thanx , dennis . so , was the al szwed fairlane andy hotton's car ? and just to be clear , you're saying that jack fuches drove the fairlane that had "andy hotton enterprises" on it's flanks ? i think we might need a score card . jack
I don't think Andy Hotton ever owned the car. I heard from Domenic Garofoli that Skinny bought the car new from Bob Ford or Jerry Bielfield Ford, working for DST he liberated parts to build it into a B/FX'er. Skinny and Domenic flat towed it to Pomona had Cobra kit dual quads and cam in it. Later on Al bought the car from Jack and ran C/MP with it. Regards, Dennis
My step father was Holmon employee in the 70's he was involved in racing off shore boats and helped a little with the off road racing . They had a lot of nice big blocks in boats
john holman was a boat fanatic- i believe that's why they opened up holman moody marine . off hand i can't remember HM being involved in off road racing , but bill stroppe became involved when off road racing first started in the '60's . any photos ?
This is Ronnie Bryant. I went to school with him but he was a year older than me. After graduating in 1961 he worked for H&M for most of their glory years.
looks like our holman moody thread has died a fairly rapid death . doesn't anyone have anything to post - photos , info , whatever ? before we bury HM , i want to correct one of the "facts" i'd posted earlier . about 3 or 4 weeks ago i told a story about how HM got started , and how their first race as owners was at the trenton , N.J. speedway on june 23 . looks like i was off a bit . looking thru greg fielden's race by race nascar history books , i found that the "depaolo engineering" fords were still called that as late as june 1st in the GN division . after that date they were called the "weatherly ford" , or the "roberts ford" , etc. , as the drivers now owned their own cars . the first reference to a holman moody owned car - that i could find - was on july 14 , when weatherly and turner were entered in "holman moody fords" . in the convertible division , depaolo was still listed as the owner thru june 7 . however , by the next race [ june 14 ] turner and weatherly were entered in "holman moody fords" . this pre-dates my "first holman moody race" by 9 days . this probably is of little or no interest to most , but i just wanted to get my facts straight . jack
i know there are a lot of pages to go thru , but i'm pretty sure someone - maybe more than one - posted photos of ford six intakes with the HM logo on them some time ago on this thread . check thru and let us know what you find .
i posted the first 2 pix before- a page or 2 back . these 2 trucks ran in the beach trials at daytona in 1956 . the ford was owned and driven by L . merritt brown , who was a salesman for heintzelman ford . heeintzelman ford was sponsoring fireball's ford convertible , so obviously brown had some sort of a racing connection to ford .brown was also a former nascar driver , having entered a few races in the early '50's . i believe he drove studebakers at that time , believe it or not . the chevy in the second pic was built and , i believe , driven by smokey yunick . these 2 trucks made official timed runs , tho it's not clear if they were entered in any particular class , or if there was a class for these trucks . and i don't remember reading about any other pickups making timed runs - so these MAY have been the only 2 to do so . these 2 trucks may have been a ford against chevy deal - each company trying to out do the other in as many different types of vehicles as they had on hand . as i said the last time i posted these pix , both trucks ultimately posted much higher speeds than those stated in the captions , as i believe those lower speeds were taken during qualifying runs . i've always had an interest in the fords that ran in the beach trials - especially some of the more unusual ones - so merritt brown's truck got my attention a long time ago . as i've said previously , i've been a model builder since i was a kid . i guess it's my way of capturing a small piece - or maybe just the spirit - of the actual vehicle . i guess it goes without saying that i build fords only , tho i just said it anyway . the problem was that information was not readily available . i finally found the photo and short article shown in the 3rd pic . this was in a 1956 ford factory mag called "shop talk" , which was about "reader's digest" size , and was apparently distributed to ford dealers and garages , as it included a lot of factory repair info . i hope you can read the article , but if you can't it says the truck went over 126 mph in the flying mile , and 81 mph in the acceleration trial . now let me slow it down here and explain that "slow" 81 mph acceleration . forget about how the NHRA and others did it on a drag strip...this was nascar , and they did it their own way . first of all , they were accelerating on sand from a dead stop . no big surprise there . they were also being timed for a distance of one mile - not 1/4 mile . now here's the real kicker . the vehicle's speed was figured for the AVERAGE speed of the whole mile run - including , of course , when the vehicle was moving slowly at the beginning of the run . so brown's pickup was probably doing something like 115 - 120 mph when it crossed the line . the article further states that the only thing brown did to his truck was to install a 225 HP 312 c.i. thunderbird engine ...WITH CONVERSION KIT [ emphasis mine ] , using only ford parts . so was this engine truely stock ? as race fans , we all know there are many definitions of "stock" . there's showroom stock ;****umed to mean that the engine is just as it came off the****embly line , with no special preparation what-so-ever . then there's, "stock" ; which could mean bringing the engine up to factory specs [ balancing , blueprinting , hand picking the best parts , etc. ] . of course there's "nascar stock" ; which means .... well , it means ... whatever big bill wanted it to mean . then we have "smokey yunick stock" , but that's another can of worms altogether ! so what sort of "stock" t-bird engine did merritt brown REALLY install in his F100 ? well , considering that a truely showroom stock '56 t-bird PROBABLY wouldn't go much faster than 110 mph - if that ; and this truck , which had the frontal area of anna nichole smith [ but not the torpedo nose cone aerodynamics ] , it's very doubtful that it was powered by a showroom stock engine . so my guess is it used ford's new aluminum intake manifold , with two 4 barrell carbs . i believe that's what was meant by "with conversion kit " . ford rated this set-up at 260 HP. now considering brown's connection with heintzelman ford , and thus fireball roberts , who's car was owned and built by depaolo engineering , it's probably not a huge leap to believe that his 312 with conversion kit was also factory built as a race engine . how else can we explain that barn door going 126 mph ? moving down to the 4th and 5th photos . years ago a friend told me he'd seen a color photo of the truck on a magazine called "clues" . "clues" was another ford factory publication , similar to "ford truck times" , that featured information about ford trucks and was apparently sent to customers when they bought a new ford truck . as i'd never seen a color pic of the truck , and , for that matter didn't even know what color it was , i started a years long search for the magazine . i asked at car shows and swap meets , with no luck at all . when i "discovered" e-bay several years ago , i put it on my "search list" . about 3 years ago one popped up for sale . i was thrilled . i immediately put in for the opening bid of 99 cents , then added a maximum bid , which is undisclosed to other bidders , of something like $20.00 - thinking it would never go anywhere near that amount . the bidding was supposed to end in about 7 days . i watched it every day , and no one ...NO ONE ! had placed another bid . when it got down to the last few minutes i watched as the seconds ticked off . when it finally got down to zero , i found that someone had gotten a bid in at the last second and out-bid me . i couldn't believe it , as no one had shown any interest in it up to that time , and i couldn't believe someone else would be as dumb as i was and pay that much for that obscure magazine . anyway , i shot an e-mail off to the seller , explaining how disappointed i was , and asking if he would copy the photos and article for me and send them via e-mail . he was kind enough to do so , but the copies didn't turn out very well ; so what you see is what i got . the 4th pic - the one showing the 2 covers - is a download i took off his e-bay site [ the mag cover on the right shows a second mag he was selling along with the one on the left , and has nothing to do with brown's truck article ] . the 5th pic is the copy the seller sent me . not very good , but better than nothing . i've been looking for the mag ever since , with no luck . if anyone has a copy of this particular mag [ july-august, 1956 ] , and would be willing to sell it - or allow me to pay for a good color copy of the article and photos , please let me know . now i hate to give credit to anything general motors - espacially chevrolet - but i read that smokey's truck ultimately went something like 129 mph ...about 3 mph faster than the ford . but it says right in the caption that smokey's truck was lowered and modified ... so , was that "smokey modified" , or .... ? i guess that could mean anything . i suppose i now have enough info to build a model of merritt brown's 126 mph pickup . i just have to get up enough "oomph" to start it . off the track here for a minute , but if we want to keep this holman moody thread going , we're going to have to have more contributors . the sky is almost the limit - we can talk about anything relating to HM , depaolo , bill stroppe , or any of their drivers , crew members , cars , etc. so break into your memory banks , and break out your photos , experiences , memories , whatever - and share . and....MAY THE FORDS BE WITH YOU ! jack ttach]1382490[/attach]
quote genuine jack "had the frontal area of Anna Nichole Smith but not the torpedo nose cone aerodynamics" Now that's funny Jack
Interesting on the truck's - Back to Frank's first post starting this. Even then I don't think anything was lets say stock in Racing. Especially in Tow Truck's, they were not the big tractor trailer rig's of today. Does anyone know what kind of lathes and who supplied them in the early day's of Holman-moody - Looking for the *Ford Co. connection* in some high tech or unusual machining?
Funny that you are talking about illegal tow trucks. At the Old Drag Racers Reunion in Panama City, FL a few years back someone made the remark that he ran so cheated up that his tow truck was illegal. I can't remember who they were talking about (I think it might have been Billy "Big Deal" Jacobs).
hey pops - can't get your pic to show up , and when i click on it , i get thrown back to my desktop . is that the pic of fred with the rubber chicken that says "roadrunner" on it ?
thanx , claymore . that's it . i'm pretty sure there's some little being inside my computer looking to screw me up every chance he , she or it gets ! have i mentioned that i HATE these things ? jack
Remember the decal that said,"Beep Beep, Your**** !" It was originally a cartoon drawn by a guy at Ford Engineering as a joke. J. Passsino got hold of it and we printed thousands of full-color decals and flooded Daytona with them.
Rick, I would love to hear your Pantera stories. If you wish to share them with me please feel free to e-mail or PM me. Do you have any H/M stories about the Omega? I have it's successor, an Italia. It came with a H/M decal, but I don' t think they really did anything to my car although I bought the car from Harvey Paskow, who held a national drag racing record with a Lincoln or Lincoln powered car.
Years ago, I had a t shirt with Wile E. Coyote on the front and he had his hands wrapped around the Roadrunner's neck... And on the bottom it said Beep Beep Your****!!... I loved that shirt..
#761; " The question we had was why were they in such a low class H/SA while my Torino Cobra with formal roof was F/SA no ram air and E/SA with ram air. Were they that much heavier?" They had to have been. No other explanation to be docked 2 classes. Tom S. in Tn.
Is this car in H also? I can't see the class written anywhere on it. Could it have had a 390 in it instead of a 428? Tom S.
In 69 the cobra jets were all F and G cars I think. In the early 70's they were G and H. I can't remeber why but I think originaly NHRA thought the ram air cars had flat top pistons and non R/A had dish pistons. I know we had a problem with tech when we raced one week R/A then put a flat hood on the next week to drop a class.
The Jalopy Journal
