Another- Same people ran a 68 Hurst Olds under the same name. Ran an 11.95 against the record of 12.04 at that time. Don't know what this wagon ran. They had the "connection" to the back door at Olds and ran Webers on this car for a while.
Great shots..thanks for sharing....must a been cool..if the race car broke..they could race the 442. I like the fact that in the 50-60's the vast majority of tow vehicles were passenger cars.....keep em coming.
Plain cool Is that car cool or what? Those slicks look like there 35 inches tall! Sorry to say that I'm old enough to remember seeing similar scenes like that in Louisville, Ky where I grew up. Thanks for bringing-up old (but good), memories. :TU:
Monkeyy, I'm insanely jealous about where you live. I lived a bit West of there in Calvert City, from 1953-1958 and went back again in the summers of 1961 and 1964. Great memories. I remember going to our first drag race on some old airport near BG in 1956. In 1961 a friend ran his 1958 Pontiac Chieftain there with "cheater slicks". Did real well. Silly hillbilly tried to run them on the street and lost both of them on the way home. They weren't very tough. When George Ray's strip opened in Arkansas across the river, that was the mecca at the time. Doesn't look like it's changed much since then. :laugh: :laugh: It certainly was a lot more fun back then that's for sure. I even liked going to work! Pics of the cars from that era show the slicks smoking during the launch. Some of them even pulled the front wheels while spinning. Kept the R's up and let the tires do the work. Bracket racing killed that when consistency became more important than actual et. That's one of the principal reasons I love heads up Pure Stock racing, and why I run Polyglas instead of radials. They still pull hard when they spin. The color of the license plate on the one shot (with the 69 tow car) tells me that it's probably 1969 (think they used that color in Michigan in 1969), if not was definitely 1971-72. They were dealer sponsored, so my guess is those tow cars were new at the time. One has the window sticker still on it. Lots of cars back then had "tow-tab" brackets welded to the frame for tow bars and they didn't use trailers at all. Pretty scary looking on some of the home built cars. Also used bumper hitches. Very scary. I had one on my Ramrod and put one on my 63 Catalina and towed numerous cars. I've got an old pic of one of them (41 Ford convertible) being towed by that 63 421 Catalina somewhere. Think Casey Marks' 68 Biscayne still has tow tabs, doesn't it? Casey? JR made really good headers. I had a set on my 60 Vette. Can't remember who bought them out, but they were made in a shack somewhere south of Battle Creek, if I remember correctly. Olds racers all used them back then. They also were the only company to ever make headers that would work on a 64-67 frame with a small block Olds. Was looking for an old set for years and never found any. Finally gave up on my 403 project in my 66 442 and went back to the big block. No problem there.
Yep !! And it was towed to the track with a BBVette !!!!!! :laugh: And those tow tabs are NEVER coming off. No matter what I do with the car as far as restoration is concerned, that is a premier part of the car and its' lineage. :TU:
This picture usually gets a rise out of somebody: Bonus question: how many carburetors are there in this picture?
We have a winner :beers2: There are four one-barrels on the Corvair and, of course, a Tripower on the GTO.
Those Corvairs could be made to fly. There was a group in Lansing that raced one that ran in the 11's. Would have been even faster with a better shift linkage or a girlie-boy slushbox. :laugh:
I had a '63 Spyder, only Chevie I've ever owned. Took it to a Gymkhana put on by the local Corvette Club. Tuscarawas Valley Corvettes. I finished second overall, they asked me (TOLD me) not to come back! Evidently I'd embarrassed some of the members who couldn't run the times my crummy little Corvair posted, with their Fuelies!! :moonu: :moonu: So I drove it home, and to work, while they loaded their ah..... "race cars" onto trailers for the ride back to the garages. :TU:
I love stories like that. My old college roommate (Bill Chewning) built a Crown conversion with a 350 in the back. Once he got the suspension and steering straightened out, that car was glued to the road and there wasn't much of anything that could stay with it in any shape or form. Those later Corvair transaxles (66-69) were virtually indestructible. Tranny was virtually a Muncie and the differential was GMC truck. I had a 66 and a 67 with the dual carb engine and 4 speed. Drove one from Philadelphia to Lansing with no clutch cable. Tricky to get it going, but took the clutchless shifting OK. Had to kick it in neutral and restart it in 1st gear everytime I had to stop. Made it with no problems and was doing donuts n the front yard in a foot of snow when I got home finally (Christmas Eve through a blizzard in Pa. Mountains). Car loved snow, but no heat. Was scraping the inside of the windshield at one point.
