History Which drag cars in your opinion would be the most important in history?

Who started it all for you?

 

The most important/famous drag cars (glad you made it plural), and who started it all are two different questions. And neither one has a black and white answer.
One of the early/famous cars that comes to mind is Dick Krafts "The Bug".
Larry T

 

Glass Slipper!!

 

No cage!

 

You asked separate questions... "First" and "Most Important"

the two arent necessarily the same.


First rear engined dragster?

it wasnt the "first" but arguably one of the most important.

 

I read an article in a HOT ROD mag that the "bug" was the first rail car..... You ever see BIG DADDY"S Swamp rat I ???

 

I don't have a clue what the first rearengined dragster was, but the Tucson Speed Sport Special was one of the early/famous REDs.
Larry T
http://cacklefest.com/SpeedSport.shtml

 

Ivo's first dragster
chrismans hustler
gbp
65 hawaiian
chrismans comet
little red wagon
garlits 1st re dragster
jenkins first vega
bernsteins tempo
larry minor/bary beck-blue car
amato's tall wing car

 

edited....thanks guys.

 

I remember Grumpy's '72 Vega... That was the first tube chassis Pro Stock car with a teeny 331 c.i. sbc motor that was blowing away the big block guys..

 

Garlits' Swamp Rats!

 

The first car magazine I bought had a pic of the S-W-C Willys on the cover. That car's influence alone makes it one of the most important. Got to agree with a lot of the others,The Glass Slipper and The Hustler have to rank up there. Chrisman's 67 Comet F/C would also be there;no doubt. This should be a helluva debate.

 

Pure hell
Mike sullivans Fiat
Jungle Jims Vega

All do it for me

 

S-W-C Willy's and Greer, Black, Prudhomme rail job do it for me.

 

Big John Mazmanian's Willy's coupe.

 

Heres a few:

 

And a few more:

 

Eddie Hills "Double Dragon".....Top of my list...Centurion9 (Artwork by Tom/twm1340)

 

There are a lot of famous and important cars in the history of drag racing, but if I had to pick just one...Don Garlits' Swamp rat. OK, it wasn't one car...It was a series of cars, but it was an evolutionary thing that set (and raised) the drag racing standard for a long time. Some serious innovation there!

 

Bernie Schackers 1971 rear engine dragster

-90% Jimmy

 

Arnie the Farmer Beswick

 

when I was 15, I saw Cook & Bedwell Break 150 Mph in the 1/4mile. First ever!
that car is in Garlits museum.

 

TEAM RAMCHARGERS,including their accomplishments in Super/Stock,Top Fuel,A/FX,and Funny Car.They would have to be in the running.

 

My first trip to the track was to Onondaga in Michigan with Dad to see this...

Being an Oldsmobile employee in Lansing at the factory, this must have hit his curious button. It was the only time he took me to the drags. I was about 8 year old. Fire burnouts and all, this was as cool as it got in for me in '66.
In pictures from Hot Rod there were Big John, Maalco Gasser, Don Garlits, Prudhomme, the Freight Train, Dick Lahaie, Connie Kallita ....... and it goes on...

 

No roll bar at first, but C.J. Hart made him install one before he would let him run..Kraft came back with a "roll bar," but it was made of electrical conduit. Hart bent it with his hands and sent Kraft back home again until he built a real roll bar...some early pictures of the "Bug" show it, though it was pretty minimal.

 

Stone.

Woods.

& Cookie.

When I was seven or eight I had the opportunity to sit in Swindler A. I thought it was the coolest car in the world back then, and I still think it's the coolest car in the world now.

 

Swamp Rat 14 has to be somewhere on the list of important drag cars.

From the web page linked above:



And from the Wikipedia article about Don Garlits:

Does anybody know on which car it was that Mickey Thompson moved the seat behind the rear axle to create the slingshot in 1954? That would have to be an important car, too, I think.

 

Gotta chime in on this one. When I was a kid, there wasn't a more bad-ass car than the Stone Woods and Cook Willys. Still ain't as far as I'm concerned!!

Pluck

 

For me, it would be the Glass Slipper, the original Bad News coupe, Mooneyham and Sharpe's '34 coupe, Stone/Woods/Cook and Big John's Willys gassers, Ivo's twin and quad-engined diggers, Tony Nancy's Wedge, etc, but the list is really too long for one thread.

 

Thats a trick question, could go a few different ways; for me, all of the local small time workin stiffs, out on Friday or Saturday, just havin fun, after that, Garlits.