More Legends of Drag Racing

[Chuck Norton]

Nicely summarized, Bill. I believe that you really captured the essence of the evolution effectively.

A fact that is rarely mentioned is the effect that the rapidly developing Funny Car movement had on established categories such Street/Modified Eliminator and some really benchmark classes such as AA/GS.

A night at the Irwindale Drag Strip in 1965-66 would have demonstrated this point very well. The AA/GS cars of S-W-C. Big John Mazmanian, Shores & Hess, Junior Thompson, Kohler Brothers, Gino Ciambella, Herrera and Sons, Chuck Finders, and more were candy-apple painted, highly polished and chromed, beautiful machines, the epitome of a highly developed, relatively sophisticated category that had built itself into a corner. On the other side of the pits were the F/C guys, hacksaws in hand, challenging for the imagination of the spectators.

AA/GS couldn't evolve much farther by then without going head-to-head with the new kids on the block. The F/C movement was at the exciting stage of developing an industry in the mid-60s. Every week brought some new experiment that started with altered wheelbased Super Stockers to injectors to blowers, to nitro, to outrageous set-backs, hacked off tops, and, eventually to flip-tops. Gassers were already developed as far as they would ever go. The only things remaining to make them stand out in the crowd were paint, chrome and more polish. In the end, the nitro won out. It must have been a little bit like watching the dinosaurs die out!

Glad I got to see it.

c