I was hours from suburbia but firmly in the Midwest growing up. when you’re in the middle of absolutely no where there isn’t much to do outside of get tanked and build race cars. our area was, still is, absolutely littered with dirt tracks. But the cars I always listened for were headed an hour or so west to Thunder Valley. The quarter mile strip. Even as a little kid riding my bike around town I was already making friends with “the old Guys with loud cars” Two blocks over Kenny’s sport fury was an absolute monster holding a few nations ***les in that era. For a while he ran a spot down town and occasionally you’d hear him fire the race car up and let it chop down the hill to the shop. One tail light, slicks, no exhaust? Not really a big deal in small town USA. Skip the trailer and just drive it over there. Between him and my parents houses were a few hot rodders and then directly behind us the family that owned the areas go to BIG horse power head shop lived in a little ranch house. I rarely heard the borderline funny car camaro fire up but when I did I took notice. you could always tell who was playing. my favorite though lived in a trailer tucked between the trees in the side yard. An obnoxiously painted tiny pick up. A full ch***is of monster fueled by av gas I could smell across the back yards. it just sounded different. The stuff of high school day dreams. when the spring came around after the 900 month winters you get up north you’d either hear it or hear talk of it being out. I’d take the road out to the small air port that closed not long after I left town for confirmation. there you’d find it, after getting fresh fuel. Black marks wider than the gap between them. the stuff of local legends. Makes for a fun youth if you were a car guy. I remember plenty of the summers big cruise nights. Cars stacked bumper to bumper for four or five miles in each direction 6 lanes full. When it got so late even the bars were closing You’d notice that trailer place down on the edge of town had a few with the doors dropped. catching just enough to notice those are track trailers sans car, not empty moving trailers. Things were about to get real fun!
In the midwest town I grew up in there was a family who moved in a the dad got my attention by driving a vdub down our street with a big honkin 396 stuffed in the front and he was driving from the back seat! Of course I immediately jump on my bicycle and pedal down to the house and introduce myself to the new kid in the neighborhood. We would hang out and read his dad's Hot Rod magazines. Then the neighbors across the street moved out and a couple of older guys and their family moved in. Well Greg had a '68 Chevelle SS with the 396 and his brother had a GTO. Of course I had to go and introduce myself and check out the cars. Then they're buddy Wolfie showed up with his jet black '55 Chevy with the orange and blue flames and open headers. Talk about a kid who drooled over hot rods, I was in seventh heaven! One day Wolfie shows up with this foreign job the likes I had never seen, turns out it was a Ford Anglia with a keg for a gas tank! Crazy!!! Well by then the kid down the street his dad sold the bug and bought a '34 Ford pickup, another way cool ride. To this day I love '55 chebys an '34 Fords!
I was born in '75, so most of the high school kids in my neighborhood were driving Chevy IIs, '60s Mustangs and early-'70s Chevelles. ******* bars and three-quarter-sleeve Judas Priest T-shirts were the ****. By the time I was 10 or 11 I got pretty good at guessing who was coming down the road by the sound of their engine. Custom painter Richard Glymph lived in the next neighborhood over. I didn't know him then, but occasionally I'd see him or his friends roll past the house. Butch Martin's chopped Model A Tudor stands out, and seeing Richard's mild custom '61 Impala warped my brain forever. Looks like the Meiser Bros. had an awful lot of engine setback for a Gas cl*** car, doesn't it?
Very cool '55. The color is close to my '55 when I got it in 1970. I think that is too much engine setback to be a legal g***er. Thought cl*** rules stated a maximum setback of 10%.
Per the featured gold car. Based on the designation in front of the slash being gone, the back wheels being moved forward after the fenders were radiused an the photo being such a dead on side view showing the set back I would guess this car was getting ready to make its debut in more of an altered wheel base cl***. anyone have or want to find any history of this car? Though to be fair the speculation based on clues is often more fun that finding the answer to the mystery lol
I knew Ralph Meiser. Here is my story. I grew up in Northeast Ohio, east of Cleveland 25 miles or so. Ohio in the '60s was g***er country. We used to joke that one could drive down any residential neighborhood and look in the open garage doors and see a g***er at every other house. In fact, my next-door neighbors, the Barnes Bros, had a '33 Willys D/Gas coupe which would become my later inspiration to build one myself. But I digress... I moved to Dearborn MI and got a job as an engineer at Ford. One day I met another engineer, also from NE OH originally. His name was Ralph Meiser. I remembered seeing his and his brother's g***er running at Thompson Drag Raceway. We became good friends. We helped each other on our car projects through the years, even into retirement. We went to the Columbus and Carlisle Swap Meets, the annual Thompson Dragway Reunion races, Ralph, to watch and help me and other racers with our antique junk. I don't remember his brother's first name, but they were wizards with a Hilborn injected SBC. 283 based IIRC, but they may have tried some 265s at some point. They usually ran E/Gas, and yes, it was a LEGAL NHRA gas coupe. In addition to being a good Hilborn tuner, Ralph did a lot of the bodywork, paint and trim himself. He had a p***ion for metal fabbing. His last project was to be a two-door 'A' sedan with a '32 heavy axle, a small block Ford and lots of metal tweaks. If you were an Ohio drag racer in the '60s you had to be on your game. Guys like Gene Schwartz, Joe Hrudka, Hart Automotive, Barnes and Sperry and myriads more were waiting every weekend to chew you up. Meiser brothers held their own against very formidable compe***ion. Ralph suc***bed to illness several years ago. He never got a chance to finish his 'A' sedan project. Every time I use some tools or material he p***ed along to me I think of him. Miss you Ralph. R.I.P.
Puts me in mind of the 55 I had from 1966 to 2000. Eng set way back, transverse spring with 46 ford front axle, 57 olds rear with 5:39 gears, 6 ft ladder bars, gutted interior, gl*** nose. Still wishing I had kept it, crude as it was, it was all mine.
The Jalopy Journal
