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The Golden Age of British Stock Cars |
One Hundred and Twenty Plus Dragsters and Drag Bikes from the 1960s & 70sI like the ingenuity and the low cost of going fast you find in drag machines. Most were taken at Santa Pod in sixties and mid seventies.
April 2008: I have had this b/w snapshot in my files for more than 44 years, originally sent to me by a Dave Maltby, young fellow-member of the BHRA, of Mickey Thompson's first visit to Blackbushe. Some related photos appear further down the page, but this nicely shows the car and the admiring British spectators. November 2007: Malcolm Dyer kindly sent scans of a 1960's Santa Pod program: the resolution is good, so enlarge them and read the familiar names! One; two; three; four; five; six. Some of us are ancient enough to recall the exceitement of supercharged "slingshot" dragsters, built in Britain, hitting 160 and 170 mph, with 8 second elapsed times --- wow --- People like Martin Kent racing a Gordon Keeble (later to drag a similarly aristocratic Facel Vega) --- John Wright's bright yellow "Kool Kams" Bedford-Jaguar with a Rolls Royce grille. Also, Malcolm's superb colour slides are viewable on the following website: the bike engines are a joy to behold --- what enginering they did back then! http://www.dragshop.net/dyer/dyer.htm November 2007: Jim Bury kindly sends this bundle of 1960's Santa Pod snapshots --- and I trust some eagle-eyed fans will identify not just the cars, owners, dates, and colour of driver's socks, but whether the water pump gasket was modified from a 1957 Hillman Minx ----! Thanks Jim: Two photos of the wheelstanding special Corvette Stingray: First, check out that "periscope" that fed air to the V-8 that sat behind and beside the driver: Next, once called Hustler, the John Woolfe WHISTLER , and if you look at this detail you will see Mark Stratton driving from the back seat. Two Altered roadsters; another of the popular Populars, unknown in this photo; the beautiful "Malibu Express" dragster; and finally a much-raced motor shown elsewhere in this website, "Travel Agent" ; in this close-up, look at the unusual supercharger drive, and the "roll cage" protection.
July 2007: Pathe News film of the Brighton Speed Trials: wild action along the narrow and not-so-smooth promenade by US and British dragsters! WWW.Britishpathe.com contains hundreds of old newsreel clips, both free (low-res) and for sale. Also, the first Drag Festival, which I think was filmed at Chelveston but please correct me. Pioneer Ken Cooper's flathead slingshot "Bazooka",
Mystery car? I've had this snapshot (approx 1965/66) for years, an early Santa Pod pic, and never identified the car or engine or driver. Any takers? At first I thought it was a fibreglass Healey, but...? Looks like it could have a Jag 6-cyl under the hood. Help! (See George Brown's van in the background, the veteran monster-Vincent exponent). November 2007: It has taken me ages to catch up with the info that Simon Ambrose kindly sent: this body is a Microplas MISTRAL, possibly on a Buckler sports car chassis. Simon believes this car MAY later have used the little Daimler 2.5 litre V-8.
Thanks to David Montgomery, one-time BDRA member, for these mid-sixties Santa Pod snapshots. Without notes to hand, I am guessing or "fudging" the car identities, and as always I welcome your furious corrections! December 2006: Phil Brown [PB below] has kindly contributed some info on these cars: PB: Possibly the original "Worden" dragster images\DragPod06\Blown4banger.jpg of Tony Densham, whose 'Ambica' company name appears on the Thames van: images\DragPod06\DF2V86Carb.jpg images\DragPod06\DragonAnglia.jpg images\DragPod06\DragonFly.jpg PB: Here is Ken Bunce's "Barons Barrow" mages\DragPod06\JagRail.jpg with a 2.4 Jag motor And virtually no rollover protection!: i images\DragPod06\StripdusterRival.jpg PB: [why didn't I recognize this straight away?!] Below of course this is a later version of Alan 'Bootsie' Herridge's Caddy-motored rail, images\DragPod06\V8rail.jpg, and just visible in the background is Dragster Development partner' John 'Hardluck' Harrison's Healey-4 rail. images\DragPod06\VinnieJap.jpg images\DragPod06\WildThing.jpg David also sent some historic 1964 Drag Fest (Blackbushe) snapshots: images\DragBbushe06\AllardDragon.jpg images\DragBbushe06\DodgeBoysFX.jpg images\DragBbushe06\GarlitsPalmos.jpg images\DragBbushe06\NancyWedge.jpg images\DragBbushe06\PittmanGasser.jpg
Thanks to long-time drag fan Phil Brown, I have added some important historical detail to cars such as Imagination 4, Al's Gasser, the Wigmore Viva, Whittle's "Shutdown", the "Sneaky" altered, and more. Cheers, Phil! This section includes over 30 (thirty!) new old photos, courtesy of Bill Taylor, showing great British cars and bikes of the 1969-1972 era at Santa Pod. My thanks to Bill, now like me an "ex-Brit" in Canada, for these photos, which Bill converted from slides: from 32 + years ago, these machines remind us how British racers were learning the ropes of drag racing. Note: it will take me some time to edit and organize and annotate the photos, so if they are in no special order, or lack information, be patient. ALSO, if you have additional facts or stories connected to these machines, please e-mail me Classic big saloon: a chopped Zodiac called ROCKY II. Your villain's choice motor, gov' ---, ready to hit the strip. This was Al O'Connor's car, which had earlier been a street-strip ride. In later versions it grew huge wheels and a regular Zodiac grille. Al was famous for his "AL'S GASSER" Pop, (built by Mick Gleadow as "Motor Psycho") which races to this day. Classic small delivery van: "Alleycat" is the name, and back then narrowing a back axle was not a do-it-yourself job or a standard garage deal, so who cared? 'Asmodeus' was just one of the names attached to this popular and long-lived Chevy slingshot during its life in the US and UK. Keith/Goodnight brought it over for the '64 DragFest, then it went to Croft Racing Partnership, and then to Bill Weichelt, crewed by the Pages . At one time it was 'Dos Palmos', but I dare not guess at which stage of its life. 'Imagination 4": lightweight Lotus Sevens had their natural habitat on road circuits -- but this one got supercharged and front-end-hiked, in the Altered class! Rick Fielding built this racer (all versions of this car were called "Imagination") , and its motor went into Rick's Topolino altered in 1973. 'Panic' by name, and panic was probably a driver reaction with this baby, a BSA Scout chopped and channeled, with a neat little wooden pickup bed, and a parachute that may not have been justified by the carburetered motor --- but maybe the handling and brakes called for a chute! Originally built by Mark Stratton as an early 'Hustler'. Panic was run by the Pages: Gary, Clive, and David. BSA Scouts, in the 1930's had 1200cc 4-cylinder side-valve motors. The company advertised them as "low slung sports tourer for sporting people" --- and British drag racing kept that motto alive! High-class Parisian boulevard cruiser: Owners Club members may not all approve of seeing this beautiful Facel Vega HK 500 coupe being hotted-up and cut-up and painted-up for drag-racing. French and aristocratic, Facel Vagas were so elegant, and one of the first European cars to use big Chrysler V-8 motors. Some history is reaching me right now from Facel Vega enthusiast Glen Tyzack: this car was first registered 10th March 1961, original pale silver-grey paint. It was later rebodied (crash, 1960's) and painted BRG. An insurance write-off in 1970 probably sent it to a scrapyard, but this car and a twin were salvaged and raced by John Reynolds, until being broken up in the late 1970's. Some cannibalized parts of this car may now reside in an owner's club FV. More: this car still exists, chassis HK1 CE5; it was built as an automatic but with no power steering. In the ethics of car connoisseurship, the reg plate visible in the photo SHOULD be 704 CLH, the number that 'belonged with' the engine sitting under the hood of this car. The Facel was probably that raced by Martin Kent, who won the 1966 'production saloon' crown at Santa Pod. Facel owner and historian-enthusiast Richard Stevens has kindly sent me copious pages of information tracing the extraordinary lineage of this and another Facel Vega, which both had multiple owners, crashes, insurance write-offs, and much 'cannibalizing' and swapping of powertrains -- a detective story for you if you're a Facel fan [and if you are, you probably know there's a thriving Facel Vega club: http://www.facelvegacarclub.info/. ] This Facel, or at least a 'hybrid version' of it, is now owned in Belgium, and its new owner inherited a photo album of its exploits at Santa Pod. 2006 LATEST: the album that accompanied the car to Belgium included these images: car-and-driver; press photo of a Pod race; owner's 'family-tree' notes; and race results. 'Geronimo' was a popular name. At least one drag bike and an injected Oldsmobile slingshot bore the same name. This one is a flathead Ford (Thousands of those motors could be pulled from Ford Pilot wrecks or bought unused (crated) for 25 pounds from classifieds in the weekly 'Exchange & Robbery' as we called it.) Ken Cooper ran flathead rails, usually called "Bazooka", and someone reckons that's Ken's Consul push car -- but maybe flatheads-forever guys stick together? The best of British engineering: The T bucket runs a tiny 2.5 litre Daimler V-8, hemi heads, just behind the famous Minivan 'Stripteaser'; this shot shows clearly Stripteaser's driver sitting against the back door, and the six exhausts in a shrouded stack going up through the roof. November 2007: Cliff Jones built this 2.5 litre Daimler hemi rod, Opus One, racing it in 1967, then installing a small-block Chevy the next year. Opus One went on to the Stones team. Cliff was busy: he partnered Mike Treutlein with the Crescent Coupe, and raced karts at Rye House with Johnny and Tim Brise, and was a friend of the late Alan Wigmore. Thanks to Cliff for the info and photos. Opus in the pits with underage driver? Opus versus Wild Thing; Opus's beautiful Daimler motor; and Opus on a run / or fire-up lane. Here the Pontiac GTO of Cliff (I think ---) takes on a Jag under blue English skies. Roll me over. Elsewhere in this section is a b/w shot of this same dented Vauxhall Viva that had rolled in the lights. Alan Wigmore rolled it 5 times at 120 mph, sheared off a wheel, shifted the motor in its mounts, but after getting out merely bruised, Alan confined his energies to NDRC organizing! The Viva was painted by AW's father who ran Pop's Paints in Stanmore, N. London. Blown Hemi altered: a serious motor in front of the brave driver of the 'Sneaky' altered, run by the 'Blue Flash' team. Rear end shot. Phil Elson ran the car, changed the body to a yellow T-bucket, passed the blue body on to the Aardvark team of US airman Freeman Rogers who promptly re-painted it in green/brown camouflage! 'Midas Mist' was a Jag powered altered --- body looks like one of a legion of fibreglass 'sports car' bodies turned out in the fifties and sixties, most of which went to cover up wheezing 1172cc side-valves -- but this one had to work for its living. Midas Mist gets a fast push. This car was run successfully by Rob and Pete Skinner, the fibreglass body being a "Falcon", picked up for a fiver from someone's garden! Its 3.8 Jag engine was a never-quitter for several years. Another Jag altered, this one with a Shorrock blower and SU carb. Here is the older version, called Travel Agent, later rechristened "Travel Tee": but not the oldest. Here's a faded b/w photo from my own files from 1965 or '66: "Travel Agent" in its earliest form: The body is from a Bond mini car, a plastic 3-wheeler originally equipped with a Villiers two-stroke bike engine. . Simple and sturdy, but probably a devil to drive, with the Jag motor (and those lumps weigh about 650 lbs without gearbox) mounted way up because weight transfer was the gospel back then. Travel Agent was run by a Surrey team, of driver Alan Sherwin, John Crosby, and Ray Webster. Sometimes wearing a Jago "T" body, this long-lived car was still being raced by Sherwin in 1980, with a Rover V-8! In 1973, a G.Francis was running the car, with the Jag Six lowered to a more sane angle. 'Poison Ivy' was a low-slung and elegant "D Type" replica with three carbs on its Jag motor. Next, Jaguar power again, in the famous 'Stagecoach' altered, an Austin 7 body. 'Metronome' was unbelievably dangerous-looking: minimal bodywork, maximum motor. Built by Mark Stratton with a Bond Bug plastic body. Here it lines up beside the Hillbillies equally-powered Fiat Topolino. The popular Popular: 'Motor Psycho'. Opus was the trade name for a little British hot-rod kit, mostly fitted with 4-banger Cortina engines. This one got stuffed with a fuel-injected big-block Rat Chevy! In contrast, here's the teeny lightweight Pony Express, 4-banger Weber'd, with faired-in rear wheels. Next, Kevin Pilling's 'Pure Seven' looks to me like an Opus kit (Bill T reckons an Austin 7 sports body and a Chev motor) (oh-oh, Brian Lucas reckons an MG 'TD' body and a 440 Chrysler motor), (and yours truly is staying right out of this!) with a tube front axle on mags. 2006 update: Phil Brown further narrows the i.d. to an Austin Seven Avon Special style. The motor is a monster 440 inch Dodge wedge, Carter carb, pump gas, twisting a 2-speed Caddy box and an Olds rear end. Rear mags from a Lola racer, and a Bootsie Herridge front end! Harrison (a genius mechanic) and Herridge both helped a lot. Kevin Pilling Gets the Facts Straight: 2006: The motor is a 413-inch Ramcharger Wedge enlarged to 440, which had replaced a weak Olds lump. The original Pure Seven car cost all of 25 quid to get to the line at Santa Pod. Kevin fought a scary squirrelly ride until one day an engine mount broke and it ran straight. When the mount was fixed, it went "pear-shaped" again, so goodbye to the rt.fr. mount and hello success! Kevin says that looking back on the team's best ever 168mph and 9.6 secs gives him a shiver today: the madness of youth! The car was an Austin Seven rebodied by Swallow. A B&M Clutchflite replaced a destroyed Cadillac transmission. The 440 motor eventually went into a circuit racer, but not before the Rose Brothers had hammered it mercilessly at the 'Pod in their heavyweight Dodge Challenger "Stock". Kevin's engine-building skills were vindicated because the 440 never broke or failed under the punishment. February 2008 Update: Thanks to sharp-eyed Bryan Whitfield (himself an accomplished hot-rodder with some monster cars to his credit) for adding facts to my previous brief and inaccurate description here. This photo is of Freddie Whittle's second SHUTDOWN. Until now I had unthinkingly described this as a "plastic" American Bantam: Not so. Fred Whittle was a genius with metal, and he formed this body from aluminum sheet, including all the compound curves, by hand and using an "English wheel". Bryan reports that Freddie had never seen a Bantam in the flesh (so to speak), and using as reference ONLY a photograph in Hot Rod magazine and a 16" slick and a 392 valve-cover that he happened to have, for scale, did all the drafting to reproduce this perfect Bantam. Freddie was that very English phenomenon, the reclusive master-craftsman working on his own in a crowded yard with a hundred projects on the go in half a dozen workshops --- a fair definition of "heaven" for many of us! It's Freddie Whittle's Shutdown Mk I, Chevy-powered Altered. 1932 Ford-based body, 265-inch motor, later upped to a 283. In the background, a basic Jag altered with non-fancy engineering --- so many people had so much fun with those cars -- you could get something on the strip for a hundred pounds. The wreckers' yards were full of Jag motors. Remember the little square Austin A40? Look at this severely chopped version. 'Wild Honey' injected (Chevy?). Phil Brown has been enormously helpful and patient in supplying many facts for this drag-racing section, and I'm very late in adding this bit --- that this is a Swedish car piloted by Lars Torngren, which won Senior Competition Altered in 1971. Slingshots! A blurred shot of two Jag powered dragsters, one a rear-engined look-alike of Tony Nancy's 'Wedge'. Tony Densham's COMMUTER, the ex-Mickey Thompson fueler. Doing things the hard way! John "Hard-Luck" Harrison was a determined man. Not satisfied with his first Dragster Developments carbureted Healey rail, which earned him the nickname, he went overboard with this beauty: TWO Healey 4-bangers, and BOTH motors were supercharged . Apparently Harrison had based Twin Jinx on the famous double Freight Train, specially designed for two motors. Oh-oh, look what happened: a big fat 429-inch V-8 was dropped in it in 1999, producing 10-second runs, and the owner, Dave Armstrong, tells me that's being tossed out for TWO 318-inch MoPar V8's ---. Dave's dragster has passed to buddy Alan, with plans for a big-block Chevy. Two more slingshots: in the background the Red Witch, a classic Jag rail, and the little rail is the original WorDen 4-banger dragster. Glen Tyzack worked on the WorDen --- built by Tony Densham -- a 1500cc from a Ford Classic, on methanol, with a home-built injector Glen made out of an Austin oil (gear) pump! Stock gearbox running 3rd and 4th. Its back wheels were from a 'D' Type Jaguar of all things. .See the Jowett Jupiter push-car? (No, the rad grille proves it's the open Jupiter sports, not the Javelin saloon). Nearly half a century before the Subaru, this was running a hot twin-carb horizontally-opposed 4. Rare and desirable, and yet amazingly the prices are as low as 10-15,000 pounds today. They only ever built 900 of them, and folks like John Surtees and Peter Ustinov owned Jupiters. Now for some bikes: March 2008 update: Thanks to Peter Cozens for spotting the identity of the low-slung "screamer" shown below. It was built and raced by a young man named Adrian Reynard from Oxford Poly, apprenticed to veteran sprinter George Brown. It's a Royal Enfield motor that RE had abandoned after quitting road racing. Adrian broke some world records at Elvington on this bike in 1970/71, using a longer fairing. Adrian Reynard's story goes like this: Built Reynard Formula 3 car, which won its first race from pole position. Built Reynard F3000 car, which won its first race from pole position. Built Reynard Indy Champ car, which ---- yes, true. Jacques Villeneuve later won the Indy championship in a Reynard. Adrian worked for BAR, Honda, and a slew of others, and is running huge race engineering shops in the USA. REYNARD'S RIDE --- How low can you get? Here is another single, but this one is a 4-stroke motor with a blower. Any takers? Only in England, surely ---- take a Lambretta scooter and stuff a big Triumph twin in (on?) it. It's a 500cc motor, and Keith Lee was the intrepid rider. Double-engined supercharged Triumph, with a seemingly-narrow rear tyre. Nice piece of work. Weird-looking frame/panels on this experimental Triumph drag bike. Identities, anyone? Dark photo of a Vincent sidecar combo.
Is it a bike? Is it a car? Clive Waye's landmark piece of engineering, the Drag-Waye, ridden here by Howard German, 1964. Do I remember right, that Clive used some aerospace engineering techniques, electron-welding or something for the con-rods? Anyway, it's a flat-four VW motor, and the simple notion of copying the slingshot format had never occurred to anyone else --- Thank you Bill Taylor! Now I await the e-mails correcting all my comments. More Slingshots Brian Lucas took these great snapshots:
November 2007: (busy month!) Some more great photos of the CRESCENT COUPE that Cliff Jones ran with Mike Treutlein and team. The motor; then in the fire-up lane; then on a run?; and three proud racers. Four "altereds" Thanks to hot-rodder Brian Lucas for these snapshots from 30 years ago:
11 Photos: Thanks to Peter Hyde for these vintage 1964 photos he snapped at the Blackbushe round of the first "International Drag Festival", and at Santa Pod, Duxford, Debden, and Blackpool. 1. Dodge Boys. Dave Strickler and Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins broke our eardrums with this historic "A/Factory Experimental" class machine. The thing was BIG and it went like the blazes. 2. The classic sixties' dragster format: Tommy Ivo, who managed to coordinate a television career with a drag-racing career, brought over this candy-apple red fueler. It obviously stunned the (excuse me) young British "gentleman" in the cap ---- who shares my suspicion it's Rolling Stone Keith Richards? 3. Here Peter snapped Tony Nancy's revolutionary (but not completely successful) rear-engined "22" dragster. I had forgotten, but Peter reminds me that this car too crashed and disintegrated. Nancy lost his other front-engined rail at the Chelveston round when a borrower ran it into the 1/4 mile marker barrels. 4. Next shot: What a stroke of luck -- not only the world's fastest 1933 Willys "gasser", but gazing at the car, on the right, is STIRLING MOSS -- whose driving skills would have been well tested in that bucking swerving short-wheelbase coupe! Peter tells me that Moss did indeed do one or more 11-second runs in one of the two wild Willys gas coupes during the festival. 5. Last, a snapshot of what in 1964 and 1965 constituted a sort of 'standard British dragster', given our engine supply in that era: a Shorrock-blown Jaguar. Can anyone identify the car and its driver? 6. Maurice Brierley's supercharged 1000cc Vincent. 7. In 1965 or '66, here is the famous Neville Higgins on his supercharged Vinnie 10000; Neville usually named his bikes "JINDIVIK" after some brutal Norse god or monster! 8. Peter Hyde himself, racing at the Pod in 1966, on his "sidecar" outfit: so stripped-down-basic that the "passenger" was 140lb of iron weights ---- maybe he couldn't pressgang any volunteers. Peter points out that for world records, a live passenger was obligatory! Peter himself recalls taking the world's LOWEST dragstrip ride at Elvington in Yorkshire when he volunteered as passenger on a sidecar sprint outfit. 9. Peter's bike at Blackpool. You are looking at a "works" Matchless scrambles engine, GS80 500cc. single-cylinder. "Severely re-worked" is Peter's description of the motor. The Castrol R bottle is the fuel tank. The 12.5:1 compression and 'untunable' DellOrto carb were on the limit for petrol, and when Peter upgraded to methanol the next day, he ran a scary 15.6 second time over the cracked and lumpy Church Lawford runway, and you'd better remember that that time would beat a then-new E-type Jag. 10. Love the name: "QUASIMODO" Supercharged Triumph, tank-in-frame-tube. Charlie Rous was the rider, here at Debden in 1964. See the blurring spokes. (In that same era I watched a "Quasimodo The Hunchback" wrestle against "Giant Farmer Haystacks" at Wellingborough Drill Hall, in the 5-shilling seats, and the Farmer fouled and there was a small riot; we believed everything we saw, too.) 11. "The Lads": Peter is at the left, with his bike #145. The arms-crossed chap is Ron Holland who today is helping a Bonneville streamliner project (V-8 motorbike). Bike 144 is "Geronimo", with Pete Dodd in leathers; it has a 500cc Velocette Venom thumper on nitro and ran in the low 14's. Peter Hyde had the dubious pleasure of a flat-out passenger ride in this outfit at Elvington in Yorkshire. Thanks for these photos to Peter Hyde, now in Canada. Barry Jackson, now in Australia, sent me this photo over a year ago and I misplaced it: Ken Cooper, "the flathead king" from Sutton Coldfield and long time BHRA devotee, built Bazooka 2. Barry races a screaming turbo rotary engined Chevette with a soft-pedal time of 10.97 and 132 mph. “Moonraker" (rider Ian Richardson) was a typical bit of British do-it-yourself genius: a 2,000cc flat-four special, engine built from four Manx Norton singles, with a custom DOHC head by Butterworth, the engineers who cooked this up. Nick Meikle later supplied a SUPERCHARGER for Ian's beast (wasn't powerful enough?): a Rootes/Wade diesel blower. Photo taken in 1967 at Santa Pod by Mal Hawkins -- thanks Mal. "Red Baron" was Mal Hawkins' own piece -- who'd have thought of feeding a 50cc (that's fifty) Honda on nitromethane and methanol? Mal did it, in 1968, and forced the little screamer to a 19.8 second quarter mile e.t. Pretty good when you know that the Dutch Kreidler factory put their works GP rider on their best GP 50cc and managed 17 secs. The tiny motor had an 11:1 compression ratio (shaved head), and drank nitro @ 50% ratio. Pegasus was a supercharged and twin-motored Norton with a blower, run by Derek Chinn and Ian Messenger [Thanks to Pod commentator Mike Cazalet and [1973-77] race director Syd McDonald for correcting a previous error in Messenger's name.] Pegasus Here's a different twist on the same story, with Triumph power; Steve Kimberley spots maybe a Weslake bottom end, which he says would finally keep Triumph rods from scattering across the strip. Triumph TwinTwin! Don Hyland brought his lovely, simple twin-motored Triumph drag-bike to Britain in the mid-1960's. The next bike is all BEAST. Its rider claimed to have 40mph of wheelspin while travelling at 120mph. Direct drive chain from a big reduction-gear straight to the back wheel. He started it on power rollers, then pushed it on its roller-mounted jackstand to the line; he simply kicked the jackstand over-centre at the green light. Recognize a V-8 Chevy Corvette fuel-injected motor when you see one? On April 28th 1999 I spoke to E.J. Potter on the phone, and he was planning a summer once-only comeback appearance at the age of 57 with "THE WIDOWMAKER" V-8 bike. He's published a book too, appropriately titled MICHIGAN MADMAN ! All the pics of his insane machines. $15 US from PO Box 968, Vero Beach, Florida 32961. EJ's toll-free phone number for ordering is (in the States) 877-262-3626. I told him about this 34-year-old snapshot. "Was that the time I hit the wall?" Potter asked. No, I think that happened a few days later, and his book shows the nasty result. He said the engine ran rotten because it had no flywheel --- really the spinning back wheel had to act as flywheel. Buy this book, see his Allison-engined station wagons, his jet trike, his electric "slot-car" Austin. Click here for Potter's Book Cover. Here's Madman Potter burning off the line at Santa Pod, courtesy of Mal Hawkins: Smoke Show; and here is a my terrible fuzzy photo, the excuse being the distance and the cheap plastic camera in my shaky hands! Light, low, simple; Yamaha twins were fun to watch and didn't need a PhD to engineer them. Santa Pod in the mid 1970's: Three snaps from a Santa Pod qualifying day June 1999: these brutes have sure changed in 25 years. A Dutch builder/rider brought over this overhead-cammed V-twin of 1600cc capacity, blown on nitro, V-twin. Same huge capacity for this Parallel twin which was "home-built" on CNC machine tools. Check out the tire on this 4-cyl fueler. Fat-tired 4. ( I think it's Steve Wollat, who I saw run 6.9 secs and 196 mph on a not-quite-dry track! Steve can run the 1/8 mile in 4.4 secs at 161 mph, and do the first 60 feet from standstill in ONE SECOND. Some British fuel bikes (try the great Brian Johnson) have hit a stunning 194 mph in 4.04 secs in the 1/8 mile. Brian Johnson did 234mph in 6.12 secs in 1999 [thanks Neil Smith for the updates].. MORE FOUR-WHEELERS Alan "Bootsie" Herridge was a hero and is missed by those who recall the rough 'n' ready early days at Podington, Gravely, Duxford, Blackbushe, etc. Here's his second rail, "PULSATION" , a Caddy: Alan had earlier run an amazing rail with a 1930's straight-8 Buick motor, blown on alcohol; I think it just squeezed under 12 seconds before smashing its pushrods. But here is the fancier and more famous 1970's rig Firefly Hayes, Middlesex, was a Mecca for racers. The "Dragster Developments" team was behind Herridge, and their other star was John "Hard Luck" Harrison, who campaigned neat and tidy machines like this 4-cylinder Healey dragster. Looking again: I wonder if this isn't maybe Herridge in the little slingshot?? Those two worked and raced together, and the helmet, goggles, and posture look awfully similar to Alan's in the Caddy photo above: any takers? Here come five more home-builts; not fancy, but they were part of that magic era when someone walking through the pits could imagine building a racer in the back garden. Nobby Hill's "Hound-dog" blown Jaguar slingshot. To be fair, Houndog was high up in sophistication and fabrication for those days. Here's another shot of the car, thanks to Jon Spoard of "Nostalgia Drags" site fame: Houndog2 This second photo was printed in the International DragFest's 1964 programme; amazingly, it must have been taken by someone standing near me, at Santa Pod, within a few minutes of my taking the previous photo! Quite a coincidence to discover this pairing after 35 years. Next: four more basic "oldies" : two with simple carburetted V-8s, then an even simpler Jaguar bolted into a basic slingshot frame plus plenty of bright paint; and a pocket-size "rocket". Oldie #1, then Oldie #2 , and Oldie #3 which was built and driven by Jeff Theobald of Exeter. Oldie #4: a simple, neat and effective little Chevy slingshot. I believe this is "Weekend Warrior II", of Alan Blout. Thanks to Michael Tickner for these pics from 32 years ago! Rivalling the multi-name Californian teams of that era, these guys were the Fry-Tickner-Sturgess-Burns-Siggery gang. A beautifully simple slingshot powered by an injected Oldsmobile. This was Britain's first unblown dragster into the 9-second bracket, which won Mike a whole entire TEN POUNDS. The press piece is by Brian Sparrow, whom I recall drove a MiniCooper at permanent valve-bounce. Geronimo off the line. Next a shot of the motor. And finally, the happy team,with Mike in the hot seat. Later the car was handled by John Siggery, the crew chief in 1969, with great success. Eventually they "tipped the can" to 85% nitromethane and ran 9.52 at 156 mph. Racer's View from the roll cage. Waiting for a dry track at Santa Pod with the crew: Mike Tickner on the right, John Siggery 3rd from right -- hope I got that right! Finally, the poor lonely dragster waiting for its alcohol while the driver and crew refuel themselves at their favourite "pit", the Chalkdrawer's Arms in Colney Heath, Herts. "Evening, officer, was I speeding??" Three shots from Santa Pod, mid-1970's Fiat Topolino called Crusader . Next, my favourite kind of race: Kart vs Car. (This kart was called “Strip Kartoon”, had a 500 Triumph twin engine, driven by a Mr Bottoms – first name -?) Thanks to John Hennessy for correcting the earlier kart identity. John raced a “Chicken a la kart” kart, and other wild men in this league were Brian Parkins (Keel kart), Ken Penfold on “Patience”, and Pete Mobs also on a 500 Triumph kart. And a red plastic copy of a what???? "Mister Shift". Ah, thanks to Charlie Middleton for identifying it as Vauxhall Vicor copy, probably the ex-Hillbillies car once driven by Roland Pratt. Please e-mail me if you know the drivers and tech data for any cars I’ve wrongly described on this page. Alan Allard being pushed. The front-mounted blower indicates that this old 354 hemi engine comes from Alan's dad's pioneering British slingshot, circa 1961/2 (Sydney Allard, builder of those sports cars of the 40's and 50's.) Alan's slingshot Can you identify this dragster? A distant shot, and it could be Santa Pod or Blackbushe -- help me, someone. Thanks, Nick Cleveland. The dragster is the Stones' HEMI-HUNTER, and the shot is either 1975 or 1976; they ran it in Pro Comp and later added "fuel". Another mystery car: a patriotic “T” rod in the fire up lane at the Pod in circa 1973. Nick Cleveland does it again: Mick Saunders called his car ANIMAL, ran a 283 Chevy, and did 117 @ 10.9 secs in 1975. A Blackpool racer in the 1960's, Paul Manders, raced a Jaguar-powered stock-car but wanted to tackle something trickier. A double-supercharged Chrysler dragster: for the time an advanced bit of engineering (two blowers mounted transversely over the vee --- how did he build the drives??). Here it is under construction, but I don't know the rest of the story. Blackpool-based Slingshot .Later, in 1988, Paul ran a funny-car, hitting 188 mph in 7.5 secs. Allards tried to retail ready-made dragsters, but it didn't catch on big among England's do-it-yourself maniacs; here's their little blown Cortina-engined Dragon Nice enough, but I wish I had a snap of Harold Bull's tiny "STRIPDUSTER", a pint-size 700-lb slingshot with a hard-blown BMC "A" 4-cylinder, a little jewel built by a master crafstman. Doug Harler, now of Knoxville, Tennessee, tells me he ran one of these Dragons in "middle dragster" class, and pushed-started it with a ferocious Dodge Charger, which he also dragged: probably Britain's "fastest push car" in the late 60's/ early 70's! Mickey Thompson brought his slingshot to Britain in 1963, 488 cu.in Ford, bewildering the natives, ahead of the big-money "INTERNATIONAL DRAG FESTIVAL" invasion the following year. [photos from Dave Maltby, BHRA member back then] Thompson left it in England, in storage. In 1964 the BHRA brought it to Perkins Diesel Open Day at Peterborough, and here is a youthful ME (left) with Dave Withers, wiping off the crud -- magnesium wheels oxidize. We could hardly believe our eyes: an actual American dragster. See the little Allard Dragon behind? Blown Ford Cortina 1500cc 4-banger motor. Look at our clothes! Can you imagine a couple of 18-year olds nowadays, going to a HOT ROD show, for goodness sake, in formal slacks and jackets??? -- this is 40 years ago. Thompson Fueler. Alan Allard son of Sydney: The front-mounted blower and motor came straight off Sydney's pioneering slingshot. English rain didn't stop them. Alan Allard vs The Chev: Blackbushe airport when they HAD to run some cars for the hungry fans, despite an insanely wet track. The Chev is the Gary Goodnight team car, as used in the (??) 1964 DragFest, here run by an English racer -- any names??? NEWS: This car was named "Dos Palmos" and driven by American Bill Weichelt, who changed its name to ASMODEUS and for a while lived in Ipswich and built limited-production sports cars called Tridents (based on TVR's). Bill and the dragster eventually returned to the US. Thanks to Chris at TRAKBYTES and Gary Goodnight for the info. Don "Big Daddy" Garlits came to England. He popped the clutch on this car that weighed only 1320 lbs -- nowadays NHRA fuelers must weigh a minimum of 2300 lbs -- they're carrying 1000 lbs of weight penalty! "Sneaky Pete" Robinson in the 1960's built a fueler that weighed only 980 lbs [ and which was NOT the car that killed Pete, as I'd earlier claimed: thanks to Robert Harmon for pointing out that the fatal crash was in his larger 427 Ford "cammer" slingshot ]. See the push-van? It had a Thunderbird V-8 motor, and remained in the UK after Garlits left. It was famous round North London, still in 1968, when a workmate of mine was scorching its clutch and tires --- people would lean over at the traffic lights and offer big cash on the spot for it. Visible in the van are Don Garlits's two little daughters. Geronimo dragster pilot Michael Tickner can be seen second from left in front of the fence, sweater and white shirt: four years later he was running an unblown Olds slingshot at Santa Pod. THE NEXT 3 SHOTS WERE THE SUBJECT OF MUCH DEBATE AMONG VARIOUS FANS -- A shot of Hemi-Hunter vs Roz Prior, 1977? She (Roz) was British champ that year. Next, the great Don Garlits, rear-engined, at Santa Pod, mid-1970's, and one of Norm Hill's "Houndog" racing "Asphalt Alligator" -- thanks to Gary Tindle for these late early 70's photos, and to Nick Cleveland for identifying via magazine shots. Tony Nancy "22": here at the International DragFest 1964, this gas dragster known as The Wedge was still fighting the handling gremlins that plagued rear-engined designs throughout the years until Garlits figured it all out. Nancy also brought over a beautiful front-engined rail, ( It was the one called "22 Jr" ) which he naively loaned to Dante Duce, a stranger to Tony, for the Northamptonshire round -- and Mr Duce drove it smack into the 40-gallon marker barrels at the end of the quarter -- KABOOM, everything forward of the engine block was smashed off. Thanks to US team member Gary Goodnight for correcting the car numbers. Gary was with the Goodnight-Keith-Williamson AA/GD team. A year or two after the first Drag Festival, the American Barnes team brought this fueler to Santa Pod -- check the extreme caster (kingpin) angle that required the pit crew to tip the front wheels back upright when it was moving at walking pace! Another shot of "Ultrasonic", from Mal Hawkins; and a "new" shot I just unearthed, taken with my 48-shilling Brownie Cresta -- lots of pan, and plenty of darkroom fudging! Mal tells me that Bud Barnes is rebuilding the car for nostalgia races. Same year, a Blackbushe press photo of a wheels-up burnout (Danny Ongais's "Mangler"?) provided an education for us new-to-drag-racing Brits. The early Brits were famous for their backyard ingenuity. Here is a little slingshot powered by a Bristol 2-litre 6-cyl of all things, built by Colin Glass; somewhere in the background is the tiny "Wicked Lady", powered by a 500cc single Rudge motor, of Tony Gane. Here, courtesy of the USA, is their 1966 visiting team: their barely-"Ford T" bodied dragster in disguise -- well, it sure ain't going on the road! And last (These pics are thanks to Mal Hawkins) their super-stock Lawman sedan. Gary Goodnight, a US team member in 1964, identified this photo as being of K.S.Pittman's '33 Willys A/Gas Coupe versus an A/FX ("factory experimental") driven by Dave Strickler and built by Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins. Mooneyes came to the UK and ran 9.99 secs, 164 mph on gas. See the "Fibreglass Repairs" pickup? FR built that insane Rolls/Merlin/Spitfire-engined road car in the sixties. More Mooneyes. In circa 1974, here's a beautiful coupe called Kerbdozer, at Santa Pod. Charlie Middleton tells me the driver's name was Mike Kason. 2006 info update: Thanks to racer Mike Kason for filling in the facts: Kerbdozer had a 427 Ford "side oiler" motor, with which Mike clocked 148mph in 10.71secs. (Later he went big time in a nostalgia fueler at 235mph / 6.4 seconds.) Mike's "red face" moment was in Easter 1976 when a lost pin left Kerbdozer's gearbox in reverse, unknown to him. He floored it and hurtled backwards into his push car in front of 35,000 fans. To add to this, when a frustrated Mike understandably tossed his helmet onto the track, the scrutineer barred him from another run until he'd gone away and bought a new helmet ---. In this vein, I saw a long-distance (all the way from Sweden) gas coupe disqualified from racing at an RAF Wiltshire strip when its first burnout clouted the christmas tree --- were the team ever angry! Love those jets! Seattle in the 1980's. Want to read the best, most intelligent, and most thorough book on drag racing? Book Cover Robert C. Post: "High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing 1950-1990", published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in the US. The ISBN is 03020100 999897969594 5432. This guy is a technical historian at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, but also a lifelong drag-racer. He has photos you won't believe, including the horrifying 1970 Garlits clutch explosion at the instant his dragster was being cut in half by the blast. Not a cheapo journalist survey -- about 400 pages, and costs a bit, but has fascinating quotes and interviews with everyone from the fifties on, and very thoughtful analysis of why people build and race dragsters. |
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