Vintage shots from days gone by!

Gulfport FL P.D.


In the early years, this water tower had a light which was used by the town marshal to summon deputies.

 

Far out man.

 

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„The Chevy designers were definitely thinking "out of the box" when they developed this mid-size concept clay model in late 1959 for the XP-722 program.“

 

Can't help but wonder.Who were these people? What were their lives about? Obviously they were proud of this Chevy.

 

What's going on here???

 

RIP 007, Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 1927 – 23 May 2017)

 

Bangshift -
EJ Potter’s Allison Powered 1957 Plymouth Nightmare 1 – When EJ Potter thought that he could spice up his already completely insane V8 motorcycle act in the 1960s, his first side track was a 1957 Plymouth sedan which he installed a supercharged Allison V12 airplane engine in. Looking at the photo on the left you can see that he is driving where the rear seat would have been.

After making some tweaks like adding big sand bags to the trunk to aid in traction and smoke making, he started to enjoy driving the car. He wanted to blaze the tires but the thing also needed to go fast to make for a good show, so speed was paramount. By the time he had it”figured out” the car would run nearly 150mph which was unheard of for a stock bodied machine of the day.

Unfortunately on a run where he crossed the finish at 147mph and lifted off the throttle, the engine backfired, blew up the supercharger and bathed him in lots and lots of fire and boiling hot oil. He was burned very badly on his hands as he had neglected to wear gloves for protection and there was nothing covering the engine inside the car. Another version of this car was created with an enclosure over the engine. Potter never missed a booked-in date. He told us stories about driving down the highway with his wife mopping the ooze off of his badly torched hands with gauze.

 

Bangshift again -
John Smyser’s Terrifying Toronado – If there are a couple of terms in drag racing’s history from the 1960s and 1970s that should tip you off to imminent failure, “four wheel drive” is one. Other than Tommy Ivo’s “Showboat” it never really ended well.

Adding multiple engines with multiple transmissions to the mix only adds a nice layer of frosting to the fail cake. John Smyser was a successful fuel dragster racer before he was bitten by an idea of building a wild twin engine, four wheel drive Olds Toronado powered by a pair of 425ci engines. Apparently the front engine was hooked to an automatic transmission and the rear engine was hooked to a traditional twin disc clutch.

The good news for Smyser is that his first appearance at a strip with the car in 1966 went great. The main reason is that he only displayed the car and didn’t run it. The next weekend he took the car down the track and on that first run the photo to the left was taken. This was at Irwindale and apparently the car completely left the ball yard and was making enough steam that people in the stands started running for their lives. He didn’t get to the stands, but it was close enough. There were a few more disappointing laps during 1966 and then 1967 happened.

The car made one more appearance where a near mirror situation occurred but this time it smashed through the guardrail at the top end of the track, was virtually destroyed and never saw the light of day again. Smyser had to have been lamenting his decision to leave the fuel ranks for that car. The Hurst Hairy Olds was more famous but equally as pissed off and also led a short life.

 

Now how cool is this pic?

 

MAN! I love these finned MoPars!

 

OH----OH!!!-------Whats going on here????????????????

 

Boy do I remember being the kid in this picture!
I recall my parents taking my brother and I to see The Bridge on the River Kwai, me in my PJ's. Yep the pic is flipped, not RH drive.
The movie seemed 57 hours ling, but my Dad made sure that I was awake to see the ending where the bridge blew up!! Blowed up good!

 

Nice stance on that Olds!

 

Lake County, Ohio Sherriff's Dept.

 

Edsel cop cars?!?!?!

 

They went down the road pretty well....they were just considered ugly to a lot of folks.

 

I'm sure, just after all of these years, I thought I might have run across them somewhere before as cop cars.

 

1960 CERV 1 (Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle)



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