(first posted 12/10/2013) Do I love old B&W photos? I just spent an hour or more perusing about a hundred of them taken at the Santa Maria CA Raceway between about 1958 and 1962. If you want to spend a sweet hour yourself, here’s where they all are: oilstick.com. If you want the edited version and trust my taste, I’ll share my favorite dozen or so without commentary, because these pictures tell their story eloquently enough.
VWs drag racing! There is a hoot. Did they use a sundial to time it?
Old beetles can be made remarkably quick with very little (relatively) work. Light weight, rear-biased weight, and seriously under-stressed motors means there’s a lot of low-hanging performance fruit to be picked.
True that. My dad was always talking about how you could use a Beetle to shame Mustang/Camaro/Corvette drivers in red light races if you did the right tuning and played your cards right…and kept it to a light-to-next-block’s-light race. The lack of modern launch control meant the Beetle might get the jump before the other guy even got traction.
I know for certain on my franken vw (57 body, 63 floorplan, motor out of a 68 – i think it was a 1300, but it’s been 20 years) i could beat anyone in first gear. Of course, once they got going, i would be left behind.
Hank, yes…back when we thought street racing was cool. No more…
3 litre Zephyr Essex V6 makes em go lots of low rpm torque and the engines used to be nearly free from wrecking yards doing MK4 V8 swaps.
Nice pics and nice site Paul!
The top pic should be captioned… “At some point son, you might want to come up for air.”
I love the whitewall tires on the dragsters. And the blown flatheads.
It is apparent that even back then, Chevrolet had become the car of choice among the racers. Sure, the flatties were still powering some stuff, but most of the mid-late model cars were Chevys.
I wish that one shot of the 59 Plymouth and the 57 Ford at the start line was a video with sound.
That FrankenCrosley looks like it ought to have the logo of a casket manufacturer on the door.
That funky custom is my favorite of the lot.
That Chrysler 300 is so damn perfect tricked out like that and sans whitewalls.
That Chrysler is the best looking car in the whole post. The “Snorkasaurus I” rocks! As a kid I had a ’62 300 promotional car which was one of my favorites. But then, I also liked the ’62 Dodge.
That car was my cousin, Jimmy Doyle Barnes’, first Snorkasaurus car – he had several he raced. Here’s another one.
Here’s his 4th one
Here’s the 4th one restored to original factory condition and sold by Barret Jackson Auctioneers
I should show that picture to my dad. He used to drag race his ’62 Chrysler Saratoga.
At Cayuga? I used to spectate in the mid 80’s
There’s some great shots here.
The duelling beetles, I wonder what the quarter mile time of a stock 40hp bug is. Not enough to try it with mine though.
The blown flathead, the blower is bigger than the motor!
Judson blowers were quite popular on VWs back then, in terms of some serious bolt-on increase in hp.
My exs father had a Judson on a Triumph TR3A, it was seriously fast on the road point to point.
When my father relocated his small repair shop back in 1990, we found a Judson blower. He didn’t remember how he got it but remembered installing it on my grandpa Bug way back in early 70s. It worked… he said.
I wonder if he still has it.
Wonderful pics Paul. Thanks a lot.
Yep, Cayuga. After he bought his ’67 Sport Fury, my dad kept the ’62 for awhile and dragged it. It had a factory 383 4-bbl. That would have been in the early 70’s.
I’m pretty the ’62 Chrysler was the car he scrapped because it blew a the frost plug on the backside of the head, and he couldn’t be bothered to pull the head to replace it. When he drove it to the yard, the guy in the office said, “Park it beside that Ford.”, so he wound it up and parked it INSIDE the Ford.
I know they have their issues, but superchargers mounted ahead of the engine, driven directly off the crankshaft, look cool.
In the pic of the supercharged engine under construction (below the ’62 Chrysler 300 pic) what kind of engine is that? The obvious guess is SBC, but it appears to have shaft rockers. Chrysler A-block? The valvecovers don’t look right for that.
I can’t tell either. Not an sbc, for sure. The heads are way to massive. I’m going to take a stab at it and say it’s a Cadillac.
I think you’re right, Caddy 331, 365 or 390 engine.
Judging by the cylinder head casting, it looks like an Olds 303, 324, or 394 to me.
I love the guy in glasses watching enviously in the top picture.
A lot of us then-skinny nerds with glasses can identify with him.
Does the dragster in the second photo down have a GMC V6? There’s only three exhaust pipes on that header, but it’s definitely NOT a flathead Ford.
No, it’s an early Olds V8, which had siamesed exhaust ports.
Gotta love the chain driven blower old school or what pre toothed belt tech.
“Potvin,” on that front-mounted supercharger, is a “hop-up” name I swear I haven’t seen since poring over Hot Rod magazines in the mid-1960s. Instantly, half a century vanishes and I’m a kid at the newsstand or library…..
This is a nice selection, Paul—I’m a lunch-at-my-desk guy, and the full collection will make for great browsing tomorrow.
The VW race must of been the slowest time on the drag way unless there were two Renault Dauphine racing in a subsequent paring.