The 1990's brought on a renaissance period of sorts in the hippy town of Austin, TX. Guys like Steve Wertheimer reintroduced the town to traditional hot rods and customs to a level that is only matched by the west coast. It's been widely covered and ... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Drag racing in Texas was rampant in early 50's in just about every town you went to. Main streets on a Saturday night hosted about every configuration of car you could think of and was the best of times and plenty of competition for every body from mild to wild..
Yeah Ryan, that thing is sooo cool. I love that time in drag racing before things got out of hand and all professional. The idea that a car club or a couple friends could still build something that was competitive is where my interests lay. Couple of my favorite features on this car are.... CHROME ROLL BAR LEVEL STANCE with perfect tire choices (motorcycle tires up front) and caps. OLD ROCkET!! Damn that thing is rad.
cool man! great story, love to learn about hotrod history! Good job on the research and story-look forward to more, keep up the excellent work! Side-note: Interesting how there's 5 responses to this so far which is really what I feel the HAMB is all about, while the fear and loathing story, in comparison, blew up with a landslide of comments... hmmmm
I'm fortunate to have an almost complete run of HR mags from '58 thru '60. Over the years I've practically memorized my favorite cars from repeated browsing through them, and this roadster's definitely among the top 20! Just a clean build with top notch workmanship evident throughout! Any clue as to what color it was? White, yellow or pale blue, maybe?
Great question about still being around. Many cars just seem to disappear. Always questioned how such cool and neat cars could just "disappear". Hey Ryan! Do more articles on racers and cars from Austin. Thanks! 1940 Willys Coupe
Very neat car. Here's a later version of it that I found digging around on the web. From what I've read the car met its demise when it flipped at Little River. and another article:
Great roadster I love it the drag version those headers are awesome. Ryan, you know why it has a dry lake roadster feel? It is because it was one. that is the ex-Art Tremaine roadster.
Sweet little car!! With the chin spoiler(?) and belly pan, I wonder if they may have had Bonneville aspirations? Stay cool, Cat
I doubt this is the same car/body, same team yeah. The 2 bodies have 2 major differences molded cowl and filled wheel arches. A couple more pics from "The Birth of Hot Rodding" book
The pic of the car on the trailer with "Inferno" up front is when Linford McLemore owned the car after he bought it from Buck & Bohls. It is infact the same car. From what I've gathered, they sold the roadster so they could play with their dragster, pic below...
This just epitomizes what the HAMB is about (and not because it's a Texas car). I can't wait to see where this thread ends up. Back at Little River, hopefully!
Sounded "super good"..I saw and heard that car run many times at the old "Caddo Mills" strip in N Texas and yes as posted by another,it was a pale yellow
A really cool car, it sucks it was only able to snag 2nd place. Does anybody know the car that beat it? I'm curious to know.
I was positive that was the inferno. Back in 60-61 I managed the houston freeway strip and did a match race between Linford and Ragsdale and both cars were very impressive to say the least. I have often wondered where Linfords roadster went as it was spotless and had a killer paint job and stood out.
Thanks guys for info on what happened to this car. You gotta love the HAMB for all that it does! 1940 Willys Coupe
Holy...! Just tuned back in for the first time since I asked the question about the color and am staggered by the amount of info that's surfaced. You guys are amazing! Would love to build a series of models of every version!