Vintage shots from days gone by!

Tommy Ivo vs the Valley Home Service in 1959
Hello,

Riverside Raceway was the location for one of the biggest drag races on the West Coast. It was a showdown between the best in the East vs the best of the West. The biggest names in drag racing were there to support their own areas.
Dec 1959
One of the races showed the supercharged SBC of Valley Home Service versus the newest addition to the Tommy Ivo arsenal, the big, twin injected, Buick FED. The popular red cladding was missing for this race.

Valley Home services FED

At the time, we all knew about the Tommy Ivo race cars from the single injected Buick, to the 671 Buick powered version, but not many had seen the twin injected Buick version, especially in all black.

single version progression

This 1959 drag meet at Riverside Raceway was a first for us. The first time to see the big names from anywhere except from the West Coast. It was the first time to go to another dragstrip other than Lions Dragstrip near our Westside Long Beach house. And, the first time to see the legendary Don Garlits, Chris Karamesines (The Greek) along with the Speed Sport Roadster in action.

Jnaki

It was a day to remember as the first full fledged East vs West competition took place in most classes. The Valley Home Services SBC vs the twin Buick of Tommy Ivo was a So Cal race within the eliminations. It was one of the highlights of that long eventful day.

 

Ha ! I guess you mean drive a Falcon.

 

American Auto Parts/ Grand Rapids 1948. Twelve years shy of being able to do God`s work.

 

See where the hand shadow is?????....

 

The Who !

 

Deuces, just knew you would respond. LOL

 

What is/was this ? any ideas

 

B-C-P Hearse.

 

It's a Boeing model 80

 

No parking restrictions I see....

 

Mandy sure does look like Barry Manilow.

 

The first photo shows Pat Flaherty and A.J. Watson (standing at far left with longer hair) after qualifying at Indianapolis in 1949. Both were veterans of the track roadster scene both on the West Coast and especially in the Midwest. They ended up missing the show. Watson actually built the car and it used a flathead Mercury engine. I'm unclear on this but from memory I think the Granatellis also had a Mercury engined car that got wrecked so they ended up putting their Grancor name on this car.

I don't know much about the sprint car in the other photo but the wire wheels on the rear are interesting. Maybe they used the wire wheels because they had them and they fit their hubs. But there were some old timers that swore they got better traction under acceleration with the more flexible wire wheels than with mags. There might have been some truth to this with friction or some lever shocks but once shocks got better it shouldn't have made much difference.

 

LOL! Good catch.

 

Mainline Ute… 1957 (yes,1957) Ford Australia brochure illustration