@oldandkrusty that is a mixed bag of good and bad news. You seem to have a form of friendship with this Hotrod family. Sorry about the loss of you're friend... Is there any chance of seeing any pics of the Late Carl's vintage beauty awaiting a revisitation to street duty...that would be a treat. Not sure of this possibility but I thought I would ask. Maybe the Son might get a charge out of it and get it cleaned up in memory of His Late Father... Thanks in advance.
You know, you halfway pay attention to what goes on around here and you end up learning just a boat load of hot rod history. This is some cool shit right here.
Hello, One of the coolest things on the modified roadster (besides the supercharged Ardun Motor) was the set of sweeping chromed exhaust pipes. But, what would you expect from a cool SCOTTY’S MUFFLER SERVICE IN SAN BERNARDINO? modified roadster class... But, one of the classes we enjoyed the most was the street roadster classes. These street roadsters looked like they just popped off the hubcaps and rolled up to the line for a run down the Dragstrip. Most of them did. jr thompson/cassady rpu competition We enjoyed watching these street roadsters make their runs almost weekly. They were cool street driven roadsters that were also used for racing. One little modification would put these street roadsters in the modified roadster class. But, the next step in the roadster classes were the actual modified roadsters, not street driven. This class had the motors set back, fenders usually off and the driver sat in the middle. Obviously, they were not street roadsters, but versions of them were modified and run in a modified roadster class. FLATHEAD MODIFIED ROADSTER 1959 Pits Riverside Raceway When we took one of our first long road trips to another drag strip in So Cal, we saw the famous Scotty’s Ardun Powered roadster in person. It was a 2 hour plus one way trip. That was not bad since we left early from Long Beach. But, coming home after the big race day was a nightmare. We drove as far as we could stand, before we decided to stop for dinner and let the traffic die down. This was in December, 1959. To us, Scotty’s Ardun Roadster was one of a kind. It was in several magazines and the weekly action newspaper (Drag News) for all of the drag racing everywhere. But, as the old saying goes, “pictures do not do it justice.” It was an immaculate drag racing roadster that looked like it would win a trophy in any hot rod/custom car show anywhere. The detailing was fabulous. We were quite surprised we were allowed to get so close to it in the Riverside Raceway Pits area. That day in 1959 was a day to remember as the top racers from all over the USA came to challenge the So Cal racers. Scottys at Riverside 1959
1954 1955 Hello, Don Garlits was a name that people in Florida were familiar with during the early days of drag racing. We read about his early race cars going faster than some of the top West Coast racers. Of course, who goes faster than the top echelon group of racers of drag racing from the hot bed, So Cal? Being from So Cal, pride of the fast local racers was the utmost. The weekly Drag News paper tried to showcase the drag racing scene all over the USA. But, for a long time, locals usually skipped the small coverage of the rest of the USA, just to see what was happening in So Cal. At the time, there were so many places to race in So Cal that story reporting was fun to read. When the first inkling of Don Garlits coming out West was hinted in several editorials and articles in early 1959, a little excitement was upon most West Coast racers and drag racing fans. Can this upstart racer from Florida, of all places, be for real? Are his reported E.T. and speeds accurate? Most west coast racers and fans could not wait for the first appearance of Don Garlits in California. Don Garlits total Jnaki Ed E. Garlits was Don Garlits’s father’s name. Ed L. Garlits was Don’s younger brother. "...in 1959 when the Smokers of Bakersfield decided to host the first annual U.S. Gas and Fuel Championship. There was a young man down in Florida named Don Garlits who had been making a lot of noise with his Swamp Rat fuel dragster. To promote the event, The Smokers paid Garlits a hefty sum of money to come west and challenge the top dogs from the Pacific Coast. Interest in the race really started to swell when in February of that year Art Chrisman in his Hustler 1 recorded a run of 8.54-181.80 at Riverside, a new Standard 1320 record." "The first annual U.S. Gas and Fuel Championship was contested on March 1, 1959. Garlits wowed the crowd when he ran 178 mph right off the trailer. But, sans a supercharger, his Don's Speed Shop Spl. was no match against more powerful dragsters like the Chrisman Bros. and Frank Cannon. Garlits lost in the first round and Art Chrisman would go on to win the inaugural event with a final round of 9.36-140.50 over Tony Waters and the Waters-Sughrue-Guinn A/FMR. Chrisman also set low e.t. at 8.70 and Gary Cagle ran top speed of the meet at 180.36." March 1959 Bakersfield Don Garlits’s speed shop special was not equipped with a supercharger at the First March Meet. Two weeks later, he showed up at the Kingdon Dragstrip in northern California with a 671 blower under the Strombergs and won the meet. Photo by Steve Gibbs “Everything seemed to be working well, and I set another world record at Brooksville, Florida, while becoming the first to break the 180 MPH barrier! Funny thing, the uproar started all over again with the California guys who were convinced that the 180 mark was even more phony than the 170s I had been hitting. I knew that I'd have to keep proving myself by backing my runs with more 180s at different strips, so we spent the winter months preparing for the 1959 campaign. We spent some of my winnings by moving into a larger shop at 12200 Nebraska Street, just down the avenue from my first Tampa shop. We added a monstrous 454-cubic inch powerplant, installed a GMC blower, and added huge M&H Racemaker tires. I was learning that drag racing was becoming such a fierce, competitive business, and even a few months' delay in implementing new designs or equipment could be disastrous and costly. It was that way with the new superchargers, so as soon as they came out, a lot of people made the mad rush to install them. I did. The potential was incredible.” 1959...Big Daddy drives his first supercharged Swamp Rat in Kingdon, California.
Oh Man, I just came across these early covers and they remind me of the heap I just drug home yesterday... There is a few way's I could go with this... I'm still thinking about which way to go... The only thing that gets me, is the fact that I'm now 70 and I'm on oxygen 24/7 (with rare lung disease) So nowadays I'm no longer allowed to weld or spraypaint along with a few other things... My mind keeps telling me I'm still 40 and bullet-proof... I've been thinking lately, it would be fun to build a car for TROG, RPM Nationals, Hill Climbs, and the Antique Nationals... It sounds like so much more fun than going to car shows & Wednesday night cruises and looking at cars from morning to night and socializing... If I had something like that I could actually DO something... I'm so tired of everybody telling me to be careful (oh my god, you're on oxygen!!!) YOU can be careful as much as YOU want... I'M going to do as much as I can do for as LONG as I can... So, gimme a little help here fellas, which way should I go with this???
The Jalopy Journal
