It was a major leap from the makeshift plywood wind foil on the Jack Chrisman Twin Bears machine.Ĭertainly, innovative machines like the Sachs & Sons Comet, the first supercharged nitro-burning doorcar and the forefather of the Funny Car, or Don Nicholson's Eliminator I Comet, the first flip-top Funny Car, should be included, right? And, of course, we can’t forget the famed Mickey Thompson ’69 Mustang, the first narrow-framed flopper, or the Chi-Town Hustler that showed us how cool (and beneficial) long, smokey burnouts could be. The Dragmaster Dart certainly has its place in the history books, showing that a mass-produced design could allow a technologically advanced and readily purchasable product could create legions of instant dragster teams who didn’t know how to weld in their garages.ĭiving into the 1960s, you think about cars like Don Garlits’ Swamp Rat V, with its innovative wing that showed that more airplane technology could work on drag cars to enhance downforce. I think about a lot of that early iron that cut bold paths through the jungle of ideas the concepts didn’t persist, but they showed us what was possible, including Lloyd Scott’s dual-motored Bustle Bomb, the aircraft-engined Green Monsters of the Arfons boys, Jack Chrisman’s rear-engined, chain-driven Sidewinder dragster, Eddie Hill’s Twin Dragon side-by-side twin, and Tommy Ivo’s four-engined Showboat. Although the car was designated as a roadster when it first ran at the Santa Ana Drags in 1950, its bare-bones nature - save for the lone seat (from a B-17 bomber) bodywork was minimal - saved weight but also created a blueprint.Īfter that, you have to think about Mickey Thompson creating in 1954 what was arguably the first slingshot dragster, with the driver over and behind the rear end for maximum weight transfer, or Ed Cortopassi’s Glass Slipper, which showed what aerodynamics could do for a drag car. It started life as a ’27-T then was stripped down and turned into a farming tool as a weed sprayer in the Kraft family’s orange groves. It’s widely recognized as the first “dragster” because of its stripped-down nature. Obviously, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick.ĭick Kraft’s “The Bug” seems an obvious place to start. We all come from different backgrounds, with loves and knowledge of different classes and eras, and I want this piece to be as representative as I can, so I want you to weigh in, too. I’m sending out an email to a cadre of drag racing experts for their input and insight, but I also want to crowdsource this through the Insider Nation. It’s going to be the subject of a future NHRA National Dragster story (that inevitably will end up here, too), but first the research and introspection. Quite simply: What are the cars that changed drag racing?īefore you start licking your lips in anticipation of an agree/disagree column, I’m not there yet. It’s the latter that I’m addressing today. Some would be orderly parked, pulled to the side of the road to make room for The Next Big Thing, some would be smoldering hunks of failure, and some would be upon pedestals as monuments of success. ![]() 29, 2021, parked along the roadside like milestones would be the machines of our past. In a sport like ours, where evolution carried us from stripped-down Model Ts to 330-mph Top Fuel dragsters, if you traveled down our road from the late 1940s to Jan. A big part of our story as human beings is carved in our past, begging the inevitable question of “How did we get here?” Whether that’s the story of human evolution, mass manufacturing and marketing, social media, or your own family tree, I think it’s important to study the road you’ve traveled.
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