Art & Inspiration Street Racer Info 60s -70s Wanted

My 396, 4 gear 64 Chevelle high school ride. 64 Nova street runner, 64 Impala cruiser, regulars at the local street races

 

another great story 31 .... ya had me laughing so hard my eyes were tearing up .... its good to see that there were others like me who had a severe shortage of common sense back then ... Im just glad so many of us actually survived but I sure dont see how ... has to go way past lucky tho

 

another great story 31 .... ya had me laughing so hard my eyes were tearing up .... its good to see that there were others like me who had a severe

im trying to determine whether these folks had pure guts or was it sheer stupidity ... if they were driving old iron youd have to think these folks werent exactly kids .... guess some of us never change ( get smarter ??? ) ..... at any rate it was a great story !
shortage of common sense back then ... Im just glad so many of us actually survived but I sure dont see how ... has to go way past lucky tho

 

another great story 31 .... ya had me laughing so hard my eyes were tearing up .... its good to see that there were others like me who had a severe

im trying to determine whether these folks had pure guts or was it sheer stupidity ... if they were driving old iron youd have to think these folks werent exactly kids .... guess some of us never change ( get smarter ??? ) .....

a way cool story on the 35 Eddy ...and I really like the way you think .... the way the hot rod hobby has gone is one of my big pet peeves . I hate to rag on guys who spend untold bucks on old iron , but they dont drive it so as not to hurt their investment ... Investment ???? thought this whole thing was about adrenaline rushes and racking up seat time ....
at any rate it was a great story ! I will never own a car that cant be driven on a rainy day

 

,,,oppppsss ... looks like my lack of computer skills is showing .... :-(

 

... from Paducah ... now this is cool ... a great story and in an out of the limelight location .. ... kinda like my hometown of Canton ... will make the book for sure .... many thanks Chris

 

thanks Rick ... the detail about under the bridge is much appreciated ....

 

if you read this RB ... thanks for the input but I got few questions .... where ... what street/s ... years ??? ...by the way ... early Chevelles , best looking of them all I think , tho I liked them all till 73

 

..id like to take some space at this time and give a heartfelt thanks all who have taken the time to reply up to this point ... I will probably have to add a few chapters to the book with all these locations and great stories ....

 

Most of my escapades happened on Woodward between Pleasant Ridge at Ten Mile Road and Bloomfield Hills near Square Lake Road. I lived near 11 Mile Road and Woodward in Royal Oak, so it was very convenient.

 

My Nova was a stout car. 301 SBC, Saginaw 4-speed (low 1st gear), narrowed Cougar 9" posi rear, (forget the ratio), rear springs moved inboard. The cheater slicks fit the tubs.

To be cool, I'd take the slicks and a floor jack and change them for a race, lots of guys did that and it drew a crowd. Problem was the trunk would fit one slick and the jack, the other one went in the back seat.

 

daamn dude , you were in the heart of it all . Convenient is always good , especially if your rear gear ratio started with the number 4 . Did you guys do a lot of money racing racing up there ? While money changed hands in my small town , it wasnt exactly common , more for bragging rights than anything .

 

I was never in any races that involved money or ***le transfers. I knew a lot of guys who were, though. Woodward was a dream for me....4 lanes north and 4 lanes south with a traffic light every 1/2 mile. Wide, gr***y median strip in between the lanes and it was a 45 mile per hour speed limit when I was there. A lot of my friends raced Woodward or Gratiot or Telegraph or I-75. My neighbor, 2-doors down from me had some lessons to teach me. He had a '62 Corvette with side pipes and a built 283 or 327....not sure (I was young). He took me for a ride in his Vette one summer and I was wearing cutoffs. First thing he did was a wheelie on a side street in the middle of Royal Oak. WHAT A THRILL that was for me!! After the drive, I got out and learned all about side pipes....without grill covers. Burnt the **** out of the back of my leg!! I hang over some of his car's fenders once in a while. I loved seeing the Silver Bullet race and wished I could afford a HEMI. I also hung around the Ramchargers in Ferndale once in a while. Those guys were LOADS of fun!!

 

Our local boys always came ready to roll but toward the end of it all ( 74-75 ) we started getting some guys show up from Akron with cars either on trailers or being flat towed with a tow bar . The tow bar guys would always change tires when they got there . They would park behind the drug store across from the main hang out spot and they usually had a crowd of about 20 or so of us who would watch them . Now the fastest guys in town only came out when there was money to be made or something interesting they wanted to race . And the Akron boys ALWAYS wanted to put money on races . Big money for the time , sometimes a couple hundred bucks . I remember one night a guy flat towed down with a 68 Firebird that had a big block in it and a race was set up with a local guy in a stout 66 396 Chevelle . Two hundred big ones on the line . This was big time street racing in our small town . At about 1 am they rolled south of town on I-77 with about 20 cars following to watch the action . They struck them off and I was quite away back but I saw a big cloud of smoke and knew someone had busted one big time . So we all pulled over and all us up around the cars and the local guy had put a rod thru the block . Then it got ugly . Out of nowhere came 4 of Ohio's Finest from both the north and the south . We all ****tered back to our cars and while most of us got away , both racers and about 5-6 guys got busted and they took them all to jail . They did let the spectators they had arrested have some one drive their car home and not tow em and most of us had a p***enger along . One of the guys I hung out with was a**** the arrested ... so we made our way up to the Avenue and folks started p***ing the hat to put up bail . We had them back on the Avenue by daylight . Never heard who was in the lead or how the money deal was handled . We also guessed that some one had tipped off the Staties as this part of the road was not well traveled , especially this time of night ... which is why we chose it a lot of course . Just another night in paradize ya know

 

you lived a charmed youth 31 .... to hang out around the Ramcharger guys , sheeesh . Closest I came to " royalty " was a guy named Koffell ( now a known name in Mopar circles ) who held a couple of NHRA gas cl*** records and one of his cars made Hot Rod Magazine . He used to stop by my neighbors garage ( my second home ) once in awhile . I got a real kick out of your Vette story ... I had a similar experience in a neighborhood fellas 57 Vette . Pulled the wheels in both first and second about three blocks from home . Scared the living sh** out of me at the time . I was about 12 . What was cool for a 12 year old , was I had witnesses . Several of my buds had seen this and me in the car . I was the " hero " for about a week . By the way , I think we ALL wanted a Hemi back then . I sure as hell did . Back to Woodward again , ive often wondered if the factory boys that were sneaking around racing , testing out their handiwork , all knew each other and just raced a**** themselves or if they actually mixed it up with the local kids and did they ever get beat might be a better question ... what I wouldnt give for a couple of your memories 31 , tho I can say I enjoy my own " very small role " in our small town ....

 

... so I was just reading another thread in here and a guy from KC mentioned they used to use three honks of their horns to start a race . I had never heard of this before . We locals always just used a verbal 1-3 count or on rare oc***ions a flashlight . Any one else ever see or use the horn method of starting a street race ????

 

by the way Bob , I remember well the days when you heard the numbers 3 0 1 , you better take them seriously

 

hey 31 ... I just noticed your location .... did some checking and your 291 miles away .... and roughly 40 years ago we lived about 213 miles away .... dont know about you , but I could never live back east again ... the winters would kill me I always wanted to come west when I was young and I made it 16 years ago , the only small detail is im about 1000 miles or so north of where I used to daydream ...... and im good with that !

 

Back around '73-75 the cop cars were Plymouths and had distinctive parking lights, we could see those a long ways off. If one appeared behind us, slow it down and be ready to present your papers.

 

I had to think about this awhile but I believe the locals used Fords in my town at that time , but I do believe the Staties used Mopars .... and speaking of , out on the larger state routes and Interstates they used small aircraft to catch speeders .... they would have 3-4 cruisers sitting a certain point , the aircraft would clock ya and if you were speeding they would pull you over as you approached them and p*** out the ticket . Sometimes they would have 3-4 cars pulled over at once .... the Staties had a nasty rep in Ohio , probably still do . In Ohio you always had to look up And a lot of the blink and ya missed it small towns had a habit of setting up speed traps . My one aunt used to get a ticket every time she drove thru a small town called Washingtonville on her way to see my grandmother . The local cop knew her by name ....

 

Ahhh....the factory boys. Yes, the factory dudes would race the locals. I was out one night on Woodward when a beer bottle brown Firebird drove up alongside me. It had three guys in it with skinny ties and white shirts. All of a sudden, they were GONE! Turned out it was a prototype of the 455 Trans-Am without all of the decals and Trans-Am trim. Stock, flat hood and that brown color. They kicked mostly everyone's ****s that night.
My cousin worked at the Sunoco station in Birmingham where the Silver Bullet hung out. I was introduced to Jimmy Addison and Ted Spehar by my cousin and I got to hang out there a little bit. Wow, that car was awesome! A LOT of their parts came from the factory speed department.
Man, I really miss those days. I must have gone through a tank of gas each night racing my *** off. I would race nearly ANYTHING.

 

I hope my name dropping isn't too much. It's just that I WAS in the middle of all of that stuff in the late '60s and early '70s.

 

e street (route 66) in san berdo... (bernardino), garry ave in pomona, whittier blvd. van nyes blvd. harbor blvd anaheim. up the street from disneyland. and so many more.
in 1969 i raced my 450 Honda scrambler against a gto at a street race near the Ontario international Airport on a road alongside the tracks. that was with la street racers with big Willy there. i was ahead at 1000 feet. ****... i lost.

 

Southern Michigan here we had quite a bit of street racing in my area. One place we used to go was a 13 14 mile drive to Austin Rd. Austin Rd. was special because it was all Amish. We never worried about them calling cops. We routinely ran best 2 out of 3 for 10 or more cars.

 

We used the 3 beep method but this was in the mid to late 80s. Route 107 the Lynn Marsh rd. Just north of Boston.The cops from three towns were usually ready to bust us. I even got a loitering ticket in the turn-around one nite while waiting to run. I never ran for money but others did. I wasn't old enough to be there in the 60s-70s but I heard plenty of stories. . . .

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South Lyon Michigan, western side of Oakland County 68-69 had a Road Runner cop car. Federal Visabar twin lights. We used to go to Jimmy's Restaurant that was there for a break when working on our cars at my buddy's shop.

Britton Michigan, out M-50 west of US 23, road trip to pick up a set of slicks from a friend of a friend. We used to "get away" with a lot of speeding circa 1970 when we took one of my friend's mother's car. 69 Plymouth Fury I two door. Plain Jane with black walls and dog dish caps. A lot of P.D.'s were running these as detective cars. We actually on I-96 one time had a marked car come up on us, we were running 15 or so over 70, they pulled alongside of us, looked over, geve us a little wave and dropped back. They must have thought we were undercover, if they only knew....far from it.

Anyway, we are running our usual speed 10+ over the posted 65 back then when as the front p***enger I said "cop up there". One of the guys riding in the back said "Probably a fireman" My buddy hits the brakes and on the side of the road is a blue Z-28 with lights in the package tray and a white painted roof. That and the "X" plates (Michigan guys know those!) were the tipoff. We go past him, there is the gold shield on the door, local P.D. His radar must have been off at the time. Anyhow as we go through town we p*** the station on the north side of the highway. Sitting alongside the station was a 69 Dodge R/T, same color scheme but with the usual Visibar, two rotators and the horn. Sitting a little higher than stock, looked pretty impressive or imposing depending on your point of view.

 

...dont see it that way at all 31 .... I asked for locations , streets and good stories and yours are great . Hope you wont mind if i use your basic factory boys story with the Firebird . I will fictionalize it some of course , but the basic story is gold . This might be one race my boys lose It makes me sad that most of these stories that all of us have from the greatest era of street car performance and street racing anywhere in the world to date arent getting recorded near as I can tell . We are letting history slip thru our fingers . If I had the skills and some cash for a website of some sort , id take this on myself . I dig history , especially automotive history and our era was as good as its ever gonna get id bet ..... truly glad I was there ... and truly sad it is gone ....

 

first off I gotta ask , what are X plates ( not from Michigan here ) ??? ... wow ... they used muscle cars as unmarked police cars ??? First ive ever heard that , at least that far back . To my knowledge that wasnt done where I lived . Detectives had them , but never saw one used as a cruiser or interceptor . Thanks for all the info and the stories Rider .

 

Damn , wished we had thought of that . We had a big Amish community in the area where I lived ....

 

I truly wished you could have been there 57 ... the stories are true ,trust us ... I still did some street racing into the 80s , but it wasnt the same by then . The cops in our town would always give out what we called ******** tickets ... just part of the game as we saw it .