In the south it started as early as '62-63 with, as a poster from Yellow River said, "Run What Ya Brung", "sit on your tool box"! The hay day was the match races bringing in two or more "Names" to race. They might race at three tracks in a weekend, friday night, saturday night and sunday. You might even see a FX type car running a A/GS car. Sure miss standing behind a injected FX type car and getting my eyes full of fuel fumes. I remember the rosin days when you would spread the rosin, spin through it a couple of times before lining up for the flag start. I'm gonna keep on here and tell my age.
It was as much high drama as wresteling. I always heard them called "Match races". Drama of each contestant doing a burn out in the rosin. Got the fans up on their feet. Morphed into Factory Experimental. In the south, the cars were still a little bit outside of the relm of what you could run in a legal NHRA strip. If you did show up at a NHRA strip you usually went into an altered class. They wouldn't even fit in a gasser class.
Seeing Match Races back in the day was THE best, our local Iowa 1/8 mile track would be packed, standing room only.... Awesome times!
Find "Match Race Madness" by Grady Bryant. This book is jam packed with killer drag racing stories from the day. These guys were barnstorming pioneers in the world of fuel and funnies. D
I can recall one night out on 367 North between the two bridges before you cross into Alton, Ill out of Mo we had over 100 cars show up to do some street racing, with only one way traffic and two lanes we got permission from Dick Gamble who owned the old Bargain Barn store on the low highway to use his parking lot after hours and since the cops had to come past us on the top highway before they could turn around and access the low highway we had people trailer in full on race machines this was when 900 Kawasakis had just come out around 1970-71 they were blistering fast at that time I was running a maroon 69 Mercury Cyclone with a 428 CJ C-6 trans , headers etc. I bought the car off a used car lot in Alton for.... wait for it.... the total sum of $850 it ran in the mid to low 12s. Hall street was another mecca of street racing others are bound to remember fondly. Well now we have Gateway for that, long may the rubber burn.
Race cars are faster today than back then of course but it was the most exciting years in the history of drag racing and certainly took the sport to the next level.
For a look at some old school style gasser's and altered's and custom's in the St. Louis, Mo. area check out Creative Custom's Chop Shop, just went to their annual charity xmas party where they had a handfull on display and the owner Bill fired up his Henry-J pro-mod BBC blown alcohol Orange 'Taxi' ever stood 3 ft. from one of these monsters when its fired up? In one word.... AWESOME! would be the word I'd use. They have a web site to visit.
This is a forum about dragracing is it not? Not a place for nitpicking, that's for the quilting bee crowd. My profile is readily posted if you take the time to read it, it should fulfill your request.
And though I wasn't there, when you look at the timelines, and look at pics of the same car or same teams or even same class from one year to the next from '62-'70, things evolved at a tremendous pace. Things that were cutting edge one year were obsolete and shoved out behind the shop two years later. Tire technology, induction technology, suspension technology, wheel base, things changed damn quick. I don't think we've had anything close to that frantic pace of change since. -Brad
Altered Wheelbase, Blown, Injected, Run what ya brung Match Racing! just like a sore pecker, hard to beat!! Chris
Match Bash was a drag category at the Spring Nationals at Bristol in 1966 before these cars had a real class, so it's not something Magnante made up. It was an eliminator category for late model stockers that no longer stock. I'm guessing it would have been a term that more people would have heard if the class didn't become Funny Cars so quick. MELTDOWN DRAGS JULY 18-20 2014 www.meltdowndrags.com
September of 66 Super Stock and Drag Illustrsted. Bristol's owner Larry Carrier had a "Match Bash" eliminator for the new funny cars. MELTDOWN DRAGS JULY 18-20 2014 www.meltdowndrags.com
First use of the term that I ever saw in print: http://www.hotrod.com/projectbuild/113_0312_1963_chevy_nova/
http://www.60sfunnycars.com/index.htm At the bottom of the page you can jump. Round 4,5,6,7 refer to these cars as match bash.
Magnante explains coining the term to describe a new trend of street cars built to look like 60's match racers in his book, How to Build Altered Wheelbase Cars.
40 years before Magnante. In his how to book he references this issue of SSDI. MELTDOWN DRAGS JULY 18-20 2014 www.meltdowndrags.com
I wasn't saying it was correct or not, (because i dont know) but if someone was looking for 60s funny cars, where would they go, what would they see and then repeat?
Yes, but it wasn't a class ever. There were match races among match racers. Match bash was obviously used to describe this particular event - could as easily have been match clash or match battle or match mash or match beatdown, lol. Probably was his inspiration for the term, but before 2001, proclaiming I'm building a match bash car would have been met with " a what?"
Nowhere in the original post was it ever stated that Match Bash was a class. Thanks for the kind words, guys.
Joey, my response was to II Funny's post. Your article was excellent, as always, I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't an actual class. I certainly don't claim to know everything and I hope that nobody takes me to be that way. I just try and help and share what I do know about this stuff.
I never said it was a class either. I said it was an eliminator category. The original responses said the two words together never existed. Same was said about Gasser on anothet thread. Ohio George campained a car called the Gasser Passer, so just like here its guys saying it didn't exist because they never heard it. MELTDOWN DRAGS JULY 18-20 2014 www.meltdowndrags.com
If I'm wrong and there is proof, well then I'm wrong. I try my best to make surenof something before I post about it and I only have my old magazines to go off of as I was born way after the golden age of drag racing. MELTDOWN DRAGS JULY 18-20 2014 www.meltdowndrags.com
No, not saying you're wrong, I think they must have re-named the super eliminator category for the Springnationals, maybe? That was where the class winners for F/X, Gas, Modified Production, Modified Sports, etc ran off. I can't find reference to it being called match bash other than that event. As other old timers here can attest, match racing or match racer were the terms that we heard prior to 2001
Well guys I apologize with a slice of humble pie. Here is what it said in that magazine "Tom (Grove) won the Match Bash competition which was open to cars too light to compete in NASCAR's Ultra Stock class." I could have sworn it had said Match Race.
The Jalopy Journal
