10 On February 20, 1955, Bob Alsenz of Paramount, California, hit an astounding 147.05 mph in his Lakewood Auto Parts Special. At the time, it was believed the Ardun Mercury-powered dragster was only 20 mph short of the theoretical quarter-mile maximum speed. Going beyond that, scientists believed the g-forces would make a person pass out.
11 Lloyd Scott, Noel Timney, and George Smith sure took a different approach to building a twin-engine dragster. Their Bustle Bomb featured both 391 Caddy and 348 Olds V-8 mills, not in tandem or side by side but stem to stern. Both engines ran off the same axle, and as unorthodox as it sounds, the getup actually worked. With the Caddy hanging out back for added traction, Lloyd clocked a 151.07 mph on gas in August 1955. This was the first quarter-mile clocking in excess of the magical 150-mph mark. The way the setup worked was really straightforward. The Olds engine transmitted power to the swing axle rear through a modified Ford transmission, which ran second and high gears only. The Caddy engine ran a timed throttle, which gave full power just after launch. The engine, which was mounted backward, made use of a dog-leg clutch, feeding power to a second pinion. Specs for the bomb were 1,800 pounds, 96-inch wheelbase, and a reported 500 horses on gas (700 on fuel).
12 In 1956, Don Garlits built Swamp Rat 1 around modified 1930 Chevy frame rails. On June 20, 1959, the car suffered a blower explosion in Chester, South Carolina, in which Garlits was seriously burned. Garlits, who vowed never to drive again (the first of many times), was convinced by Art Malone to allow him to take over the driving chores. Of course, Big Daddy’s retirement was short-lived, and by mid–1960, he was back behind the controls.
13 The chassis of Swamp Rat 1 had to be stretched 6.5 inches to fit Malone and was renamed Swamp Rat 1B. Twenty-three-year-old Malone exclaimed after making a record-setting pass of 8.23 at 183.66 mph in 1960, “It’s like riding on the tail end of a missile headed for Mars!” Just two months prior to taking controls of Swamp Rat, Art was circling the dirt tracks around Tampa.
14 Southern California’s Ollie Morris is credited as being the first to drop a Chevy OHV V-8 into a dragster. In early 1956, Ollie swapped out his 275-inch flathead in favor of a 265-incher, which propelled his mid-engine dragster to a 141.86-mph clocking. The relatively tame Offenhauser test bed featured stock bore and stroke. Weighing a shade more than 1,400 pounds, the dragster had a full aluminum body perched on Model A rails, which held a Zepher gearbox and a Model A rear end.
15 With the millions of dollars paid out to athletes these days, it’s not unusual to see sports figures cross over and invest their time and money in the world of drag racing. But in 1957, it was very unusual. The world of drag racing and pro tennis collided when Pancho Gonzales, eight-time winner of the U.S. singles as well as four-time winner at Wembley, hooked up with Don Rowe. The pair campaigned a 389-inch Caddy-powered Gas dragster, and on August 18, 1957, they set the elapsed time record with a 9.70 at San Fernando.
16 Big Daddy Don Garlits started a reign of terror in 1957 that lasted almost 50 years. On November 10, Don set his first national record, turning a 8.71 at 176.40 mph in his carbureted, Hemi-powered Swamp Rat. The record was set at Brooksville Airport in Florida. Garlits laid claim to being the first to crack 170, 200, 240, 250, and 270 mph.
17 The nitro fuel ban was first activated on February 10, 1957, at Santa Ana by Pappy Hart. The reasons stated for implementing the ban included overall safety, sky-rocketing costs, lack of sufficient stopping distance, and the desire of participants to return to gasoline. Although the new rule affected all categories, it was aimed at dragsters. Emery Cook set the new dragster record prior to the ban, hitting 166.97 mph at Lions on February 3, 1957. NHRA’s all-out nitro fuel ban commenced with the Nationals held in Oklahoma at the end of August 1957. The NHRA ban ran until the Nationals in 1963.
18 With the NHRA fuel ban in 1957, many Top Eliminator dragsters compensated for the loss of power by adopting either a blower or twin engines, or in some cases, both. Tommy Ivo, influenced by Howard Cams’ Twin Bear team, chose to go the twin-injected route and in 1959 bolted two Buicks into a Kent Fuller–designed chassis. Kent wasn’t a fan of these twin-engine oddities and did his best to convince Tommy to go with a single blown engine. Kent felt the car would be quicker than a twin-engine rail, but Tommy, being the engine builder and tuner, felt otherwise. He didn’t want to go with a blower because he wanted to stick with his Buicks and knew that the small valves in his nailhead wouldn’t work with a blower. As Tommy recalls, “At the time blown cars were breaking a lot of parts.” To appease Kent, Tommy bolted a blower onto his Buick and proceeded to prove Kent wrong. Of course, Kent had no idea that Tommy had detuned the blown engine to ensure it ran like a slug.
19 Tommy’s twin Buicks measured 464 inches each and the rail became the first to crack 170 mph and hit the 8s, accomplishing each feat in 1959. The old nail-valve Buicks ran on torque, and as Tommy recalls, he may have been hitting 4,000 rpm going through the lights. The secret to making the car perform was the 2.90 rear gears. “And we had the right combination of tire and horsepower,” Tommy says. The Kent Fuller chassis initially featured a 92-inch wheelbase, but it never worked for the twin. “It never grabbed the ground very well so we started shortening it at 2-inch increments until we settled on 88 inches where the car seemed to hook the best,” Tommy adds.
20 Ivo’s twin was by no means the first twin-engine rail. That distinction falls to Mike Willis, who built a twin-flathead car in 1950. Others who capitalized on the twin design included The Bean Bandits in 1951 and the Colorado team of Kenz & Leslie in 1955. The Kenz & Leslie team went on to greater fame in the mid-1960s with one of the first flip-top Mercury Comets.
21 Jack Chrisman in the Chuck Jones/Joe Mailliard Automotive Engineering Hemi-powered Sidewinder topped 9.03 at 151.51 mph in May 1959 and went on to defeat Tommy Ivo at the Kiwanis charity meet at San Fernando. Running on gas, the engine was mounted sideways and transmitted power to the solid-mounted rear via chain drive. Jack once commented that Sidewinder was the hardest leaving car he ever owned. Jack, seemingly hooked on the idea of rear, side-mounted engines, built a number of them through the years.
22 By the late 1950s, Art Malone had his own rail and was also driving for Garlits. Art’s drag race career has spanned from Indy’s Brickyard to Daytona Beach, where he was the first to clock 180 mph. In 1963 he first went to Indianapolis, where he ran the 500. He finished as high as 11th in 1964.
23 In 1956, Robert “Jocko” Johnson put his renowned West Coast porting service on the back burner and went to work developing drag racing’s first fully enclosed fiberglass streamliner. Powered by a Jazzy Jim Nelson–built, 450-inch blown Hemi topped by eight Strombergs on nitro, the 1,800-pound streamliner managed a best of 8.35 at 178.21 mph in May 1959 before the body finally disintegrated. Not discouraged, Jocko went to work on an aluminum-bodied streamliner, which debuted in 1964. Powered by an Allison aircraft engine, the new streamliner proved to be too heavy to be competitive and quickly faded from the limelight. Restored by Jocko in 1987, the innovative streamliner resides today in the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing.
24 Earlier attempts at slicing a cleaner path through the air included the Cortopassi brothers’ well-designed Glass Slipper. Built in 1954 with the help of Doug Butler, it has been credited as being the first dragster to incorporate a streamlined body with an enclosed cockpit. Dick Katayanagi laid on a gorgeous burgundy paint job, which helped win the most beautiful competition car at the 1957 Oakland Roadster show. Although the brothers, Ed and Roy, switched from flathead power to a 301 Chevy after a couple seasons, at the second annual NHRA Nationals, they used both the flathead and Chevy engines during qualifying. For eliminations, they opted to go with the flathead because it proved to be the most consistent. Ed set a high-speed mark of 141.50 mph during the meet and took home the winning prize, which, ironically, was a small-block Chevy. Glass Slipper topped 160 in the quarter and 180 at Bonneville before being parked in 1963.
25 The bullet-shaped A/Dragster, Hustler 1, of Art Chrisman and Frank Cannon can take credit for being the first to break the 180-mph barrier, although I’m sure Garlits would have something to say about that. Chrisman hit 181.81 mph in 8.54 seconds at Riverside on February 15, 1959. According to Drag