I believe you could run a 6 cylinder in gas class or any motor , I believe I've seen The designation like H or something like that.
Define "started out". You mean as originally manufactured? Some gassers started out with four-cylinder engines. Or do you mean, 6 cylinder engines were used to race with before V8s? Not a lot. The V8 is king.
A friend of mine ran a 53 ford with a flathead V8 in H/Gas. He ran against a lot of 6 cyl. Chevys. As far as gassers in general, I would think that most started out with V8s.
Hello, If the original Gas Coupe and Sedan class is your version of early "gassers," then no. There were all divisions as per motor and coupe or sedan body. The first published race results were from 1955 in the Drag News weekly paper. Here are the earliest facts and posted results that give some kind of understandable information from 1955 in So Cal. February 1955 at the Pomona Drags. Drag News Santa Ana Drags June 19 1955 There were some interesting categories with names and titles hard to decipher. Don Montgomery was prominent from those early days at Pomona. Also, look at the Santa Ana class: Post War Gas OH, which was won by George Cerny in his custom Plymouth Station Wagon. Jnaki Lions Dragstrip was just being built at this time and would join the fray later on in October 1955.
I remember the gassers from my teenage years going to Pomona in 1959 and the early 1960s. I have distinct memories of seeing Big John Mazmanian, Stone-Woods-Cook, and others during the Gasser Wars years. It is from those early memories that I now have a fascination with drag racing in the 1950s. Jnaki mentioned that the "first published race results" were from the 1955 issues of Drag News. But I knew that many newspapers throughout the country published race results between 1950 and 1954, before Drag News started publishing their weekly newspaper in March 1955. I decided to compile an electronic data file of all the newspaper articles that I could find that gave race results from California drag strips that had not been reported in Drag News from 1950-59. It is called Drag News Reborn: The Missing Drag Race Results from the 1950s. This data file contains over 600 published drag race results from 40 drag strips in California found in local newspapers that were never reported in Drag News. It is available through my Drag Strip List website and would be interesting and useful for any drag racing historian or researcher. Jnaki mentions that there were many "interesting categories" for the cars that we recognize as gassers today. That is indeed correct. They included such category names for the gas coupe and sedan cars such as stripped, full-fendered, non-fendered, large, small, light, heavy, pre-war, and post-war coupes and sedans. In 1953, Pomona ran a simplified category of gassers. They were divided into either running on fuel or on gas. I spent many Sunday afternoons seeing the races at Pomona from this vantage point, standing on the railroad tracks about 25 feet north of the track fence. They were the "cheap seats," for those too cheap to pay to get into the races. But we had a great view of the starting line. The flag starter and the old pump house near the finish line down the track were there when I started going there. The Ganesha Hills would have been a bit more smoggy than is seen in this 1952-53 photo. These two cars would have been in the gas coupe and sedan classes. NHRA had standardized its categorization of the gas coupe and sedan classes at least by 1954. They were described in a newspaper article reporting race results at the Samoa Drag Strip in Eureka in Northern California. Drag strips in Santa Maria, Kingdon, and Winters Airstrip were all running these categories in 1954. The published reports that appeared in Drag News in 1955 and later would chronicle the race results that had already been appearing in newspapers all over the country in the previous five years. They are an untapped resource for drag racing history.
not a true gasser, but this 37 is probly my favorite six banger powered drag racer 292 cubic inch Chevy...( I know the wheels don't fit here...)
I too really like the ingenuity of that 37 coupe but you know damn well those Weld wheels are way off topic. Lol
In the early days of organized drag racing there were stock classes (based on advertised horsepower) and all out racing classes. As hot rodders are prone to do guys modified their cars by adding multiple carburetors, different cams, boring cylinders and other things to increase horsepower as well as putting different engine of the same or other makes in cars they already had. There were no classes to fit these cars because they were no longer stock but not all out race cars either. The Gas classes were established to fit these cars. The formula was simple weight of the car divided by the cubic inches of the engine. In the beginning these cars had to be street legal because most cars were driven to the drag strip. There were other rules but but weight divided by cubic inches was fair because no one could accurately predict the horsepower of each car to race against each other. As with all racing guys soon figured out how to modify engines for more horsepower (within same cubic inches) or modify the chassis to be lighter or increase traction. Of course the gas classes then evolved into true race cars and less dual purpose street/track cars. Eventually a lot of the street legal requirements were dropped as most gassers were now trailered to the track rather then driven. In my opinion the gas classes were the best classes for drag racing allowing innovations but yet good side by side racing. As racing goes it was somewhat affordable to the average person especially in the lower gas classes.
The Jalopy Journal
