Drag Racing in the 1960s: The Evolution In Race Car Technology

By Doug Boyce

The 1960s were a fascinating decade on the race scene. Relive the memories today through this wonderful new book.

Drag racing has a long and storied history. Many have said that the first drag race happened shortly after the second car was made. While that may or may not be true, racing prior to World War II was mostly centered around dry-lake activities and top-speed runs. After the war, drag racing became organized with the formation of the NHRA, and during the 1950s, many tracks were built across America to accommodate the racers. Technology in the 1950s centered on the manufacturers updating old flathead designs into newer overhead-valve designs, and the horsepower race really started to heat up.

In many forms of racing, the 1960s brought technological evolution. The decade began with big engines in even bigger stock chassis and ended with purpose-built race-only chassis, fiberglass bodies, fuel injection, nitro methane, and blowers. Quarter-mile times that were in the 13-second range in the beginning of the decade were in the 7-second range by the end. New classes were formed, dedicated cars were built for them, and many racers themselves became recognized names in the sports landscape.

In Drag Racing in the 60s: The Evolution in Race Car Technology, veteran author Doug Boyce takes you on a ride through the entire decade from a technological point of view rather than a results-based one. Covered are all the classes, including Super Stocks, Altered Wheelbase cars (which led to Funny Cars), Top Fuelers, Gassers, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Car Tech
• Release date: Jul 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781613257258

Doug Boyce

Doug Boyce has had a life-long addiction to drag racing. He turned his first wrench at age 8 and attended his first race at age 10. The essence of burning rubber and screaming open pipes filled his head and by his early teens, he was elbow deep in building classic cars. He continued to fuel the fire while working 9 to 5 in the automotive field. Doug has filled what little spare time he has had writing numerous club and magazine articles related to drag racing's golden years. He has an ongoing love of drag racing and the way it used to be.  He is the author of <i>Grumpy's Toys, Junior Stock</i>, <i>Drag Racing’s Quarter-Mile Warriors: Then & Now, 1001 Drag Racing Facts</i>, <i>Match Race Mayhem</i>, and <i>Dyno Don: The Cars and Career of Dyno Don Nicholson</i> all best-selling CarTech titles.

Book preview

Introduction

In another time, the old adage, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby just might have been a fitting title of this book.

From racing jalopies down main street USA in the 1930s to the professionalism we see in the sport today, no decade in between saw more advancement than what was witnessed during the 1960s. It was like a modern-day industrial revolution wrapped up in a 10-year period. That may have been an exaggeration, but the level of progress made by the men and women of the sport during that period was undeniable. This was a group of people who never heard of the word can’t. It just wasn’t in their vocabulary. What did the NHRA call it? Ingenuity in action. And that it was. It began in the 1950s and exploded in the 1960s.

This book is written in recognition of the 10-year period that fell between 1961 and 1970. Follow the evolution of drag racing’s key categories and the rise of many of the sport’s top names. It’s a double entendre to say that things moved fast. From AA/FD to Stock Eliminator, follow along as we show you just how fast.

Swamp Rat III-A is seen at the AHRA Nationals at Green Valley on Labor Day weekend in 1961. Don Garlits came out of retirement prior to the NASCAR Winter Nationals in 1961, where he set top speed of 165 mph while driving his brother Ed’s blown dragster. Connie Swingle reportedly drove the Swamp Rat to a best of 7.88 in 1962. (Photo Courtesy Forrest Bond)

Chapter One

1961

… And Away We GO

There were 10 categories in 4 eliminator brackets to start the NHRA’s 1961 season. Excluding the Stock classes, there were a total of 36 classes in which to compete. The most popular with the fans was Top Eliminator; the emerging Gassers were a close second. As far as participation went, nothing beat the entry-level Stockers.

It was there that Detroit’s Big Three showed much of their own interest. Each manufacturer released performance packages in 1961 that individuals grabbed ahold of and modified to the extent of the rules and then some. It’s time to hold onto your hats, folks, it’s the start of a new decade with plenty to look forward to.

A Quick Study in Chassis Evolution

The decade began with mostly home-built cars that would have been equally at home in the 1950s, where many of them were initially built and raced. These cars often followed chassis designs that were available commercially. Some were inventive enough to pioneer new designs, manufacturing techniques, and materials (aluminum chassis). Bobby Joe Rutledge’s car (pictured below) is a prime example of an owner-fabricated car that was competing early in the decade: large-diameter rails, a stock beam front axle, and a short wheelbase.

By the middle of the decade, chassis had grown in length to the neighborhood of 140 inches, as builders and racers looked for improved weight transfer and increased stability. There were many commercial chassis builders by this point in the decade: Frank Huszar (Race Car Specialties), George Britting, Roy Fjasted, and Woody Gilmore (Race Car Engineering).

Gilmore was responsible for the flexy flyer concept, a design meant to address the previously mentioned areas. Samples of his design (early and later) are shown here. In the upper photo is Paul Sutherland’s Charger. The engine was solidly bolted to the upper frame rail, there was an upright at the engine mount, and all uprights were welded in place, top and bottom.

In the lower photo (Warren-Coburn) the engine mounts were unbolted, the engine-mount upright was absent, and the forward upright was only welded to the top rail. Characteristic of most Gilmore cars, Warren’s had only a single radius rod on each side.

Paul Southerland (top) and Warren-Coburn (bottom).

The last major innovation in chassis placed the driver ahead of the engine. While many tried the concept, Woody Gilmore and Pat Foster perfected it. After watching John Mulligan’s fateful front-engine crash in 1969, Gilmore was determined to not see it happen again. In December 1969, he tested the pair’s first rear-engine car.

Although the car crashed during an early outing, Gilmore was undeterred and went to work on a second car. Dwane Ong debuted the new car, which featured a 223-inch wheelbase in February 1970.

Bobby Joe Rutledge.

Dwane Ong.

Top Eliminator

There were six Dragster classes in 1961, the top dog AA/D through to D/D and finally the low-end, 4-cylinder-powered X/Dragsters. Drawing the most attention was the AA/Dragsters. They were the quickest cars on the track and mesmerized fans with their 8-second times; full-length, tire-smoking runs; and wheels-up launches. Technical advances usually began here and trickled down through the remaining classes.

To take a clear look at Top Eliminator in the early 1960s, we’ll step back to the 1950s. Changes were coming fast in the latter part of the decade. The use of OEM frame rails that were standard early on was replaced by chassis manufactured by the likes of Scotty Fenn, Dragmaster, and the Logghe brothers (Ron and Gene). Weak OEM transmissions that stymied performance gains were shelved in favor of direct-drive and lock-up clutches. Getting the power to the ground meant more power could be built into the engine. Replacing multiple carburetion atop GMC blowers was 2- or 4-port injection. Although tire technology lagged, hampering performance gains, improvements came in time.

The alternate fuel, nitromethane, was introduced to drag racing back in 1949 by Vic Edelbrock. Fran Hernandez, an employee of Edelbrock at the time (and later with Mercury), took his 1932 Ford out to Santa Ana and cleaned house, running a 20-percent load.

A short study in the composition of nitro tells us that it contains more than 50 percent oxygen, so it needs very little air to combust. It’s difficult to ignite, so a minimal amount of alcohol, or methanol, was added to help it along. To control the burn, 1 or 2 percent of benzene was added. Depending on the percentage used, nitro could double a reliable engine’s output. By 1957, speeds had increased to the point where NHRA president Wally Parks felt that they had reached a dangerous level.

To curtail the increasing speeds, a ban on the use of nitro was implemented. The ban was first activated on February 10, 1957, at Santa Ana by track manager C. J. Pappy Hart. The reasons Pappy stated for the ban included overall safety, skyrocketing costs, a lack of sufficient stopping distance, and the desire of a number of participants to return to gasoline.

It seems that Emery Cook’s record run of 166.97 mph at Lions on February 3 forced the decision. It is interesting to note that Cook’s speed was just short of what scientists back in 1955 thought was the theoretical quarter-mile maximum speed. Going beyond 167 mph, scientists believed that the g-forces would cause a person to black out.

Mickey Thompson’s X/Dragster was powered by a Hilborn-injected, GMC 3-71–blown Pontiac 4-cylinder measuring 220 ci. The car was a winner at the Nationals in 1961 and a record holder at 11.27 at 125.96 mph. Thompson was a busy man, running at least five cars under his umbrella in 1961, from Stock to a four-wheel-drive AA/Dragster powered by twin Pontiacs. Few were as innovative as Thompson. (Photo Courtesy Lou Hart)

The NHRA’s all-out nitro ban commenced with the Nationals in Oklahoma at the end of August 1957. The ban gave rise to individual meets, such as the U.S. Fuel and Gas Championship at Bakersfield, and helped grow the AHRA, as it never supported the fuel ban. Many West Coast racers, along with Don Garlits, Chris Karamesines, Bob Sullivan, Lou Cangalose, Dick Belfatti, and other Midwest and Eastern racers didn’t want to give up nitro. AHRA president Jim Tice, foremost a businessman, pounced on the opportunity to make money and sanctioned tracks that gave the fuel racers more places to run.

Mike Willis can take credit for building one of the first twin-engine rails, having pieced together this twin flathead-powered, four-wheel-drive car as early as 1949. It was primitive, but such were the beginning days of organized drag racing. Tires are salt flat originals.

Eddie Hill’s twin-engine, four-slick homegrown dragster left its mark at Indy in 1961. The following season, Hill used the twin, 422-ci, Pontiac-powered rail to become the first to break 200 mph on gas when he ran a 202.70 mph at Hobbs, New Mexico. (Photo Courtesy Richard Kinstry)

The NHRA ban saw many Top Eliminator dragsters going the twin-engine route to compensate for the loss of power that nitro had provided. Of course, running twins was not a new concept. Mike Willis ran a twin flathead–powered rail in 1949. The Bean Bandits saw success in 1951, as did the team of Kenz & Leslie in 1955. Howards Cams Twin Bears and Tommy Ivo’s twin Buick were two tough leaders after the ban. In 1959, Ivo ran twin Buicks measuring 464 inches each, and it was the first twin to crack 170 mph. He followed in 1961 with his four-engine Showboat, assuming that if two was good, four was better.

This maiden voyage photo of Tommy Ivo’s Showboat in April 1961 provides good perspective on the size of the dragster. The four Buick engines were mounted in a Kent Fuller chassis. The two left-side engines drove the front wheels, and the two right-side engines drove the rear wheels. The power of the four Nailheads couldn’t overcome the 4,000-pound weight of the vehicle, and it never ET’d well. The NHRA shunned the setup and told Ivo he could only run it as an exhibition car. (Photo Courtesy Tommy Ivo)

Lefty Mudersbach in the twin, 402-ci, gas-powered Howard Cam Special opened the 1961 season by winning Top Eliminator at the AHRA Winternationals with a record 8.63. He followed with wins at the US Fuel and Gas Championship and at the AHRA Nationals later in the year. Lefty was a prominent name well into the decade. (Photo Courtesy Forrest Bond)

After winning Top Eliminator at the NHRA Winternationals, turning an 8.99, Jack Chrisman took the Howards Cams Twin Bears AA/D on a cross-country tour. He accumulated enough points to be crowned overall world champion. Weight bias for the 1,350-pound rail was 30-70. (Photo Courtesy Richard Kinstry)

Proving the value of a single-engine Chevy, Pete Robinson won the Nationals in 1961. Some say the Chevys had the advantage off the line. They got ahold of the track quicker, thus usually getting the jump on the competition. After that, it was just a matter of holding off the bigger engines. Robinson’s 352-ci Chevy lightweight had little trouble doing so. (Photo Courtesy Richard Kinstry)

The team of Chet Herbert (Herbert Cams) and Zane Shubert started 1961 off right by winning the AHRA Winter meet with their twin, Chevy-powered AA/FD dragster. Chet modified the twin Chevys, which were supplied to him by Chevrolet’s own Zora Arkus-Duntov by increasing the bore and stroke to 4.125 x 4.25, giving 454 ci. Herbert and Shubert met up with Ed Garlits at the AHRA Championship Drags at Green Valley, Texas, where Shubert defeated Big Daddy’s little brother in the Top Eliminator final.

The twins were out in force in 1961. The most unusual may have been Eddie Hill’s twin-blown Pontiac-powered dragster. When designing the car, Eddie made the 422-ci engines an integral part of the chassis with rails bolting directly to the engines. Out back, the rear end–mounted, four 8-inch slicks literally tore up the asphalt.

Taking the Top Eliminator win at Indy was the Howards Cams Twin Bears driven by Jack Chrisman. The car was built by Phil Johnson and Howard Johansen in 1958 and was the first successful side-by-side twin. The 310-ci engines were nestled in a fabricated chassis and were meshed at the flywheel with the left engine built to run counterclockwise.

After a crash in 1960, the 100-inch-wheelbase car was sidelined briefly. When it reappeared, Chrisman was the new driver. He won Top Eliminator at the 1961 NHRA Winternationals with the low ET of the meet at 8.99. Taking top speed was Hayden Proffitt in the more conventional Bayer-Freitas inline, twin-blown Chevy with a 176.81 mph. Proffitt, probably best remembered for his time running Stockers, was behind the wheel of a Mickey Thompson Super Stock Pontiac by May. Chrisman, in the Jerry Johansen–crewed Twin Bears, closed the season amassing 540 points to win the NHRA Championship.

As for the single-engine AA/Dragsters, at the 1961 NHRA Nationals no one questioned the clocks when the Tom McEwen and Gene Adams 475-ci blown Olds dragster (driven by McEwen) laid down low ET with a 9.01 at 170.45 mph. But when unknown Pete Robinson rolled off the trailer with a 352-ci blown and injected Chevy and dropped low ET with an 8.68, the ET seemed so far out of the realm that the tower initially refused to broadcast it.

I was pretty burned because they wouldn’t show me my times for two days, but they weighed me five times, Robinson said.

Up in the tower, NHRA Executive Jack Hart had no choice but to relent and show Pete the numbers, as his clockings were just too consistent to be incorrect.

Pete opened class eliminations on Sunday with an eye-opening 8.52 and proceeded to trailer the twin-engined cars of Jack Chrisman and Eddie Hill on his way to a final face-off against McEwen. It was a close race until half-track, when Robinson opened up with a slight lead. He took the win with an 8.86 at 170.77 mph to an 8.90 at 168.55. In the Top Eliminator final, Robinson defeated Dode Martin in the Dragmaster’s twin Chevy.

In an interview afterward, Robinson recounted that he had blown his engine about a week prior to the Nationals.

I had gone through something like five engines that year and had only been out of state once, he said. I was pretty much unknown when we headed to Indy with junk, and I mean junk.

Not only had Robinson won Indy with a junk engine, he had only been in the 8s once before. His high-revving Chevy could beat the bigger-engine cars off the line, and the light weight of the car held them off. That was his advantage, as his Dragmaster car weighed as much as 500 pounds less than his competitors.

As for speed secrets, Robinson said put in a lot of compression and pick the right rear-end gear. Helping keep the Chevy together was water injection, something Robinson installed to help keep the Chevy from detonating and destroying itself. He ran without it after tech inspection threatened to toss him if he didn’t remove it.

Although times slowed slightly, the final results showed the Chevy survived just fine without it. Robinson debuted a new Dragmaster car at the 1962 NHRA Winternationals. The car made use of the same 352-ci Chevy but featured a longer wheelbase and was said to weigh 200 pounds less than his old car.

Mid-Eliminators

The Mid-Eliminator categories were a crowded place in the 1960s. There you found the greatest variety of cars: Altereds, Comp cars, Gassers, Roadsters, Sports Production, and the lower-end Dragsters. Although many ideas born in Top Eliminator trickled down to the lower ranks, individual ingenuity in the Mid-Eliminators was alive and well.

In the Roadsters’ ranks of Little Eliminator, Dick Manz (in Larry Sanchez’s car) won category honors at the NHRA Winternationals, while Division 4 standout Willis Ragsdale was the Little Eliminator winner at Indy.

Ragsdale, a millwright by trade, built his 1927 Ford in 1958. For power, his Raunchy relied on a punched-out 283 that housed a Racer Brown camshaft and four 2-barrel carburetors on a Weiand manifold. Backing the 302-ci engine was a 50-pound flywheel (to get off the line in a hurry) and a second-and-third-gear-only 1939 Ford transmission. These transmissions were known to be pretty tough parts at the time, but as horsepower increased, they became less reliable. At Indy, Ragsdale’s B/Roadster defeated Sam Parriot’s blown Caddy-powered A/MSP Kurtis with an 11.55 at 122.44 mph. Ragsdale set his first class record at that race, where he ran a 123.62 mph during eliminations. Ongoing refinements helped Ragsdale compete with the car well into the 1970s.

Don Prudhomme’s first rail came courtesy of Tommy Ivo, who sold him his Buick-powered Kent Fuller car early in 1960. Prudhomme replaced the Buick with a Dave Zeuschel blown Hemi in 1961 and was hitting 180 mph on fuel in the mid-8s. (Photo Courtesy Bill Scharing)

Two Bad was the name of Eldon Dye and Don Hampton’s Competition Coupe. With twin bored and stroked 283 Chevys, you can bet the Fiat was tough on the competition. In 1968, Hampton swapped the body for a Corvette shell. Hampton and his blowers were a popular sell in the blown ranks through the decade. (Photo Courtesy Phil Bellomy)

Willis Ragsdale started racing in late 1958 with his homebuilt 1927 T. He ran modified versions of the car until 1978, using both Chevy power as well as a Chrysler Hemi. Over the years, he ran the car in B/Roadster, B/Altered, A/Street Roadster, and B/Street Roadster, setting class records five times. Besides winning Little Eliminator at the 1961 Nationals, Willis also won the Little Eliminator title at the 1964 AHRA World Championship. A multitude of wins at points meets followed. (Photo Courtesy Trey Ragsdale)

Altereds

Back when there were fewer than a handful of national events each year, there were few repeat winners. Racers built a reputation by dominating regional races. Looking at the 1950s Altereds (and Roadsters in a similar vein), early Fords (often dry lake refugees) initially dominated the categories. The heavy, wide bodies pushed a lot of wind, and drivers quickly learned that to be successful, they needed to go smaller.

Thanks to the success of people like the Brissette brothers, Jazzy Jim Nelson, and Walter Knoch, by the tank. Although banned by the NHRA, the AHRA welcomed the fuel burners with open arms, and over the next few years, the Altered Coupes, Sedans, and Roadsters morphed into what became known as Fuel Altereds.

Bob and Jim Brissette’s Bantam, driven by Howard Ike Eichenhofer, relied upon a blown 354 Hemi to run over 160 mph in 1960. More than any other, this car wrung the death knell for the early Fords that had dominated the Roadster classes up until that point. With its fiberglass body and Chassis Research tube rails, it may be an understatement to call this car evolutionary. (Photo Courtesy Bill Scharing)

There’s plenty to see in this photo of SoCal’s Nick Cirino and Frank Groves’s 445-ci Olds-powered A/Roadster. The five blower belts and individual chrome pipes made for some great tunes. Check out the injector ram tubes atop the GMC 6-71. (Photo Courtesy Ken Crawford)

An early standout in the fuel ranks was the 1934 Ford of Mooneyham & Sharp. The A/Fuel Coupe was undoubtedly the most famous fuel sedan of the period. The car was originally built in the mid-1950s and competed on the dry lakes. With Larry Faust behind the wheel and a setback 390-ci Hemi under the cowl, the full-fendered car managed a best of 133.60 mph. It was converted to run the quarter-mile in the late 1950s, and as a Fuel Coupe, it late 1950s, compact Bantams and Fiat Topolinos dominated the Altered category. And, just as we saw in Top Eliminator during the later 1950s, injection replaced car-buretion as a means to go quicker and faster. A natural progression was to add a dose of nitromethane to the was considered quite innovative.

With its enclosed body, setback engine, 75- to 80-percent fuel load, center steering, and the rear position of the driver, many have referred to the car as the grandfather of today’s Funny Car. In 1960, the Ford was the first Fuel Coupe to break 150 mph when Faust ran a 152.02 mph. By the end of 1963, the car had run its best of 8.98 at 170 mph.

At the NHRA Nationals in 1961, Michigan’s Walter Knoch Jr. was an odds-on favorite in Mid-Eliminator. His blown Hemi-powered A/A Fiat, christened Walt’s Puffer II, got the attention of the masses by laying down 10-second ETs approaching 160 mph. Walt Sr. himself had been racing since 1956, when he built his first Hemi car using his son’s 1937 Ford. Walt Jr. came home from school one day to find his car gone. Asking his mom if she knew what happened to it, she told him that his dad had it in the shop. While Junior was at school, Walt Sr. wheeled the car into the garage, pulled the flathead, and placed a Hemi between the frame rails.

Jazzy Jim Nelson built this Fiat on 1934 Ford rails and ran it in Competition Coupe with a bored and stroked flathead. The car was then sold to Ewell & Stecker, who campaigned it with a fuel-burning Hemi. (Photo Courtesy Connell Miller/Rudy Perez)