. Rawleigh may have had intentions about entering, but it didn’t happen. Maybe he didn’t get it ready in time.

I’ve been unable to find a photo of Rawleigh’s Chrysler fuel dragster but have found reports of the Chrysler dragster doing quite well in the latter part of 1958. Rawleigh had the dragster ready for the big 2-day Drag Racers, Inc. race at Riverside held on September 27-28. The top eliminator prize of a $500 bond attracted a good field of dragsters. Rawleigh went through several rounds, beating guys like Art Chrisman and Red Case before darkness forced Riverside to call a halt to the races before the top eliminator final between Don Rackemann and Todd Raleigh. Riverside decided to postpone the D.R.I. finals until another race in early November.


Before the November Riverside D.R.I. top eliminator runoff, Rawleigh took the Ansen Automotive-Itow’s Auto Chrysler-engined A/FD to top eliminator honors at Colton on October 11. He had the low ET and top speed of the meet with 9.70 and 160.42 mph.

Rawleigh won the D.R.I. World Championships in the postponed runoff for top eliminator at Riverside on November 9, 1958. He beat Don Rackemann driving the Spaghetti Bender’s Chrysler fueler to win the top fuel portion of the race. Then he beat Tony Waters, the top gas eliminator, to take all the marbles and the $500 bond. His best clocking was when he ran against Rackemann, turning 9.54 at 160.71 mph.


Sometime in about 1959, Rawleigh built a beautiful full-bodied dragster. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a photo of this dragster. But various people have commented on it. This full-bodied dragster slowly shed its panels for weight. Todd was very proud of this dragster. It was one racer’s impression that Rawleigh was enamored with Formula 1 cars and built his full-bodied dragster with an open front nose in adulation of F1 style race cars.

He named it “Tarantula,” but never did have that name painted on the side of the dragster. One guy who knew Rawleigh at the time that he had this dragster, said, “I don’t think Todd was especially good at names.”

Another time, Todd was racing this dragster at Bakersfield. He told another racer and his father to meet him after the race at an Italian restaurant where the racers hung out. “Apparently, it was the favorite after-race spot and Todd was telling everybody about his double-blown Olds.” Rawleigh ***umed that everyone was familiar with his old double-blown Olds dragster. “Anyway, Art Chrisman laughingly says, ‘You mean you had two motors?’” Chrisman was dead-panned, playing ignorant about Rawleigh’s old double-blown dragster. “It was only funny as Todd’s story and ego kinda shrunk on the spot, thinking his racing endeavors were well known I guess.”

Rawleigh took a lot of ribbing from other racers. He was likeable enough, but sometimes he was the **** of a lot of their teasing. With his spectacles and blustering ego, he didn’t always fit in with the guys. One time, announcer Bernie Mather was talking about Rawleigh’s full-bodied racer with a group of racers. “You know why he named it ‘Tarantula’?” said Bernie. “If you can see through the blue plexigl***, just look at the driver inside.”

Dean Lowe remembered what some of the other racers started calling him because of Doc’s continual talking about his full-bodied dragster. “He made such a big deal of his full-bodied car,” said Dean, “they nicknamed him ‘Toddy the Body’ Rawleigh.”


In late 1961, Rawleigh bowed out of drag racing and jumped into boat drag racing. He built a highly successful blown fuel Chrysler-engined drag boat called “Hot Toddy.” Finally, he came up with a pretty good name. When that “Hot Toddy” flipped and was destroyed going over 100 mph, Rawleigh built another drag boat in 1965 that he named “Hot Toddy’s Ghost.” This photo shows the Dodge wedge-powered “Ghost” with Doc at the controls.


This 1962 newspaper photo shows Rawleigh (left) and his co-owner, Jack Siebuhr, with a subsequent drag boat, called “Impulse IV.”

Todd Rawleigh died in 2006 at age 73.

 

Jerry Rollema and His P***ion
with Building Beautiful and Fast Dragsters​

I have an old hi-fi record album, somewhere in the house, of sounds recorded at a race at Lions Drag Strip. I just can’t find it right now. Wouldn’t do any good because I no longer have a hi-fi stereo record player to listen to it. I can picture the front cover. It is a colored illustration of a dragster, mostly blue with a touch of yellow, I think. Lots of smoke coming off the tires. On the recording, you can hear the announcer’s voice at Lions. I can only recall the announcer mentioning the names of two dragsters on the album. One of them is Tommy Ivo and the other is Rollema and Hill. For whatever reason, Rollema and Hill stands out in my memory bank. I don’t think I ever saw them run. If I did, then it wasn’t memorable enough to stick in my mind.

They ran at most of the tracks in SoCal, just not at Pomona—which is where I mostly went to watch.


The earliest photo I have found of Jerry Rollema’s GMC-engined dragster is this photo that appeared in Drag News (4/20/57). It sports a Ch***is Research T.E. 440 frame. He won the C/D cl*** at San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip on April 14, 1957, with a 112.50 mph clocking. The driver of Rollema’s dragster in this race was Gary Scherer.

Jerry Rollema was from Culver City. Scherer was from Whittier. Scherer first started picking up wins at San Gabriel in late 1956 with a GMC-powered A/SR. It was probably in early 1957, that the two racers first met each other.


I’m going way out on a limb here. I have nothing to back it up. But Rollema had been racing a Merc flathead dragster. I’m guessing that the two guys met—and one thing led to another, and Scherer’s GMC engine ended up in Rollema’s dragster. That’s how partnerships were formed in the ‘50s. It may have been as simple as that. But that’s a wild guess.

This photo appeared in an issue of Hot Rod (probably the July 1957 issue) prior to the running of the Nationals at Oklahoma City in 1957. This was a very early Ch***is Research model built by Scotty Fenn on his very first run of his acclaimed ch***is. Notice the gusseted roll cage.


Gary Scherer drove the Rollema-Scherer & Veronico GMC-engined dragster to a top eliminator victory at San Fernando on August 11, 1957.

Veronico was only involved as a partner in the dragster venture in August 1957, when they raced at San Fernando and took a C/D cl*** win at Lions a week after the San Fernando win.

I’m grasping at straws, but there was a guy named Armand Veronico, who was 20 years old and lived in Culver City at this time. If he is the same guy who was in a short-term drag racing partnership with Scherer and Rollema, I’m waiting to hear back from him. I’ve sent him e-mails and text messages. He is 89 years old now.

When you choose to write about guys who drag raced in the ‘50s, it’s rare to find some still alive.


Jerry Rollema is purportedly still alive. He’s 89, living in Pennsylvania. I’ve just reached out to him via email and text. His wife, Sherry, is a couple years younger than I am. I hope to hear back from either Jerry or Sherry. I told him that it would greatly enrich this story to hear his recollections about his racing days.

Jerry (left) worked for Joe Itow (right), seen here in this photo. They are eyeballing an Itow-ch***is dragster at Itow’s Automotive, located at 52nd and Normandie Avenue, in Los Angeles. Gary Hill, Stan Hill’s brother, remembered, “You could go to his [Itow’s] shop, and he would fabricate most anything within reason, mostly race cars.”

Jerry developed his love of hot rods when he was just a kid. He graduated from Dorsey High School in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles. He built four dragsters before 1961. “I used to build them in my garage, but the neighbors complained,” Jerry said. “So, I got a job with Joe Itow’s Automotive Service in Los Angeles, who specializes in building cars, and I do all my work in the shop.”

Jerry lived with his parents at their house in Culver City (4390 Mentone Avenue) until he was at least 25 years old, if not longer. He married Sherry in 1971. He was 35, finished with racing, ready to settle down, and she was 23 years old.


Gary Scherer drove the GMC-engined Rollema & Scherer to a top eliminator win at Santa Ana on September 22, 1957, with a time of 11.90. This photo, from my scanned digital database of Drag News issues, appeared in the October 5, 1957, issue.


Rollema and Scherer teamed together until at least late June 1958. At San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip on February 23, 1958, they took a top eliminator victory with a win over Ollie Prather. Scherer turned 11.57 at 116.18 mph for the win. They got top ET of the event with 11.05 seconds. They also won a Bell “TX” helmet from concessioner Jay Evans for the Top Time of the month at the strip.


Sometime around July-August 1958, Jerry Rollema and Gary Scherer parted ways. Stan Hill, another Whittier guy, joined Jerry in the GMC dragster venture. Their first joint victory came at San Fernando on September 7, 1958. “I am the mechanic,” Jerry said. “Stan does all the driving in compe***ion.”

This is an interesting photo of Rollema & Hill, probably with Stan Hill driving the Jimmy dragster, at Riverside. They are racing the blown 409-inch Cad dragster of Ohno-Lew-Gonzales.

On December 21, 1958, the Ohno-Lew-Gonzales triumvirate took Rollema and Hill as partners in their dragster at a race at San Fernando. The Ohno-Lew-Gonzales-Hill-Rollema short-lived partnership, with tennis pro Richard “Pancho” Gonzales driving, took top eliminator with a clocking of 11.21 at 151.51 mph.

There seems to have been some long-term trust relationship between Rollema & Hill and Ohno-Lew-Gonzales. The latter team got Stan Hill to drive their dragster at San Fernando on September 17, 1961. He drove their blown Olds dragster to a top eliminator victory with a 9.39 and 164.53 mph clocking.


As the dragster’s driver, Stan Hill generally got the headlines in newspapers. This article appeared in the October 31, 1960, issue of the Los Angeles Times. Stan Hill bested Tony Nancy for Top Eliminator at San Fernando with a 10.18 second run.


This photo accompanied the Drag News (11/5/60) article for Rollema and Hill’s San Fernando TE victory on October 30, 1960. The Drag News text for this race read: “The little unblown GMC powered dragster of Rollema and Hill proved to be the giant killer today as they shut down Bert’s Flying ‘A’ Chev powered dragster for the first top eliminator race with a speed of 134.00 and a 10.48 ET. . . . Final top eliminator action brought Rollema and Hill to the line to face the challenge of the blown Buick roadster of Tony Nancy. While Tony was running real good today, in the 140’s with a top of 141.38, Rollema and Hill proved to be the final judge and top honors went to Stan Hill in this last big race of the day.” They beat Nancy with a time of 10.18 at 135.33 mph.


This photo appeared in a very informative newspaper article published in the July 21, 1961, issue of the Venice Star-News Vanguard en***led “Local Man Builds Championship Dragster: Hold Top NHRA Mark for Racers.” Stan Hill (left) is in the driver’s seat and Jerry Rollema (right) is kneeling next to the engine. The man with his hands on the rear slick is not identified.


The newspaper article mentioned that the dragster held just about every track record available in its cl*** at SoCal drag strips. It also held the 1960 NHRA national record for D/D with 10.49 and 132.35 mph. They set that record at Colton on November 13, 1960. According to the report of the Colton race in Drag News (11/19/60), they “obliterated” the old record.

“That is the record in the books,” Jerry said. “However, it has done 141.00 miles per hour in 9.90 seconds.” Jerry was justly proud of his record-setting dragster. “The 1958 Jimmy will displace 292 inches, run an Iskenderian cam with stock valve train, Jahns pistons, Hilborn injectors and magneto from Joe Hunt,” said Jerry. “The 12-pot head is from Wayne. The English Ford Anglia front end spreads the tread 49 inches, is snubbed by friction shocks. It contains a 1950 Lincoln transmission.”


A 2-page article, en***led “Jimmy Dandy,” appeared in the August 1961 issue of Hot Rod.


The caption under this photo on page 59 of the “Jimmy Dandy” article reads: “Jerry works for Joe Itow’s Automotive, thus the reason for the neat Itow channel frame. Wheelbase stretches 93 inches with the engine mounted parallel in the ch***is and just slightly to the rear of mid-sideship. Rear wheels are Halibrand magnesium.”


A small inset photo of the two co-owners appeared on the first page of the “Jimmy Dandy” article.


In the latter part of 1961, Jerry installed a blown small block Chevy in the dragster. In the Venice Star-News Vanguard newspaper article, Jerry said he was in the process of putting the Chevy motor in the dragster. “I’m putting a different engine in it right now,” Jerry said, “and expect to go over 170 miles per hour in it. In fact, it’s almost finished and will be tested soon.”

This photo of their blown 352-inch Chevy dragster appeared in Drag News (12/23/61), taken at Fontana when they took top eliminator honors on December 17, 1961. Stan Hill also won the A/D cl*** with 9.22 at 169.81 mph. Stan beat Dave McKenzie’s new twin Chevy-motored AA/GD to win the $150 TE prize.


At Lions, most top eliminator victories in late 1961 were taken by either Tom McEwen, Jack Chrisman, or Glen Stokey. They were the dominant drivers. It was a surprise when Stan Hill started off the 1962 season at Lions with a top eliminator victory. Hill waded through three rounds of eliminations to win, including two against dual engine dragsters. The headline in Drag News (1/13/62) tells the story of how the season began for Rollema and Hill. $300 was their prize, but the following week, Lions was going to bump it up to $500.


Dave Sorenson remembered, “The guys [Rollema & Hill] always field clean equipment. The frame was pearl and the body was candy blue.” This photo, taken at Bakersfield in 1963, shows the dragster with a matching dark blue body and frame. It was one of the last cars to run a channel frame.

At San Gabriel on January 27, 1963, Stan Hill won Middle Eliminator honors in their A Gas Dragster. Steve Gibbs reported the San Gabriel races in Drag News. Gibbs described the Rollema & Hill dragster as “beautiful” and “radical.” “You have to see this one,” Gibbs wrote, “It’s really something else.”


This photo taken at Lions, shows the car with a different scoop atop the blown Chevy, launching off the starting line. Apparently at one time it had a nose piece. “I remember seeing it at Lions with a nose piece,” Dave Sanderson recalled, “which was so low it ran under the front axle.”


Jerry Rollema and Stan Hill are the 4th and 5th guys from the left respectively (wearing light-colored pants). From the looks on everyone’s faces, it must be serious matters under discussion. Either that, or the dragster just wasn’t performing or winning—and those are disgruntled rather than serious faces.


Rollema and Hill came out with a very distinctive new car that they debuted at Lions on February 23, 1963. It was a blown ’59 365-inch Chevy A/GD. **** Dean built the body with a fairing around the front and back of the slicks. It was truly unusual. In this photo, Jerry Rollema (left) accompanies the dragster up to the starting line at Lions.


Stan Hill launches the “wheel-fairing” car in front of a packed house at San Gabriel in 1963.


This is another photo of the “wheel-fairing” dragster at Lions. It still ran the Itow ch***is.


In August or early September 1963, Rollema and Hill shed the fairings surrounding their slicks. They also decided to compete in top fuel, where the prize money was more generous. This photo was taken at a race at Lions on September 14, 1963. The whole car has a different look than the “wheel-fairing” dragster. Notice the low-profile blower scoop on the engine. At this meet, Stan Hill made it through four rounds of top fuel eliminations before losing to Pfaff-Sowins in the final round. Stan turned a best time of 8.56 and 183.85 mph during the compe***ion. This is the better of two photos of the Rollema and Hill dragster that were printed in the September 21, 1963, issue of Drag Sport Illustrated.


Stan Hill was getting to be a drawing card as Lions featured him in a newspaper ad as being one of the entries along with Roger Wolford and Gary Gabelich for its race on September 28, 1963. However, at that race, Stan had to shut off the fueler in the first round of eliminations. Troubles plagued them at almost every meet.

Rollema and Hill ran for a couple of more months, even trying a 414-inch blown Chevy motor, but nothing they did brought them any success.

They ended up selling the dragster to Al Teague.

Now, if only Jerry Rollema would reach out to me and fill in the gaps with his recollections.

 

Harry Duncan:
Doodle Bug, Jitter Bug, and His Fleet of Speedy-Fast Race Cars​

Harry V. Duncan, Jr. was a builder. He built homes for a living. He built race cars, I guess, because, well, he had this itch to build them. He was good at both, i.e., building homes and fast race cars.


His business, Duncan-Built Homes, gave him the financial wherewithal to build a whole fleet of race cars. He got into the home-building business in 1948 as a general building contractor. He got into the race car business in about 1952—at least that’s when he started snagging drag racing trophies every weekend at Santa Ana.


He raced at least two different cars in 1952, juggling between them both on Sunday to generally take trophies home in two different cl***es. And there was an ever-changing myriad of cl***es each week. C. J. “Pappy” Hart, the de facto strip manager at the Orange County Airport, liked to change things up. In those early years of the Santa Ana Drags, it’s as if he looked at the cars coming in the gate each week and devised a category to fit on the fly. Pat Ganahl said, “There was no governing body to make rules, or cl***es, so Pappy Hart made them up as he went.”

So, even though Duncan raced two cars that were pretty much the same during the ’52 season, the cl*** names kept changing. There was Closed Pre-War Heavy, Modified Coupe-Sedan, Closed Gas Heavy, Closed Gas Light, Light Gas, Light Closed Gas, and on and on. And what they all meant seems lost to the eons of time. But Duncan picked up trophies in them all. But to make sense of the whole mess, i.e., all the different cl***es, well, there’s no one to ask and no cl***ification guide that I have found for those early years. Unless someone knows of an earlier one, the first cl***ification and rules guide for the Santa Ana Drags that I have found was printed in Drag News (4/15/55).

What cl*** did Harry’s “Duncan #1” ’34 Ford 5-window coupe run in? I’m guessing that it may have run one week in Closed Pre-War Heavy and another week in Closed Gas Heavy. But did it ever run in Closed Gas Light? Heck, I don’t know. I clipped a frame from a YouTube video en***led “Santa Ana Drags, 1952-59: A Trip Back in Time” for this photo. Don Tuttle, the old Santa Ana public address announcer, put this video together with informative commentary. It is an absolute treasure. In this 8-second segment of the video, beginning at the 1:07:39 mark, you can see C. J. Hart peering down the track to see when it was safe to start Duncan’s coupe.

C. J. had a trademark style of flagging. There was no jumping up in the air like a wild man. He held the flag in his right hand, pointed straight down to the ground. Then, when he felt the cars were ready, he would raise his arm quickly up, either high overhead or at waist level and flick the flag. It took an economy of effort on his part and got the job done. In this segment of the video, C. J. flags Duncan off the line with his back turned to Harry, while still peering down the track. Nonchalance personified. C. J. stood ramrod straight wearing his signature-style ballcap. He ran the starting line like an army general. A take-charge kind of guy. No nonsense or goofiness.


We are indebted to Margaret Duncan, Harry’s wife, for taking home movies of Harry’s cars at the Santa Ana Drags. I clipped this frame showing Harry’s ’34 coupe from Margaret’s home movie, now available to be viewed on a YouTube video en***led “Old School Hot Rodding.” In this 12-second segment of the video, beginning at the 6:48-minute mark, you get a great look at Harry driving the coupe through the dirt pit area, dodging puddles. Much of the video focuses on Harry’s different cars, interspersed with footage of other race cars. It’s a gem.

Here are directions for those who want to view the video (and I can’t emphasize how well worth it is to view) to see several other places where you can see Harry’s “Duncan #1” coupe. There is a 22-second-long segment beginning at the 5:27-minute mark that shows the coupe parked in the pits. Then it jumps to the coupe sitting at the starting line, waiting to make a run. At the 5:43-minute mark, it gets a push start to fire up, then is seen roaring off on its run. There are two other places in the video where Harry’s ’34 coupe is seen racing off the starting line against a 5-window coupe. The first 14-second-long segment begins at the 6:27-minute mark, and the second 6-second-long segment starts at the 6:42-minute mark.


Another in Harry’s fleet of race cars that he may have raced in 1952 was what he called the “Doodle Bug.” As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had to do a lot of guessing in this story. That’s the nature of writing about cars and drivers in the 1950s. You end up having to do a lot of guessing because the visual and written record is spotty. I’ve reached out to one of Harry’s grandsons to see if he has some photos of his grandfather. I have found precious few. I’m guessing that the guy in the white T-shirt kneeling by the rear wheel might be Harry. That’s a big maybe—or maybe not. Not sure.

The word “doodle bug” could mean a lot of different things. The Beam Manufacturing Company in Iowa built a motor scooter from 1946-48, powered by 1½ horsepower engines that they called Doodle Bug. During the Depression, farmers converted old cars into makeshift tractors that they called doodle bugs. It was also a name for a cl*** of midget racing cars. Or doodlebugs referred to an actual tiny, but ferocious predatory insect that ****ed bodily fluids from their prey with large, sickle-shaped jaws. You don’t want to mess with them.

Racers might not want to mess with Harry’s “Doodle Bug” either. It ran in the Modified Coupe-Sedan cl*** at Santa Ana in 1952. Near the end of the ’52 season, he set a strip record with a run of 120.04 mph. But why did Harry turn a roadster into a coupe—and in such a wacky way? It’s a head scratcher. “I really don’t know why several racers added these low, quicky, cardboard, tape, and clear plastic tops to turn roadsters into coupes—or ‘doodle bugs,’ Pat Ganahl said. “Crude? Yes. Safe? Questionable.”

Harry’s “Doodle Bug” might have been funny looking, but it hauled.


Margaret Duncan took home movies of Harry’s “Doodle Bug” at the Santa Ana Drags, too. I clipped this frame from a segment in Margaret’s home movie showing Harry’s “Doodle Bug” being pushed backward by a crew of men to get it into position to make a run. It is viewable on the YouTube video en***led “Old School Hot Rodding.” In this 8-second-long segment beginning at the 1:11 minute mark, you will see that the “Doodle Bug” word has not been lettered on door. Only “Duncan” is lettered on the door.

Here are the directions for those who want to see the “Doodle Bug” on Margaret’s home movie. It appears numerous times. There are several segments where it is seen racing off the line and speeding down the track. The first 6-minute-long segment begins at the 0:43-minute mark. The second 5-second-long segment starts at the 1:37 minute mark. Another 20-second-long segment shows the “Doodle Bug” parked on a residential street behind Duncan’s tow truck. This is a nice shot, showing the small size of the coupe compared with an ordinary automobile. Then the segment jumps to a view at the drag strip showing several men standing around the bed of Duncan’s pickup truck chatting away. The camera pans to the “Doodle Bug” behind the pickup truck as one young fellow pulls the front wheel straight.


In the ’53 season, Harry upped his game, running at least three race cars—maybe four. He raced the “Doodle Bug” at Pomona on January 11, setting a strip record in the A Fuel Modified Coupe cl*** with 122.11 mph. That wiped out the old cl*** record by a whopping five miles an hour. Later in the year (12/13/53), he set a strip record at Paradise Mesa with his “Doodle Bug.” In the C Fuel Compe***ion Coupe cl*** at the San Diego track, he set a new strip mark with a 121.45 mph clocking. His fastest time in the “Doodle Bug” in ’53 was 135.78 mph at Santa Ana, recorded on December 20.

This article from the Santa Ana Register (8/10/53) mentions that the “Doodle Bug” “blew up” in July. On his return to racing, on August 9, he got the fastest time of the day trophy. That was essentially the top eliminator win, back in the day when the top speed of the meet was all-important, valued as more significant than quickness or elapsed time.


A few months into the ’53 season, Harry was towing a fleet of cars to the Sunday Santa Ana races. He had his ’34 5-window coupe, his “Doodle Bug” modified compe***ion coupe (with a carbureted, and a Cl*** C Roadster that he began winning trophies with, in mid-June. On at least five occasions, he won cl*** honors at Santa Ana with three different cars. This article from the Santa Ana Register (12/28/53) reports on the race at Orange County Airport on December 27 in which he took cl*** wins in Modified Coupe (the “Doodle Bug”), Full-Fendered Coupe (probably “Duncan No. 1”), and a Cl*** D Roadster.

I’m not sure what to make of the Cl*** D Roadster cl*** in 1953. Was it the same as the Cl*** D Fuel Roadster cl*** in 1955? I don’t know. The 1955 D Fuel Roadster cl*** at Santa Ana was for all-out dragsters, or what they called “frame jobs.” Or did the D Roadster cl*** in 1953 refer to a cl*** for actual roadsters at Santa Ana? I don’t know.


It was good fortune for the Chrisman brothers, Art (center) and Lloyd (right), that Harry (far left) went to the 1953 Bonneville Speed Trials. This is one of the few photos of Harry that I have found. This photo of the three men appeared in the February 1954 issue of Hot Rod.

Art and Lloyd Chrisman were running a rear-engined 304-inch Merc in their severely chopped ’30 Model A coupe. They blew their motor after turning 163.63 mph to qualify for a record in Cl*** C Compe***ion Coupe. Without a motor to back up the record, they turned to Harry for help. He lent the brothers his 258-inch Ardun-Merc engine. After making the engine subs***ution, they ran a one-way qualifying speed of 156.52 mph and a two-way record average of 160.178 mph to establish a new record in Cl*** B Compe***ion Coupe.


The Chrisman’s fantastic coupe graced the cover of the February 1954 issue of Hot Rod. The top half of the streamlined nose was fashioned from a ’40 Ford hood. The car was painted with bronze lacquer, trimmed in red.


Harry began racing a couple of different cars in the 1954 season. I’m not sure how “Doodle Bug No. 2” differed from the first “Doodle Bug.” Both cars ran with carbureted Ardun-Merc engines on nitro. And newspaper reports never distinguished between the two cars in reporting race results. Here again, we are left with more questions than we have answers for. This photo was published in the Pomona Progress Bulletin (11/19/54).

There was another car that Harry built called “Duncan No. 3” that ran in the B Fuel Coupe-Sedan cl*** at Pomona and the Heavy Coupe cl*** at Santa Ana. I don’t have a photo of it. He only ran it for two months in mid-1954 before he flipped it and crashed the car after being clocked at 108 mph at Santa Ana on August 15. Harry escaped with just a few minor bruises.


The “Doodle Bug No. 2” coupe is seen in another YouTube video en***led “1954 So-Cal Drag Races & Sports Car Racing 8mm Footage.” The color on the video is vivid and well worth viewing. The car is seen racing in two brief segments at Santa Ana. The first 4-second segment begins at the 8:52-minute mark. In this photo taken from a frame of this segment, you can see C. J. Hart holding his starter’s flag as he walks towards the launching car. The second 4-second segment begins at the 10:14-minute mark, showing a nice side view of the coupe racing down the Santa Ana strip.


Margaret Duncan also took home movies of Harry’s “Doodle Bug No. 2” at the Santa Ana Drags. I clipped this frame from a segment in Margaret’s home movie showing Harry’s “Doodle Bug No. 2” racing down the strip. It is viewable on the YouTube video en***led “Old School Hot Rodding.”

There are three segments showing the car racing down the strip. The first 10-second-long segment begins at the 6:00-minute mark; the second 12-second-long segment begins at the 6:15-minute mark, and the last brief segment concludes the video at the 7:00-minute mark.


Sometime in about 1954, Harry bought a ’29 Model A roadster from Ed Lusinski. Harry raced it with good success in the A Hot Roadster cl*** with an Ardun-Merc for power. It generally ran in the 115-mph range.


In this photo taken at Pomona, Harry has his back to the camera, wearing a white shirt and light tan slacks. While Harry owned the car, he probably engaged Lusinski to do the driving when this photo was taken.


This photo shows another moment of action to bring the roadster back from inching over the starting line at Pomona.


In April 1954, Harry debuted a new hot ’34 Ford coupe called the “Jitterbug” at the 2-day Southern California Championships at Pomona. He had bought the coupe from the Spaghetti Benders. He ran his “Doodle Bug” in the A Fuel Modified Coupe cl*** and the new “Jitterbug” in the B Fuel Modified Coupe cl***. Both cars took cl*** wins with the “Jitterbug” clocking ten miles per hour faster than the “Doodle Bug.” The “Jitterbug’s” winning speed was 126.58 mph.


If I were to hazard a guess, that looks like Harry kneeling down by the front wheel.


Something low on the car, below the door, has the attention of three crew men, one of whom is probably Harry. Why do they always have their backs to the camera? Although this is probably Santa Ana, Harry took a top eliminator win and set a new strip record of 121.78 mph at Pomona with the “Jitterbug” in the B Fuel Compe***ion Coupe cl*** on December 12, 1954.


I clipped a frame from the “Santa Ana Drags, 1952-59: A Trip Back in Time” YouTube video that Don Tuttle put together for this photo. The 10-second-long segment begins at the 52:34-minute mark. It shows the car on the starting line with Don Tuttle saying, “This car run by Harry Duncan had a big Chrysler engine in it. Beautiful car and they couldn’t get the engine started.” We get a brief glimpse of C.J. Hart with the starter’s flag, waiting for the car to fire up.


The “Jitterbug” is parked in the staging lanes at Pomona. On the other side of the portable stanchion is the fire-up lane for dragsters requiring a push start. On the other side of the fire-up lane is the chain-link fence that surrounded the fairgrounds parking lot and drag strip. About thirty feet north of the fence is the railroad tracks.

I spent many Sunday afternoons standing on those railroad tracks watching the races. But by my time attending races at Pomona, the strip operators had wised up and covered the fence with canvas to make it more difficult to view the racing on the strip. But if I recall, they didn’t extend the canvas all the way east (probably about where it shows in this photo), so you could get a glimpse of the dragsters when they began their push, down the fire-up lane, until the canvas-covered fence blocked your view. Even so, when the dragsters caught fire, you could see the canvas whipping back and forth as their weed-burner headers blew by the canvas. You could also see the tires and lower parts of the cars as the canvas didn’t go all the way to the ground. About fifty feet after the dragsters made the turn left to go to the starting line, you had a good view of the action. That was life in the cheap, i.e., free “seats,” standing on the railroad tracks just outside the north fence line on Sunday afternoons at Pomona Drags. There were generally about 50-75 of us cheapskates there each week.


This photo of the “Jitterbug” looks like Pomona to me. Harry’s racing years here were before my time. I didn’t start going to the drag races at Pomona until about 1959. That is where I cut my teeth on and developed a p***ion for drag racing. That was over 65 years ago. Seems like only yesterday. My memory is vivid about those times. They were special.


Although Harry usually ran “Jitterbug” with a 354-inch Chrysler, in this photo taken at Saugus, he was running with a blown Ardun-Merc.


I clipped a frame from the “Santa Ana Drags, 1952-59: A Trip Back in Time” YouTube video that Don Tuttle put together for this photo. The 3-second-long segment begins at the 1:03:26-minute mark. It shows the car parked in the pits.


The “Jitterbug” racked up its share of trophies. At Pomona on March 3, 1955, Harry’s “Jitterbug” and his A Hot Roadster faced off against each other to determine the fastest-car-of-the-day runoff. Both had taken cl*** trophies and were fairly evenly matched, but the “Jitterbug” took the win after high gear blew in the roadster. Drag News (3/18/55) reported, “The combined might of the engines in these cars brought the crowd to their feet as they blasted off.”

In early 1955, Harry got involved with Ed Losinski in a dragster venture. Harry supplied a big, injected Chrysler engine for a very successful marriage of powerful engine and well-engineered dragster. I won’t delve into that here but will follow up this story about Harry with a forthcoming story about Ed—and their successful partnership in the dragster venture.


In this photo, Ray Brock and Wally Parks stand next to a famous race car that Harry was involved in. Take a close look at the painted sign on the rear fender of this famous 1957 Plymouth Savoy. It reads: “Harry Duncan’s engine by Wilcap.” I’ll defer to Wally Parks, who drove this car to a record at Daytona Beach in 1957, to recount the story of this car. He related it in National Dragster (3/16/2007): “Early in 1957, we heard of a new cl*** that NASCAR was adding to its Speedweek agenda called ‘Experimental.’ The cl*** was designed to attract participation from the auto factories, but it was also open to private entries. Knowing little more than that, our immediate reaction was, ‘That’s for us!’ With barely two weeks’ time for planning and preparation before hooking whatever we’d have to Ray’s Oldsmobile for the long tow from California to Florida, we contacted our good friends at Plymouth in Detroit and gained their approval for a ‘loaner,’ a 1957 Plymouth Savoy two-door coupe that we drove right off the production line at Chrysler’s old East Los Angeles ***embly plant. Ray was our project engineer, but I selected the color: light yellow to contrast with sea, sand, and sky for distinct photographic advantage. With so short a time to convert and prepare the car for participation in the speed trials, which would consist of two-way timed runs through a one-mile course on the Daytona Beach sand, Ray kept modifications to a minimum. One shortcut was to borrow a Chrysler Hemi from Harry Duncan, a contractor friend who had prepared it for Ed Losinski’s dragster. The engine had Hilborn fuel injectors and a Scintilla Vertex magneto. Bob Hedman handcrafted a set of headers for us, with open pipes tucked back cleanly under the car. . . . When all was ***embled, we took the car to Tony Capanna’s Los Angeles Wilcap shop, where the Hemi, after being fine-tuned by Tony on his dynamometer, was installed. As an extra precaution, he added a set of rubber tubes that fed into the fuel injectors, “to cool the charge,” he said. But latent rule changes limiting fuel to high-test gasoline made them unnecessary . . . . As I p***ed the brave flagman at the mile marker, I knew I was on my way to a good run. I even took time to steal a glance away from the unwavering oil gauge to the tachometer at a top speed of 166.898 mph for a two-way average of 160.175 mph on less than five gallons of gas.”


This is Harry’s engine, which he had run in the Losinski dragster, that the Hot Rod editors used in the record-breaking run of the ’57 Plymouth Savoy at Daytona in 1957. Wilcap's Willie Garner offered one of Harry Duncan's fuel Chryslers for the project. Ray Brock wrote, "We had two concerns as Wally fastened his seatbelt and shoulder harness: We didn't know how the car would ride on the extremely rough beach, and we didn't know how much pressure the 1-inch main drive gear on the stock Plymouth transmission would absorb. With a 3000-mile tow job behind us and an untried machine in his hands, Parks pitted this full-bodied sedan against the factory's special super-light, low-cut racing jobs. But we had faith in Duncan's engine and the Plymouth's ch***is."

Gray Baskerville wrote about this historic venture in the February 1996 issue of Hot Rod: “The down run netted a 153-mph timeslip—not bad consider the head wind, the tall gearing and the lack of nitro (a gas-only policy was ins***uted for the Experimental cl*** just before for the Hot Rod staff left). No sweat. With the wind in arrears—a.k.a. El Mirage horsepower, or in lay terms, a tailwind—and some seat time under his hiney, Parks thundered through the eyes at 166.893 during the return run. That p*** turned out to be the fastest time ever recorded by a door-slammer at the beach.”

Harry had pulled back in his active involvement in drag racing by the end of the 1950s. His construction business was booming, and he couldn’t devote as much time to racing any more. His attention and focus on racing may have been an issue in family matters, although that is speculation on my part. Harry and Margaret divorced in 1969. Harry died in 1988 at age 74.

 

Ed Losinski and His Single-Minded Quest to Be the Best of the Best
​

“Men are but grown-up boys, after all.” So wrote author William Dean Howells in his 1885 novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham. It’s about a self-made man who rises from poverty to wealth in the paint industry. I don’t want to start off all bookish, but the insights from novelists can sometimes help us understand the impulses, actions, and motivations of real people.


What can we read into Ed Losinski’s junior high 1945 yearbook photo? Do we see that single-minded focus that would characterize the lad as he matured? Even at this young age, he evinced a serious countenance and focus.


Ed attended Willowbrook Junior High School in Compton in 1945. This yearbook photo shows Ed and his cl***mates who were members of the Willowbrook Wood Rangers Hobby Club. The boys organized the club to do woodcraft as a hobby.

He enlisted in the Navy, serving for a couple of years in San Diego after the war. By 1950, when the U.S. census was taken, Ed was married (to Beryl), living in a trailer in Compton, and working as a brick mason. Ed, who was born in Wyoming, followed in the footsteps of his father. Like his father, Ed started out as a brick layer, then established his own masonry contracting business. But in 1950, he was 21 years old and Beryl was 17. In 1951, they became parents when “Little Eddie” was born. But as often happens when couples marry at a young age, for whatever reason, the marriage went on the rocks. In 1955, the Ed and Beryl divorced. As Ed matured, learned and grew from the school of hard knocks, he married again (to Pat) in 1957. By that time, he was better equipped to handle married life.


Although the caption mistakenly identifies this photo as having been taken at El Mirage in 1949, I’m pretty sure it is in the staging lanes at Pomona. And furthermore, I’m going to guess that it may have been circa 1953. As the sign on the door reads of the roadster reads, the Losinski & Son ’32 highboy was sponsored by Chrisman’s Garage. Losinski started racing the roadster in late 1952. The flathead in the roadster ran with a Sharp intake and manifold and a Harman & Collins mag.


This photo was taken at Pomona. In 1953, Ed was living at Redondo Beach. The Losinski & Son masonry contracting business was headquartered in Downey. On May 10, 1953, at Pomona, Losinski broke the track’s A/R cl*** record for the third time with a speed of 119.02 mph.


Losinski’s roadster is seen in a 10-second-long segment in a YouTube video en***led “Major Speed at 1949 [sic] San Diego Roadster Club First Bonneville [sic] Speed Meet.” The video ***le is mistaken on two counts: it was not filmed in 1949, and the venue was not Bonneville. The film shows a meet at Paradise Mesa, probably in 1952-53. The segment showing Losinski’s roadster begins at the 2:33-minute mark. In that segment, Losinski’s pit crew pushes the roadster to the starting line and then, the roadster takes off and roars past the camera. Believe me, it is well worth watching.


In this photo, we see an early photo of Art and Lloyd Chrisman’s just-completed ’30 Model A coupe that they prepared to race at Bonneville Speed Trials in 1953.

Don Prieto, also known as “The Louisiana Lip,” was a columnist for that wonderful Drag Racing Magazine in the late 1960s. I still have all issues from that first volume that I bought off the magazine rack at Wolfe’s Market on Foothill Boulevard in Claremont in 1964. I paid 50 cents apiece for each magazine off the rack.

Prieto wrote a piece called “The Chrisman and Duncan Coupe” that delved into the beginnings of the Chrisman’s fabulous record-setting coupe. Here are some pertinent excerpts from his story: “Brothers Art and Lloyd Chrisman and their dad Everett decided to build a compe***ion coupe that would have a simple but effective way of changing engines . . . . not just to facilitate repair but to make the changing of engines of different sizes easier so as to compete for the records in different cl***es. They meant to bring several engines with them to the salt and try to take home as many records as they could in as many cl***es . . . The body of an abandoned 1930 Model A coupe provided the basis for the machine that would run in the compe***ion coupe cl***. It was ‘severely’ chopped and the cowl from a '35 Ford, complete with A pillar section, was grafted to the front of the coupe above the firewall. This gave the coupe a rather severe windshield rake that Art was seeking. Art then went to the Alameda wrecking yard down the street to find suitable sheet metal to fill the roof section. He discovered the hulk of a Forty Ford Tudor, and he torched the roof out and while doing the cutting he pushed over the hood that was leaning up against the side of the sedan. It fell forward and landed atop another hood that was already lying upside down on the ground. After removing the roof panel and setting it aside, he noticed the two hoods lying there together on the ground . . . . ‘AHA! There's my nose, he muttered to himself,’ as he envisioned the two hood panels forming the front of the race car. He loaded the roof panel and the 2 hoods into the back of the truck and returned to the shop. He and brother Lloyd spent the better part of the following weekend cutting and tacking together what was to be the Chrisman's Garage compe***ion coupe.

On Monday, when dad Everett came into the shop, he was greeted by a cobbled together pile of tin that resembled a racer but was pretty raggedy. Looking at the huge gaps in the fit of the hoods and the cowl and the roof panel, he commented in p***ing: ‘Looks like you two have a lotta welding to do!’ Without looking up, both brothers nodded in agreement and moved closer to the task at hand. As the body progressed through stages of buildup, each change was carefully test-fitted to the tube ch***is. The goal was to have the engine, trans and rear end fashioned together so they could be unbolted as a unit and the body and front half of the ch***is lifted and rolled forward for complete access to the running gear. This would make it easy to change engines to run other cl***es or to repair any damage that may have resulted from too big a dose of nitromethane—the coupe’s intended fuel of choice. A seven-gallon fuel tank was mounted behind the engine and above the '40 Ford side shift transmission. Two war-surplus 5 gallon ‘Jerry’ cans were mounted on the ch***is next to the engine and they carried the necessary coolant to pull the heat from whatever engine sat in the bay. A surplus aircraft seat and seat belts were installed in the room left in front of the firewall that separated and isolated the driver from the engine. The driver (Art) sat very close to the front of the cab with his nose just inches from the windshield and getting in was quite a chore.

‘You grab the roll bar and pull your body in the air like a chin up and swing your feet into the front well, then you swing your rear end into the cab. You then press up and squeeze in between the seat and the dash and you're in. Getting out is much simpler,’ says Art, ‘you just turn your shoulders to the right and roll over onto all fours and crawl out.’

At the driver's fingertips were the brake handle (rear wheel brakes only), fire extinguisher, hand-operated fuel pressure pump and mag switch. The shifter lever was a single push-pull device that shifted the gearbox that contained a 28-tooth cluster running only second and high gear. Just above the driver’s head was a small air scoop that provided intake air to the engine and shortly after running the car the first time, a small air inlet was fabricated to get air to the driver—something they overlooked in the initial construction. The sleek little coupe was finished in a bronze lacquer with red trim and outfitted with Harry Duncan's set of 18-inch Bonneville Firestones mounted on Halibrand wheels. This tire wheel combination was used on the coupe for the first year, but Art and Lloyd thought they were too big. They changed out to a set of 600X16" Indy tires on steel wheels.

‘This,’ says Art, ‘got the car down lower and it looked much better.’"


This photo shows the Chrisman coupe out on the salt. Don Prieto continued with the story of the coupe’s exploits at Bonneville in 1953: “The coupe was taken to Bonneville for Speed Week in 1953, and the team was prepared to run for cl*** records with 3 different engines, each a different-sized flathead and one was equipped with a set of Ardun OHV cylinder heads. The initial engine was a Cl*** C 304 cubic inch Merc out of Art and Lloyd's dragster. It ran 163.63 one way but vented the pan on the return run.

‘A little too much nitro,’ Art allowed sheepishly, ‘so we put Duncan's Ardun in. With it, we qualified at 156 and set the B cl*** record at 160.187 mph. We pulled that engine and installed Ed Losinski's engine, a 304-inch Merc for another shot at the C record. We didn't get the record because we couldn't get it to run right and ran out of time.’”

So, Ed Losinski, from an early date, was benefiting from his close ***ociation with some of the most significant early pioneers in racing—the Chrisman brothers, Harry Duncan, and a network of speed hotshots. It was a genuine collaboration with creative automotive geniuses in the racing game—he with them and they with him.


By trade, Ed Losinski was a brick mason contractor. Laying brick is an art. One time, I worked with a brick layer to help build a block concrete building at a campground in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains. The brick layer set the first course of block to establish the foundation of the building correctly, i.e., he did that so I wouldn’t screw it up. The foundation was all important. It had to be level, or the building wouldn’t be properly vertical. So, my job at the beginning was to mix the mortar while the brick layer did the all-important first steps in getting everything square and level. After laying a few courses of block, he let me have a hand in laying the blocks. Attention to detail was important in laying every block. I recall spreading the mortar with a trowel and tapping the bricks into place, always checking for level and plumb using a string line. Attention to detail was important at every step. The traits necessary to be a good brick layer were embedded Ed Losinski’s very being. If you didn’t build it perfect, you built it wrong.

This attention to detail marked Losinski’s next race car project—a dragster. It really became the pinnacle of his drag racing career—and for what he is most remembered. And in 1955, it was the best of the best—the fastest single-engine dragster in the world.

It was ready for racing in late 1954. This photo, taken by Norm Grudem, shows the dragster in the pits at Pomona, being admired by a gaggle of onlookers. The engine, seen here in its early trim, was a flathead.

On November 21, 1954, Losinski took a top eliminator victory, and a dragster cl*** win at Pomona with a 123.67 mph clocking in one of its first outings.


The Pomona Progress Bulletin used to be delivered to our house each evening and then on Sunday morning, a big edition with a section of colored comics. It was our daily paper. I still have many old, yellowed clippings that I cut out of the paper about the drag races at Pomona. This photo appeared in the Pomona Progress Bulletin (4/4/55). On April 3, 1955, the Losinski & Duncan dragster snagged the top time of the day honors at Pomona with a new strip record of 141.28 mph. This photo showed Ed at the wheel on their strip record run. By this date, the flathead was gone. Ed wanted more oomph—and the flathead was limited. So, he turned to Harry Duncan for an engine that would take his dragster to the top of the heap.

Bob Greene, in a feature article about the dragster in the August 1955 issue of Hot Rod, wrote about the several engine swaps that Losinski undertook on his path to figuring out what engine would take this sleek dragster to the top of the heap. “After a siege of ill luck with the original flathead Ford, Ed turned to a DeSoto and then, very quickly, to a Chrysler,” Greene wrote. “The big V8, owned by Harry Duncan, lists a surprisingly modest array of speed equipment: Herbert roller-tappet cam, Scintilla mag and Hilborn injectors. The heads are polished and ported. Earth-shaking fuel mixtures insist on a change of rod inserts following each weekly burst of speed. With an amazing knack at keeping engine and clutch together, Losinski, sole driver of the car, reports that much credit is due to the fact that he doesn't speed shift between second and high (only two gears used). ‘The Chrysler pulls harder when I throw it into high than it does in low comin' off the line. I never have to worry about keepin' the revs up between gears.’ When asked how the engine felt, Ed commented: 'Well, the DeSoto had a lot of muscle. It pulled 375 on the engine dyno, and now the Chrysler feels like two DeSotos!’”


Harry’s engine and Ed’s dragster were just the combination. New track records were set at every strip where they showed up in Southern California in the first half of 1955. At an early showing at Santa Ana on March 20, the fuel dragster showed its potential. They ran 10.1 seconds at 144.95 mph. That was good enough for the fastest time of the day and just three-tenths of a second off the strip ET record held by Cal Rice and Melvin Dodd. A week later at Santa Ana on March 27, they set a new strip record with a run of 147.05 mph. That equaled the world mark for dragsters set by Bob Alsenz a month earlier in the Lakewood Special fuel dragster. But Ed’s 10-second flat ET was much quicker than the time run by Alsenz.

This beautiful color photo shows the Losinski dragster leaving the line at Santa Ana. I snagged the photo from a frame taken from American Hot Rod Foundation film “Slingshot!” This is a full-length feature film available for viewing only by members of the AHRF. It is not viewable in its entirety on YouTube. It is a fascinating look at the early history of drag racing, as told by such men as Wally Parks, Tony Nancy, Don Montgomery, Creighton Hunter, Otto Ryssman, and others who were videotaped in interviews by AHRF.


This photo shows the Losinski A/FD at Colton. At an SCTA meet at Colton on April 3, 1955, Losinski got top time of the day and a new strip record with a blast of 138.46 mph. Drag News (4/15/55) reported that the every time he ran, the crowd would be brought to its feet in excitement about the “frame warp that develops during Losinski’s gear changes.” Colton was a short track for hot car shutdowns. The end of the strip came up fast. There was a drop-off hill at the end of the track that made for some exciting rides—sometimes too exciting. In early January 1956, a wild ride over that hill at the end of the Colton strip would put Ed out of commission for a couple of months with a back injury.


Alex Xydias put together a beautiful video that can be seen on YouTube en***led “The Hot Rod Story (1984) by Alex Xydias: Four Decades of Hot Rodding History.” There is a 10-second-long segment showing the Losinski-Duncan dragster in the video. You should look at it. Ed’s dragster first shows up at the 39:24-minute mark. During this segment, Losinski is seen arranging himself in the ****pit of the dragster before getting pulled out of the pits to make a run. Then follows a close-up of Losinski’s face as he p***es by the camera. During this brief segment, Xydias says, “Another of the early long dragsters is the beautiful Duncan-Losinski machine. Have you noticed how few supercharged cars were running in the early days?”


Losinski’s purple dragster, photographed by Eric Rickman, made the cover of Hot Rod in the August 1955 issue. Inside the magazine, the note about the cover read: “One of the top six contenders for the Fastest Dragster ***le is Ed Losinski’s fantastic purple and chrome charger. Chrysler powered, its ch***is is noted for an advanced suspension layout, incorporating an ‘anti-walk’ device at the front. An automotive enthusiast since childhood, Ed first made hot rod headlines when his ’29 roadster began sweeping the field at local dragstrips and Bonneville alike.”

Inside the magazine, a feature article en***led “11 Seconds to Drive,” written by Bob Greene, detailed the dragster’s build history, complemented by many photos showing its features.

Since this dragster is the ultimate achievement for a Losinski-built drag car, I will quote Greene’s article in its entirety and follow it up with several Eric Rickman photos from the article:

“Some define it as the most beautiful dragster ever built. Certainly, Ed Losinski's metallic purple missile stands a**** the finest in construction as well as efficiency. Translating this last bit into miles per hour, we come up with a figure of 141.90, Ed's official record at the Pomona, California, quarter-mile drags. More recently, the car clipped off an official 143.41 mph at the Southern California Regional Championship meet (Colton) only to be nosed out by Mickey Thompson's injection Ardun-Merc at 144.46 mph. Realizing that a powerful engine is only half the battle in dragging, Losinski first concentrated on his ch***is, basing the frame width measurements on the minimum allowed by a flathead Ford (his original engine). Chrome moly aircraft tubing of 3¼-inch o.d. cons***utes the main rails. With most of the ch***is built, the engine and driveline components were set in place and shifted about to their best advantage. The problem was one of placing the engine as far back as possible, still maintaining working freedom for the driver between it and the rear end. Weight distribution was hoped to be about 80% over the rear wheels. To verify the placement, an aircraft engineer was called in, and his correction amounted to only a couple of hundredths. Wheel tread is standard Ford at both ends, except that the magnesium rear wheel rims have been reversed to place the wheels in closer to the body for better traction. Seven-inch drag slicks are run at the back end of the dragster, while Firestone track tires are used up front. Controlling the reactions of a healthy dragster engine poses immense problems in ch***is suspension, and here's where Ed's car shines. While one of the conventional dropped axle and cross spring arrangements are employed, the front spring perch is made to pivot on a 7/8-inch solid steel aircraft bolt that extends forward from the center of the front crossmember; radius rods being the only steadying device. The idea is Ed's own and in effect it allows the frame to absorb engine torque without disturbing the weight distribution on all four wheels. As a consequence of the design, no front wheel hop (a real dragster gremlin) is experienced upon acceleration. Equally important in keeping all four wheels on the ground is the torsion bar suspension used at the rear of the ch***is. Two Morris Minor (small British auto) bars, one mounted on each side of the frame, run fore and aft; the forward ends of the bars anchoring in chrome moly plates attached to the frame ahead of the firewall. The bars can be loaded or unloaded (wound up or backed off), to exert a force between the ch***is and wheels by adjustment screws at the front of the bars. Thus, more or less of the car's weight can be placed on the wheels to gain the best bite. Ed is experimenting from Sunday to Sunday, trying to place as much weight as possible on the rear wheels without eliminating spring travel completely.”


Photograph in Hot Rod, August 1955, caption: “Convinced that streamlining was a direct step to better time in the quarter, Ed sought top talent for construction of his shell.”


Photograph in Hot Rod, August 1955, caption: “Inspired by Ed’s sketches, Rod Chappel (Herbert streamliner fame) designed dragster.”


This front view photo of the dragster in the Hot Rod article, shows Ed with a serious face, looking straight at the camera. The caption reads: “That 1320 feet of strip can become an endless chicane if suspension isn’t up to horsepower. Both are treated with equal respect in Losinski dragster.”


Photograph in Hot Rod, August 1955, caption: “Harry Duncan, owner of engine, helps Losinski tune Chrysler, is brewmaster for potent fuels that play big part in car’s success.”


Photograph in Hot Rod, August 1955, caption: “Implicit instructions are given Ed on dragster maintenance: ‘Don’t use too much elbow grease on those Von Dutch stripes.’”


Photograph in Hot Rod, August 1955, caption: “LeRoy Neumayer draws from experience with his own Ardun-Ford injector job to ***ist in track-side tune. Best run, 143.41.”


In late August 1955, Ed took the wheel of the legendary, beautiful “City of Burbank” streamliner at the Bonneville Speed Trials. Bob D’Olivio, a photographer for Petersen Publishing, took this photo of the Duncan-Hill-Davis Hemi-powered streamliner on the salt in 1955. Ed Losinski set a new 236.842 mph SCTA record for the B Streamliner cl*** at the Speed Trials in this iconic car. He was the fastest man at the week-long meet.


A few weeks later, Ed returned to the Salt Flats to take the wheel of the “City of Burbank” streamliner in an attempt at setting records at the International AAA Speed Trials. Unfortunately, the condition of the salt surface was wet in spots. He lost control of the liner and flipped the car at a high speed when it spun out on the wet salt. The legendary car was destroyed. Ed was taken to a Salt Lake hospital for treatment of his injuries. This article, in the Redondo Beach Breeze (9/9/55) reported that he suffered a fractured facial bone, cuts and abrasions.


Three weeks after his crash on the salt and imbued with optimism from his earlier successes at Southern California racetracks, Losinski decided to see how his dragster would do on a national stage. He towed the dragster back to Great Bend, Kansas, to race at the very first NHRA Nationals. In a 15-second-long YouTube video en***led “Early, Vintage Drag Races—Nationals 1955, 56, 57,”, Losinski is seen speeding off the line, down the airfield strip all the way to the end where he is just a speck on the horizon. View the run of the speedy dragster by going to the 3:57-minute mark on the video.


At Great Bend, he clocked 143.78 mph but failed to come away with any cl*** or eliminator wins.

The photo is from the archives of the American Hot Rod Foundation. The caption with the photo reads: “The Ed Losinski Dragster is seen at the first Annual NHRA Nationals held at Great Bend, Kansas, in 1955. The car was fitted with a Chrysler Hemi. The slick body was designed by Rod [Chappel], who also did Chet Herbert’s Beast and consulted with Craig Breedlove on Spirit of America.” In an unsigned article on the AHRF website en***led “From the Lakes to the Drags and Back in the Same Issue [Hot Rod, Aug. 1955],” the unidentified author offers a few other observations: “The car usually ran with a Harry Duncan Chrysler Hemi but we’re not sure in this shot since Ed has a new partner’s name painted on the side of the car.”


Upon his return to California, Ed was back in the seat of his A/FD at Lions for its grand opening event on October 9, 1955. On his very first run off the trailer, he turned 151.26 mph—good enough for the top speed of the meet and a new strip record. In this photo, Ed receives congratulations from Harry Duncan (center) and strip manager Mickey Thompson (right). The photo appeared in the Wilmington Daily Press (10/10/55).


Harry Duncan was a master engine builder. It was Ed’s fortune to pair up with Harry for an engine to power his dragster. There are not a lot of photos of Harry Duncan, but a**** the few extant photos, this is one of the better ones. In this photo, Ed (left) watches Harry (right) making some adjustments on the injected 331-inch Chrysler Hemi.

A month after his record-setting outing at Lions’ grand opener, Ed returned to Wilmington for a race on November 13, 1955. He upped the strip record and set a new world record for single-engine dragsters with 151.51 mph.

Ed towed his dragster to Perryville, Arizona, for the State Championships and final dragster conclusions of the rained-out portion of the Great Bend Nationals on November 20. Although not competing in the finals, Ed set a new track record of 151.77 mph. That was what he did—set strip records wherever he showed up.


This photo, taken circa September-October 1955 time frame, shows the Von Dutch pinstriping on the nose before it was painted over with a white single pointed scallop. That is probably Harry Duncan (left, closest to engine) and Ed (right, white shirt/pants) intent on making some engine adjustments.


This color photo shows the front nose of the dragster after it was painted over with the white single pointed scallop. Harry Duncan’s beautiful pickup truck is parked next to the dragster. Harry got Von Dutch to pinstripe and letter the truck for him with his business logo painted on the side doors. His logo had the words “Duncan-Built” above a castle and the word “Homes” underneath the castle. Both truck and dragster were painted dark purple.


This photo, from the Jim Miller Collection, archived on the American Hot Rod Foundation website, has a caption in small print on the photo that reads: “Harry Duncan’s 331” Chrysler powered Cl*** D Roadster (that’s what they called it) ran a blistering 143.60 mph October 16, 1955, at Santa Ana. On a later run, driver Lloyd Scott stripped the teeth off the ring gear, so the crew is caught getting at the problem.” The report of that race in Drag News (10/28/55) gave different results: “The reknown Losinski & Duncan dragster exceeded the track and ‘D’ Roadster record twice today when driver Ed Losinski turned in runs of 149 and 149.68. The powerful Chrysler engine, owned by Harry Duncan, was quiet most of the day when the clutch failed after the first run of 1949, but a replacement was made late in the afternoon, and the ensuing runs netted the new marks and a Top Eliminator win over the rear engined machine of Ollie Morris.”

I also have some questions about the dating of this photo. Look at the new roll bar. I don’t think that was added until after Harry’s accident at Colton in early January 1956. There is a photo in Drag News (2/3/56) of the new roll bar in Ed’s dragster at a race at Lion on February 29. In the photo, Mickey Thompson inspects and discusses the new roll bar with Harry Duncan and LeRoy Neumayer, sitting in the driver seat. The roll bar in the Drag News photo exactly matches the roll bar in this photo.

But although the caption on the photo may have some incorrect information, it is still a great photo. Harry is kneeling on the right, fiddling with something on the back wheel. Ed, with his hands on the rear slick, intently watches what Harry is doing.


After Ed suffered a back injury going off the end of the track at Colton on January 8, 1956, he got LeRoy Neumayer to handle the driving duties. Neumayer had made a name for himself on the Salt Flats and in big-time stock car racing. When he showed up to drive Ed’s dragster at Lions on January 29, 1956, Drag News (2/3/56) wrote that the dragster was “recently fitted with one of the best roll bar setups seen on a dragster.” Ed’s rough ride at Colton prompted him to put in a safer roll bar and make some safety improvements. At his first outing at Lions, Neumayer turned 149.25 mph. The following week at Lions, he became the second person to go over 150 mph at that track, turning 150.25 mph and winning the fuel dragster cl***. Ed, of course, had been the first to crack 150 mph at the Lions’ opener in 1955. At the P.V.T.A. Championships at Pomona on February 11-12, Ed and LeRoy arrived too late to compete but were permitted to run for time only. LeRoy set the meet’s fastest speed, a track record 147.54 mph.

In March 1956, Lloyd Scott took over the driving duties from LeRoy Neumayer in Ed’s dragster. That happened because Neumayer went off to drive in big-time stock car races around the country. Lloyd Scott happened to be available to drive the dragster because his “Bustle Bomb” dual-engine dragster was being revamped. This photo shows Lloyd Scott driving the Losinski-Duncan purple dragster at an SCTA event at Colton.

Although the photo dates it to 1956 with Scott being at the wheel, I’m inclined to think the photo was more likely taken before September 1955—and with Ed doing the driving. I say that because the white pointed scallop is not on the nose of the car. In looking at and trying to date it, I believe the white pointed scallop was probably painted on the dragster nose at least by mid-October 1955. So, there are a couple of points in error with the wording on the photo. Nonetheless, I thought this was a good place to talk about the two drivers, Neumayer and Scott, who took over driving duties for Ed after his back injury put him out of commission.


Lloyd Scott drove Ed’s dragster for three months, his last time in the seat being at the 2-day California Championships held at Minter Field on May 12-13. Thirteen of the fastest fuel dragsters in the country were there, but the Losinski-Duncan dragster didn’t make it far into elimination rounds. This photo shows Lloyd Scott on the line (far side), paired against Bill Replogle driving Ernie Hashim’s blown Chrysler dragster at that championship meet.

That was just about the last hurrah for the beautiful Losinski dragster. In drag racing, it’s difficult to stay at the top, but for several months in the latter half of 1955, Ed Losinski was the best of the best.

Later Ed got interested in Jet Skis. He and his son-in-law, Steve Stricklin, formed L&S Engineering & L&S Jet Ski Clinic. For his contributions to the sport and the personal water craft industry, he was inducted into the Wake of Fame in 2015. Edward Lee Losinski died in 2016 at age 87.