Two guys an a gal sitting in the front survived this one, car landed in our driveway at 2:30 am after hitting a parked stn wagon and retaining wall
Post #2 looks like a Mopar ,,,,quarter panel area and marker light,,,,,and the torsion bar registers in the frame crossmember . Big block too ! Looks like it had a bellhousing bolt missing right above the starter mount area ? Tommy
Lotta people always talked about being worried about wrapping a car around a light pole street racing. My personal fear in my street racing days(stopped in 2017 for the most part) was to be tearing along some back highway racing and have some semi randomly pull in front of us from a blind spot. Came really close years back....
I was brought home from the hospital as a newborn in a 71 charger. So I could recognize the difference between 71/72 and 73/74 chargers at a partial glance at an early age lol
Don't have pictures, but back in the early 70s there was a guy with a built Plymouth Superbird that did a lot of street racing. Him and his car were well known, he was fast. One Friday evening, he was racing with another guy, and someone lost control (I didn't see the event happen, but we sure heard it). The two cars bounced off each other a couple times, before the 'bird veered to the right and struck a 2' high cement post that was in front of a building. The bird flipped onto its roof, slid across the street and went through the wall of a brick building while it was still on its roof. Two of my buddies and I arrived at the scene probably a minute after the crash (we were only a few blocks away). We got there in time to see the bird's driver crawl out of the crumbled building. within about a minute, he was getting into someone's car and they left the area. There was lots of speculation about that, but shortly the police and the fire department was there and they chased everyone away. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing the back end of that upside down Superbird with its back 1/2 hanging out of that brick building. That picture made the local newspaper, I had to act shocked when my mom threw the picture in the newspaper in my face and lectured me how bad those high performance cars were. I can't imagine what she would have done if she knew I saw it in person. To finish up the story. I knew one of the police officers at the scene, so I told him that the car's driver had gotten into a different car and had left the area, knowing they would soon be frantically looking for his body. Everyone knew who the crashed car belonged to. The police caught up with him a day or two later. I suspect he was in less trouble when they caught up with him then he would have been that night. I didn't learn much from his misfortune or that of so many others, but I was lucky. The worst thing I got from my street racing days was a pile of broken car parts (a very big pile). My play time came a few years after the Superbird crash. Everyone knew who my car belonged to.
Racing was restricted to deserted areas less hassle from law. About the time I began driving, a school member took his parents SW Rambler for a speed exibition. An open, stretch with no cross road and different Twnsps at either end, DMZ. With a slight bend in the road, the SW decided to swap ends and take a tree down, sideways. First time I saw the use of a flat bed tow truck to haul away the two pieces. The driver and his three pals all had funerals on the same day.
I'll imagine the infamous Camaro wrapped around the telephone pole, that sat for years on top of a speed shop will be shown....the "Just A Car Guy" blog, the mother of one of the victims told the story and quelled the old rumor those bodies were left in that mangled Camaro all those years. I had a buddy basically do the same thing that Chevelle did in "Convoy" movie, only it was a billboard alone. He had a '65 Chevy II, lost it in a sharp curve. He lived.
You mean the center of the rear wheel,,,lol . All that’s left of it after it broke off,,,,,at least the lugs held good . Tommy
I knew of one death from street racing in HS. I know of a few wild rides street racing the old hand jammers . Now that was as close to a death ride as a man can get and walk away to tell about it . Bastards had no brakes and unsafe with normal driving . Hit a hard bump and doesn’t stop or go easily when the wheels were off the ground
Most of the pics Look to be High Speed driving , Accident / Crashes. Not street racing 1/8 , 1/4 drag street Racing , Pics look to be late 1960 - 1980 ish , Not to many street driven vehicles could run mid 12s in 1/4 ( early 80s)
My dads ‘57 he rolled 7 times wheel to wheel racing a new 409 SS. The cops jumped behind them and he voted not to stop but out run them. He was almost at the county line when he hit a flat curve with gravel on it @135+ and the rest was history
I can't say I've ever engaged in full-on street racing but I've done the streetlight challenge. Light goes green, first to the other side of the road wins, back off and a nod to the winner. These days I tell people who won't drag race their car at the track, 'because they might break something', to treat it like a spiritted run from the 'light.
Never was there anything organized about the street racing I was involved in, usually occurring after the bar closed, guys would eyeball one another then the race was on, sometimes right in front of the bar for everyone’s edification or the highway by the elevators, train tracks marked a half mile from the intersection. When I moved to the capital city things were a little different, often street light to street light when out cruising, or if things were a little more serious you’d head out to the industrial area.
The Jalopy Journal
