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

looks like a Delta blower drive.

 

Loved this thing, Doug Nash's.....all aluminum chassis, 289ci SBF on fuel, less than 1700lbs "wet"...

 

Rusty still has this same car, although with a different paintjob. I think it's been a drag car since new.

 

What make of car is this in post #27897? Really like the nose!

 

Ford

 

It appears that the late, great "Wild" Willie Borsch didn't pay much attention to the "keep both hands on the wheel" mantra of generations of scholastic driver education instrutors-- Although there's rumors that owner Al "Mousie" Marcellus actually placed a phony arm/hand on one side of the Altered to create the illusion of Willie driving with just one hand-- Not sure whether or not that was simply an example of drag racing "urban myth" or if it was true...


my daily blog...
http://www.dragracingunderground.com/~dragrac/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=27

 

Connie Kalitta......

 

It wasn't an altered with a fake arm, it was the Charger F/C they eventually ran.......NOT an urban myth.

 

The phoney are was only after they went to a funny car. The fans missed Willie's one arm driving style, so the arm was added to the funny as a gag.
Willie didn't drive with one arm always and when he did, it wasn't because he was so daring. It's because he felt that he had less of a tendency to over-compensate while using one hand. The altered was twitchy enough without over-driving it, so one handed steering was fairly common for him. He was fearless, not stupid. That's the way Willie described it, not just my interpretation.
A phony arm on an altered would look pretty lame...three arms in an open car.....

 

Here it is....

 

"and the fans go wild!!!!!!"

 

Willie and Mousie story:

If you have ever been to a meet meet or reunion where they had the Winged Express and had Mousie signing autographs you may have noticed this brass thing sitting on the counter. When I first saw it I thought it was a national event trophy or something. Well it seems that when Willie passed away he didn't have any relatives so he was cremated and that brass thing is the urn holding Willie's ashes. Mousie still pulls the car behind the old Dodge truck he used when racing and Willie rides in the seat beside him. Mousie said that he will talk to Willie as they travel. Someone asked Mousie if Willie ever talked back and Mousie said, "About as much as he did when he was alive".

They were having a lot of trouble with bending front axles and one day Willie came in with an arm load, "well I've fixed our problem with axles", He had been to the exhaust shop and had a bunch made out of exhaust tubing. Or so the tale was told.

 

I had a model of this when I was young...think it came with an arm.

 

Had a model of this one too!

 

Hope this guy got it "Wheels Down" before stuffing it into the guardrail!

 

correct, Willie ran a big Model A steering wheel and steered from the top, more wheel, more turn...but the moment the car got crooked both hands went to the wheel...that didn't keep him from drifting into the other lane (legal then), hitting the guard rail, moving back to his lane and beating the competition...he also kept his hand on the door because he needed to brace himself because of the original wide roll bar...when they got a new chassis with a three-point cage he did less one-handed driving.

 

Are you sure about that?

 

Thats "fantastic"

 

Well, yea, Larry, but thats not outta shape yet, thats a "good" pass...

 

It did. I have long since lost the model, but believe it or not, I still have the arm somewhere.

 

This was sort of normal for Willie (in this picture, they were trying a new type of Goodyear with a thinner sidewall, obviously didn't work).

I was lucky enough to watch Willie drive, and yes, he usually grabbed the wheel with both hands when it really got out of hand...but not always

(remember also that Willie had nacrolepsy . .. so he sometimes was asleep just before a run -- Mousie bumped the roadster with the pushtruck to make sure he woke up because he slept sometimes before a pass...so he sometimes reacted a little slowly when the car got sideways...but those reactions almost never included lifting)

 

Yeah, ok, so the phony arm gag was the Funny Car which came later in Willie's career...

A somewhat emotional interview with Al "Mousie" Marcellus during his first visit to ETown in decades... And yes, besides towing the "Winged Express" Nitro Altered 'cross country to the northeastern track, "Mousie" also brought the urn with "Wild" Willie Borsch's ashes in it for the teams' triumphant return to Raceway Park... It was a heartfelt reunion...

from the Funny Car Reunion dvd


my daily blog...
http://www.dragracingunderground.com/~dragrac/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=27

 

Kelsey-Hayes...they made several custom wheels for Dick when they sponsored him.

 

You can hit the quote button so we don't have to go waaay back and look for it.
It's a 32 Ford 3 window with a 40 Ford nose parts.

 

This appears to be the old dragstrip just west of Pocatello, Idaho

 

Are you kidding me? That's funny right there!

 

Whole car was built out of muffler tube, in a muffler shop in los angeles. Henry harrisons mother couldent even wake him up to mow the lawn, LOL !!!