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

Tom Hoover had at least one Rod Stuckey car. Rod's trademark was the windup key pushbar. I shot the first photo at the inaugural NHRA Springnationals at Bristol, TN in '65.

 

This appears to be J.C. Kirby of Dallas,TX. in his Cadillac powered Bandini.(A/MSP?)
Kirby was a professional photographer with big bucks. A regular at Green Valley.

 

Tom Hoover is there too: http://cacklefest.com/Hoover.shtml

 

Rockford DragWay

 

The recreation

 

That is why I thought that it looked more Fuller than Woody.

Roo

 

The altered wheelbase C/A '57 Ford (Gunfighter) belonged to Gary Coe from Portland,Or. It ran an injected 289.

 

Pete Robinson at Lions


Tony Nancy at Bakersfield, can't tell who he is racing.


Tom Prufer's fueler, made up from pieces of the Masters & Richter Fuller car that Bob Haines drove off the end of Half Moon Bay (the first purple Fuller car, not the yellow one)...Tom ran a 354" Chrysler, gave up some inches to the big guys but stayed in the game.


Caspary, Hampshire, and Waterman...Jeep at left, Sid Waterman center...did Jeep ever smile??


Sid Waterman's "Clearspark" car at San Fernando.


Clearspark on the trailer


Jr Stock...love the name of the '55 on the left


Vance Hunt and Ed Mabry's gas dragster, before Vance turned to fuel


Gary Bolger in the Garlits funny car, racing Bob Cain


Second Jack Chrisman Comet, fuel Mercury --- if I remember right, this car started out as the first Chrisman white car, with modified chassis and engine setback...and painted red...


Jerry Dilbeck C/A at Pomona...the old days with steel bodies, stock frames, even whitewalls...


John Matsek A/A, not sure where this is


Lions, can't see name on driver's helmet...this was the time when top fuel was getting very expensive to run...so buying a nose was beyond many racer's budgets...but it made it hard to ID cars...

 

That car makes his head look HUGE!

 

Glen Stokey -- twin blown Chevies...Glen ran many dragsters, one engine, two engines, gas, fuel, finally a class fuel car that Jeep Hampshire drove. This shot is at Lions, early '60s.


Paradise Mesa, Jim Nelson in the Oiler's car club '34 nearest


Red Case at the Houston meet, where three California cars (Case, Jack Ewell, and Romeo Palamedes) met in '58 to take on Don Garlits (Garlits beat all three, then beat Texas' Bobby Langley for TE)...this car was very minimal, but it would evolve:


Here it is at Colton with a full body....Clarke Cagle came on as a partner...it was in this configuration that the car appeared at Vaca Valley, where it went off the track and hit a hayrake, costing Red his life.


I think this might be Frank Rupert's "Black Plague" at Lions. John Martin once drove, not sure who is at the wheel here.


Ed Losinski's purple fueler at Perryville, AZ


two gassers square off at Santa Maria


McEwen at Capitol Raceway


Captioned "Mickey Thompson's Dragmaster," but I'm not sure that is correct. It is Pontiac powered, but Dragmaster gold, and that looks like Jim Nelson looking at something (maybe the plugs). That is Tommy Ivo's old car in the background, probably now run by Colorado's Heth and Thompson. The background looks like Colorado, but no other information...


Mooneyham, Ferguson, Jackson, and Faust...after Gene finally stopped running the 554 coupe and went to top fuel...looks like Riverside


There were Willys and there were exciting Willys...this one qualified in the latter category, hope dmorago will give us more (no, I don't understand why the Lions banner is on color in a B&W photo.)


Early Paradise Mesa...what are probably a former street roadster, a former track roadster, and a Nash Rambler convertible that ran in the fuel ranks. Look closely at a bygone era that we will not see again.


This might be Perryville, AZ...no ID...(old style pit passes had a piece of string attached so we could hook them to our shirt buttons....then we wore them to the drive-in after the races so we could be cooler than the people who didn't have pit passes on their shirts...or so we thought...the other people thought we were just greasers and stayed away from us...)

 

Creighton was of course Hunter Oil Co. on first street in Santa Ana. A good friend still has one of his old Oil Co. signs hanging in his garage. Here is a pretty recent shot of the car

CJ "Pappy" Hart owned a gas station in Santa Ana (and later a hop up garage) and that's how he and Creighton became friends. And there was also Frank Stilwell (another customer of Creighton's) who was involved at the beginning as well. CJ not only ran the drag strip, and many others after Santa Ana closed, including OCIR, but he raced as well - as did his wife Peggy, who was very fast in her own right. In retirement, after Peggy passed on he ended up going back to work for the NHRA as part of the Safety Safari team until he was 86!

 

I'm pretty sure, this pic was taken before the Scribners Bros. bought the '56 from Doc Watson.

 

After leaving California and drag racing many years ago, I would up in central Ohio, where I spectated at the Springnationals when it was at National Trails. One time in the '80s, when I had my youngest daughter with me, I saw C.J. Hart in the pits riding a scooter. Still had the same type of straw hat he wore at Santa Ana. I walked up to him and said "are you C.J. Hart?" Yes..."I saw my first drag race at Santa Ana in the summer of '57, and I wanted to thank you for all you have done for drag racing," and introduced him to my daughter...He seemed thrilled that someone in central Ohio actually recognized him and appreciated what he did for organized drag racing....a high point of my drag racing life...

 

Don, The car ran up at Fremont in the 80's, would Creighton have been driving it then ?