The Birth of a Rail…

Here’s a great short film from 1965 of “TV” Tommy Ivo assembling his latest blown Hemi AA dragster in the garage. He makes it look easy at the car magically comes together, but obviously it was all fabricated and test assembled ahead of time, but recreated for movie magic. If your not aware of Ivo’s impact on drag racing in the early 60s, he really was the pioneer of bringing crowd-pleasing showmanship and car theming to the strip. His dragsters were always immaculate (along with his transporters), and Tommy was best known as a ‘match-racer’, challenging all the big names for a single-run showdown in the 1/4 mile. Regardless, this is a fun little clip narrated by the late Keith Jackson, who would go on to become a legendary football broadcaster, and shows some nice detail shots of the basic components that went into this particular car. I’m pretty sure this is “Chartreuse”, Tommy’s third Top Fuel Dragster built after his “Red Winged” car…