Prudhomme's Army Monza...McEwens English Leather Corvette. Local racer Tom Hoover's Showtime. Leong's Hawaiian. Our family used to have a summer cabin on a lake near Brainerd MN. On a whim my brother and I went to the 1978 "Crown Auto Funny Car Championships" at BIR. I've been soiled ever since.
Good Lord!!! those photos would have been better if you had erased those nasty abortions called funny cars and left the photographers in.! Those "cars" are almost as ugly as the current crop of NHRA front motored "Nostalgia Dragsters"
I remember Gary Burgin, Bob Pickett, Larry Huff...funny car drivers behind the wheel of cool looking cars...
Great era of Funny Car, I was always a huge fan of fhe Army car but loved the ****oose Corvette too. I was a young kid at the 78 US Narionals and we were in the Pits looking at the Army funny car. I got Dons autograph and told him he was my favorite funny car driver, he picked me up and sat me in the seat for a picture. Great day, cool guy. Still my favorite FC driver of all time followed by John Force and the ****oose. Favorite Nitro drivers of all time, Garlits and The Snake. I Still have the original hot wheels issue of the Army and ****oose Vette in the unopened packages along with the Pepsi Challenge FC The Snake drove a few years later, also never opened.
About 45 years ago I worked in the body shop for House of Kolor in south Minneapolis. We did a little collision work on high-end cars and custom paint work on motorcycles, cars but We also worked on Tom Hoover‘s funny car bodies. The thing I remember about the bodies was how heavy they were. They were built like early Corvettes were, thick chopper gun fibergl***. Tom was low buck even back then and was using the seven to nine year old 71-73 mustang body.
The above post is of Justin Grant’s Stardust tribute car that was sanctioned by Don Schumacher. Put together in 2006 Justin, his crew and driver Joe Haas were struggling with the car so Justin brought it to Tom Motry’s Lockport, IL shop and over a couple months in Tom’s words “we went over the car from the weight bar to the wheelie bars.” We align bored the block, the aftermarket rocker stands were the wrong height for his push rods and different stands corrected the push rod issues, the blower needed work, etc. Justin had a good combination, basically it was setting clearances and careful ***embly. The car went on to do well on the match race and nostalgia circuit making Don proud.
The Jalopy Journal
