Vintage shots from days gone by!

That's a "babe" in anyone's book !!

 

I never knew any of these existed as street cars. I wonder if any still exist.

 

Wow, how cool is that?!?!?!? Gary

 

Note push car board



A few T birds





Black Bird

 

Louisa Dragway



M&H



Mickey Thompson



again



the man himself working

 

I've been staring at this photo ever since Gary posted it. It has definitely tripped my trigger. Not just a photo of a couple of dragsters, but of (in my opinion) the zenith of the Top Fuel Dragster. Hoover's car with the neatly formed body, and the yellow car, basically the same but a little more bare bones.

Almost from the very beginning of drag racing in the early 1950's, there have been dragsters. They may not have been called dragsters at first, maybe "rail jobs", signifying a Model-T or Model-A frame, an engine, and a seat for the driver. Crude would be putting it mildly, but little by little, the concept of the all-out drag car evolved. The stock frames evolved into a dragster frame, the engines evolved from the flathead Ford or Jimmy-6, to every engine under the sun, Buick, Olds, Packard, Lincoln, etc., even aircraft engines, dual engines, one in front of the other and dual engines side by side, even three and four engines. Engines in the front, engines in the back, engine in the front and one in the back, engines mounted sideways, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The old saying, everything that goes up must come down, I guess this is a scientific fact. But at some point in all of this, there is a zenith, when whatever is going up stands still in time, just for a second, or just for a billionth of a second, caught in time before if starts to come down. This photo captures that moment in time for me. For me, probably 1964 through 1966 is that moment in time in the evolution of the Top Fuel dragster.

Look at these two cars, simple is as simple does. No wings for down force, no bill-board ads for sponsors, nothing really "professional", a push-car was required to start the engine, a hobby at it's zenith. The evolution of the chassis became almost a standard configuration although each chassis builder did their own little "thing", maybe the shape of the roll cage, or maybe the length of the wheelbase. The evolution eventually settled on three primary engines of choice, the 392 Chrysler Hemi, the 426 Chrysler Hemi, and the 427 Ford SOHC. This was "IT". For me, it never got better. The ultimate dragsters, before they started their downward slide into what we have now.

Thank you Gary, for posting that photo...

 

Thanks for another great midget photo, Rootie! I don't know who the driver is but he must be part of the crowd running at Gilmore since there always seems to be some movie star type hanging out with the drivers. And is that a muffler on the exhaust? Or maybe it's just a heat guard?

I could be wrong but the second photo seems to show the George Metzler car on the Bear Rack at IMS in 1947. The car is listed as having a Clemons engine which I really don't know much about. Poor Metzler never had any luck and ended up being killed in the ex-Shaw 1937 500 winning car. His family had been involved in racing before he got started and his uncle Ed was a well thought of mechanic that worked for the Boyle team as well as several others. Here's a photo of Ed.

http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/IMS/id/7607

 

The midget driver is Fred Friday at Gilmore and I suspect the babe is a Hollywood starlet getting a photo op. Friday was a pretty good midget driver but is probably best remembered as the subject of a famous, well published photo of his car on fire at Gilmore one night. I believe they were required to run mufflers at Gilmore as it wasn't far from a populated area. Another track they ran the mufflers like that, back then, was Balboa Stadium as it was pretty much in the middle of town.



You're right, that is Metzler's car at Indy 47. Here's a shot of Metzler and the car in 1948 as the Glessner Spl.

 

George, 64-66 is my favorite era for Dragsters too, when a couple of guys could pool their money, weld up a chassis in their garage, and go racing ! The other thing about this shot is the variety of push vehicles. That is also the era that Tom Prufer and Brian Burnett were trying to emulate when the nostalgia drag racing movement really got going, at Fremont in the mid-80's.

 

Don't know what it is but it is not a latham.

 

Actually I believe it is a Latham. You may be confused by the non over the counter carburetors on it. Not everyone is content to stick with what is in the catalogue. It looks as though this owner used his ingenuity to try to improve upon what was commonly available.

 

I read somewhere that this photo (or one very much like it) was the inspiration for all the Flame paint jobs that came along...

 

too bad they cut all those 2000 year old trees down....for what, some greedy logging company....sad....

 

Other guys get a magazine to read...

 

look how rusty that Plymouth wagon is !!!!!wow, they rusted fast back then didn't they ?

 

Anybody know if there is a better copy of the original available somewhere. Google didn't come up with anything.