Art & Inspiration Gassers, a can of worms?

Hello,

When the Gas Coupe and Sedan Class went from daily driver street cars that had some modifications and raced each other to the all-out gas coupes that would not be able to make it to the next gas station, that was the downfall of the gas coupe class. The term gassers always had a bad connotation of having gas or those that had gas, etc. It was/is a short way to abbreviate the correct terminology: Gas Coupe and Sedan Class.

As the rules relaxed, the builds became more of a full race car without any street legal accessories left on the car. Straight through individual exhaust pipes sealed the deal. Those definitely are not street legal, but fell within the ever-changing rules. The eventual gas coupe product, after the rules relaxed, the cars looked different. They were similar to the classification of an altered coupe without the 25% set back. The times were about the same, with the only difference is the set back of the motor.

Then the awful straight axle, with the “up in the air” stance started and now, most people know the Gas Coupe and Sedan Class is no longer. Those “up in the air” cars are what is left of the destruction of one of the most popular classes in drag racing. Reading countless Drag News papers from the beginning to the 70s, became a chore as the most popular classes Gas Coupes and Sedans always had the top billing for records and weekly result reporting. If you read a 1964-65 Drag News, you might find one short paragraph of the one race for a gas coupe reported. If you were not the record holder, those elimination races were nowhere to be seen.

Then as the rules changed and the class started to disappear, so did the popularity. The gas coupe designation moved down the list of class racing results. The once thriving street legal class was so the little guy with some hot rod modifications could race his daily driver at the drags. Now, that class is gone as is the participation of the neighborhood hot rod/drag race guys/girls. Big money racing is all that is left.

Jnaki

There are a lot of people whose only idea of “gassers” is the awful “up in the air look.” That is too bad as there was a very early culture on why hot rodding was the way it was because of those early GAS COUPES AND SEDAN classes at the dragstrips. Modify what you built and drove, then see how it does at the local dragstrips. A hot rod era gone, overridden by the term Gassers.

The rise in the front is not from 90-10 shocks, springs, or a straight axle, but pure horsepower being sent to the rear.

These are a couple of true gas coupes and sedans that are the epitome of street legal class racing.
Doug Cook 37 Chevy Coupe

Jr Thompson 41 Studebaker Sedan SOUND FROM 1959 PURE HORSEPOWER

The Junior Thompson SOUND could be interchanged into the Doug Cook film easily, as they both sounded pretty powerful going down the track. A winning of countless trophies and championship records proves the point of true builds and wins with power.


If the “up in the air look” was good for speed and better E.T. times, why aren’t the 1000 hp funny cars raised in front with a Moon Tank sticking out in front of the grille?


It was a fad that keeps getting pushed to the forefront for nothing other than a look gone bad. There was no reason to raise the front. “Hey buddy, there is a party going on, down by the wheels and they want you to come on down…” The boxy 55 Chevy sedans have a hard enough time pushing the wind down the dragstrip in stock form, so any streamlining for smoothness deals with lowering the sedan and making everything go up and around the sedan, not under.

 

Marty you are correct sir. Those fellows did put on a great show! Sure was nice seeing the Bizio truck run again, always a favorite. Miss seeing it here in the NW but the current owner sure has it running good, looking beautiful ,hauling ass, and he can drive!! Would love to see the SEGA guys run out west but man what a tow.

 

There are some pretty bizarre modern interpretations of classic gassers. Spindle mount front wheels and radical nose high stances are not authentic representations. However the nose high stance was an identifying feature in the early 60s. This was pretty much unavoidable with rules requiring stock frames, no tubbing and really bad recapped slicks with little traction. Using tall +30" slicks with no frame mods resulted in tall rear ends. Without raised front ends the cars would have a positive rake dramatically reduced weight on the rear tires. Racers had no option but to raise the front ends to try to keep weight on the slicks and have at least some traction. The norm seemed to be to have no front wheel inside the wheel well. Here are shots of some of the big guys with that look. I used 4" riser blocks on my Willys with the stock axle and arched stock springs. A tall car with level chassis seems to define a 'proper' gasser stance. Of course when Goodyear and M&H came out with soft compound real racing slicks and rules were changed allowing racing tubular frames, car bodies crashed to the ground. And gasser popularity died concurrently.

 

Aww yeah, THOSE are gassers..... some tiny front tires on Big John's car.
You missed Bones, Dubach and Pisano in that all star collection, one of the prettiest early Willys ever.

 

Really like your “Straight Axle”Car

 

Wow! 1965,Hampton,Va........Takes Me Back!!

 

Nice! It certainly has potential. Good luck with it.

 

RAW!!!!

 

I didn't like their blower scoop but it was a beautiful car. My favorite all time gasser was Altizer, Finders, Kibler Traveler. Some folks don't know that Traveler was originally Stone Woods, Cook Dark Horse. It beat the SWC big car a couple times before blowing its Chevy engine, They gave it to Chuck Finders who transformed it into Traveler.

I tried to copy the classic stance on my car w/ the 4" risers.

View attachment 4794667

 

"didn't like their blower scoop" One of the most iconic scoops ever made is the scoop Red Greth created for the Speed Sport roadster. Gary Dubach ran one on his 33, and the Greek ran one on his Chizlers. In the late 50's/early 60's, if you didn't know Red or Don Maynard, you didn't have one. I feel extremely lucky to know Red, and have one of his scoops out of the original mold he created in 1957. I proudly run it on my RPU.

 

Willys36, you did good! Definitely hit the mark!
Scott


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Here a few more pics just for fun. My son was actually working on it a little bit yesterday but sadly I’ve gotten side tracked with my Pontiac for the time being.


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As with everything in hot rodding, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The scoop is definitely iconic but just doesn't spin my prop. In my pea sized brain gassers have to be a pre-war Willys, have a Hilborn scoop, Halibrand small hole front runner mags, tilt 'glass hood, front wheels totally out of the wheel wells, chrome front axle, preferably a drilled stocker. That list warms my heart. Everyone has his own list of likes and dislikes, makes hot rodding never dull. If everyone had my list, attendance and participation in drag racing would be much smaller and less interesting.

 

That is how this truck sit, it's not from acceleration, there's a few other high boys out there too.



https://barnfinds.com/the-silver-dollar-in-the-barn/

 

The AFK Traveler with its chopped top just looks like it’s ready to pounce. It was one of my favorites. You nailed that stance with your Willys.
As for the scoop on the BDP Willys, I think a lot of us were just used to seeing the ever present Hilborn 4 port scoop poking out of the hood. Anything else looked out of place. That scoop itself is classic.


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Yep.

 

Unless the truck was modified after the starting line pics were taken, both starting line pics were taken during launch. The truck has risen to the point that the wheel is almost entirely out of the wheel well. A line drawn straight forward from the bottom of the fender of the truck at rest hits the wheel at the raised ring around the lug nuts. On the launch pics, the same line crosses the top of the rim.
I have to disagree with jnaki. The nose high stance disappeared, not because it was ineffective (though it might have been), it disappeared because the NHRA outlawed it. It doesn't seem to have slowed the gas cars down any.

 

My understanding is the cars came crashing down to weed mowing stance more due to slicks with good traction being available from Goodyear and M&H in mid/late 60s and NHRA allowing cars to have custom race only frames rather than requiring factory stock ones. Applied science; Traction was no longer due to weight on tires with small coefficient of friction. New tires had great coefficient of friction so could concentrate on building cars with good wind resistance characteristics, not needing to stand them on end to load weight on bad rear tires.

 

Maybe more of a fad rod. I don't see as many of them junked up as I have seen rat rods over the years.

I find it amazing that every tri five chebby that comes down the pike is a gasser/street beast. They were not all gassers some were customs and others were just hot rods.

 

This photo has always been in question.

Hello,
It looks photoshopped as the dividing line inside the car is not the same as on the track. The area is highlighted with copied dragstrip color in varying shapes is not on the other smooth or even, like the other side of the track. Why is the area around the Willy truck shaded while the flag guy has no shade? So, just in this section of the track there is a circular shade and not the straight tire marks? Questionable...

Either that or it was one of those give the little guy a head start races. Anyone with written proof from the old San Diego Raceway have conclusive results of this purported race?


Jnaki
B/GS winner
The one thing that photo shows is the designs of two conflicting race car builds. One is low and fast. The other "up in the air" and questionable. The Bakersfield March Meet results speak for themselves. The Big John Mazmanian Willys Coupe beat all comers in the A/Gas Supercharged class and did not have a nose in the air Willys Coupe. The B/Gas Supercharged winner was the Panella Trucking Willys Truck that was not a nose in the air truck.

 

I seem to recall something about 24" max crankshaft centerline?

 

Bamber's Silver Dollar was always at the extreme end in the nose high days and it stayed that way.
I believe that in the "pre-tubbing days" the stance we all came to love came from big (tall) rear tires being fitted into the rear fenders of cars with limited room and strict rules regarding fender/body modifications. The only way to fit a 10.50-15 or 16 slick in there was to cut the fender as much as you could and raise the car for the rest of the clearance. That left the car severely raked toward the front, so they raised the front a suitable amount and gained some load transfer in the process. Some took the front end a little further than others but I believe a fairly level stance was most common.
My good friend and I did that very thing to his '64 Falcon back then. We modified the rear fenders to fit 10.00-15 M&H slicks (no tubs) and installed a straight tube axle such that it made the car level. One mean looking Falcon in those days.

 

Here are a couple of shots showing the Bizio Truck's evolution in height.

 

Note the change in rear tires. Once they got good traction the gasser noses all came down, soon followed by rules changes that allowed custom chassis to replace the formerly mandated stock chassis.

 

Here's more of those high boys I said were out there and if you look at the Silver Dollar on the starting line it's not even pulled into the second line, definitely not at launch.

 

In my recollection, the thing that killed the Gas Classes was the cost and time involved in tech. Weighing the car and verifying engine displacement, etc. I only ran D/G down the list as CI was a cost. Ran at Half Moon Bay (airport), and Fremont (later Baylands). Some of my friends ran straight eights, I ran the odd Six and small V8's as the cost of big inches in good condition was tough on a teenager. A few sessions, I ran my buds Twin H Power Hudson flat head Six.

Most of us were street racers downtown San Jose at night and 4-lanes north of Santa Cruz. It was the local ordinances that dictated the cars. Santa Cruz city & county (sheriff and city cops) would bust you for any part of the tire outside the body work (local ordinance). That got a lot of the East Bay boys in a bunch when they came down to run us ... But you could go fast enough on 8" tires if you knew what you were doing.

I was a Ford guy. Ranch Wagons were my fav. $50~$150 for a runner and then an engine/clutch/tranny swap and you were on your way. Most were not straight axles. A lot ran Van axles with matching brakes and lug patterns to the rear ends. Cars did not sit that high. I worked part time at A&W Engineering (race shop in Santa Cruz) and we split wheels, reversed centers, widened rims, etc. Almost all ran steelies out back. Maybe ET's up front. ... We had to build the offsets to fit in the body work, and with the selected axle/spring package.

All these radiused wheel wells were cars outside the South Bay Area that could get away with it ... We had to build stuff the Cops would let us run on the street because they were our go-to-work rides too. It was a hoot driving race cars on the street. Most Gas Class cars were pretty spartan, but they all had lights, wipers, horns, and rudimentary mufflers. Your entire race budget would get taken in one ticket, so try to not get caught on anything.

One of the popular chassis were the early 50's Plymouth tear drop 2-doors. They were even lighter than the shoe box Chevies. You could stuff a 273~318 small block Chrysler in there with work. Never saw anyone try a BB Chrysler in one ... People even stuffed Pontiacs and Olds with Hydros in bath-tub Ramblers. Gas classes were all about weight to CI. Either factor would work.

Getting them to hook up was the trick. Slapper bars, pinion snubbers, and maybe ladder bars if you were packing big inches ... Bruce's Tires (Oakland) racing recaps (cheater slicks) were the norm for the track. Atlas Plycrons were the trick on the street as they were predictable on variable pavements and very sticky when warm

Most of what we see now days are A, B, & C/Gas recreations. Those were not really the bulk of the Gas Classes, and they sure were not running around on the street ...

 

Here in Oregon in '61, Bill Ireland (who later joined the Ford Drag Team) had a '61 2dr sedan with a 390-401 Hp and raced SS/S and dominated. For 1962, The Oregon Ford Dealers gave him a new Galaxy with a 406 to run S/S. He sold the '61 to his friend Bill Anderson, on the agreement that he would remove the front bumper and run B/G, because the '61 was faster. The '61 won B/G most of the time.

 

Gassers are bad for your love life, sell them, put a swimming pool in your yard and get laid instead of scorned for wasting money on cars, HAHAHahahah!!!! Yes race cars are a drug habit just as bad, maybe worse than herion, just saying.

 

Gassers are cars that are modeled after cars that would have run in the gas classes back in the days, or cars that did actually run in those classes.. There were lots of variations, ranging from relatively stock looking machines, to fairly wild machines with no front bumpers, straight axles, engine set backs, ladder bars, radiused rear wheel arches, big slicks, etc.

An altered wheelbase would make a car modeled after something in an altered class, not a gas class, therefore, not a gasser.

And yes, it's a whole lot better if a gasser style car actually sees some track time. However, I will point out that when it comes to hot rodding (I consider gassers to be part of hot rodding), most of the modifications we do are emulating something from racing. Chopped tops, fender removal, lowering, etc., are emulating modifications done for racing at the dry lakes. A Deuce 5 window with a chopped top and no fenders is still a legit and valid hot rod even if it is not raced at the dry lakes. I apply this same philosophy to gasser styled cars. We do these modifications to our cars because they look good, and pay homage to the racing origins of hot rodding.

 

20161212_153338-jpg by Mike posted Aug 29, 2018 at 1:36 PM

Non identical twins. The machine on the right is a true and proper gasser, a street / strip car that has been driven and raced in this basic configuration for neck end of 50 years. '57 Chevy 150 Business Coupe with a Hot 327 Chevy V8, Muncie 4 speed, Ford 9" rear axle with 4:11 posi, radiused rear wheel arches, 15"x 8" ET five spokes with big slicks, bitchin' old traction masters, 15"x3.5" Fenton Gyro slots up front, front bumper, grill and valance removed, stock front suspension cranked up with monkey nut spacers (the ghetto way).

The machine on the left is a gasser styled utility vehicle. '57 Chevy Sedan Delivery, stock 350 Chevy V8, Muncie 4 speed, stock rear axle with 3:08 gearing, 15"x6" American five spokes at the back, 15"x3.5" Fenton Gyros slots up front, front bumper and grill removed, thoughtfully placed cosmetic "Moon" tank, stock front suspension cranked up with monkey nut spacers.

I consider both cars valid, legit gasser styled hot rods.

20190814_141325 by Mike posted Jun 26, 2020 at 2:45 PM

A shot of the Sedan Delivery at work.