Brooklyn, NY Infamous Street Racers Back in the Day

Is this the guy with the silver and black all out 55 that used to run at westhampton??

 

No ... when I raced at the track I ran a 55 Belair Coupe with a '64 corvette 327 - 4 speed ... it was a street car ... I remember getting my "100 MPH Club" window decal at Westhampton ... thought I won the nationals.

 

I still have my Class winner trophys from the Hamptons...Treasures of my youth. Still have the car too

what years did you race there? I never heard of 100MPH club decals

 

I remember the 100MPH Club. Willie the Welder and Dave Daly got one for the MG I now have, it was some where around 62-66 at Westhampton

Pat

 

Win stickers were cool - but getting a "100 MPH Club" decal back in the sixties really said something!!
Everyone in the bar saw mine many times before it made it on the window!






All Hampton win stickers - I have no clear shot of the 100 MPH on right side window!

 

I was talking with Art Leong and around '72 he and a business partner at the time bought Dick Landy's "Pepsi" sponsored '70 Dodge Challenger (which was given a '71 Challenger front/rear to qualify for that year). He traveled from Brooklyn to California to pick it up (he bought it as a rolling chassis) from Landy. Once he got back to Brooklyn he stopped in at Benson Burgers in St Albans just for the shock value (it didn't have an engine/trans, but could you imagine that car pulling in on a flat bed?). Art wanted to hurry up and race the car, but his partner wanted to take their time and make everything perfect. His partner bought out his share and soon after he then partnered up with Ray "Tex" Cook and bought a 1971 Dodge Charger R/T from "a kid in Brooklyn." He mentioned it was a strange car and very light. "You could see a pattern of stars and stripes on the car, under the black paint. Nobody at Chrysler would fess up to the origin, but there were rumors." After further prodding he told me he believed it was built for Judy Boertman. It was too squirlly on the top end for her, so Chrysler just repainted and sold it. He never got the confirmation on this but the build date on the car was May, 1971. They stopped making Hemi's in January of '71, yet it was an original numbers correct Hemi car. He's also sure the body was acid dipped. They street raced that car a bit, but Wally Parks asked them to quit street racing after they got involved in NHRA. Art eventually sold the Charger (body only). According to Art (and I don't have much reason to doubt him) it was the last Hemi to roll down the assembly line.

Suffice it to say, the late '60s/early '70s in New York City (especially Brooklyn and Queens) may have been the most intense & legendary period of street racing the world has ever seen, but pro race cars were still running on the streets of New York City for high dollars even through the late '70s.

 

As I recall, ALL of Brooklyn was IT !! 1st Av, Fountain Av, Flatbush into Crossbay Blvd, beside the Belt Pky...

 

Hats off to anyone that raced Fountain Avenue ... that was a roller coaster ... I did race on Cross Bay Blvd back in mid 70-s ... drove from the parking lot on soutn bound side down to the traffic light after the bird sanctuary and then raced on the north bound side. Total distance was 3/4 of a mile which allowed the races to be a half mile long. Rolling start was the method at that time. Both competitors would nod their head in unison and you went the the third head nod. "On three"

 

Then 'Mitchell's' became Wetson's, right? I remember both. I also remember those cool Westhampton drag strip decals. Also 1st and 3rd avenue racing. Wow, this is a great thread.

 

Anybody remember road racing on the Interboro?

 

Yeah it did, and now its Nathans, was a few other things in between also

 

Chris(hippy) lives in PA now, we still have the black duster....still looking to street race but 150 is black top now and nassau expressway is kinda tight but may be ok.

 

test

 

You're here prostock207!

 

You're probably referring to a 427 SOHC '65 Mustang previously owned/raced by Len Richter, Jerry Harvey, Hubert Platt then "Dyno Don" Nicholson. Nicholson sold it in '69 to a Brooklyn street racer named Tab Talmadge who "campaigned" the car on the streets of NY for big money. Eventually Talmadge sold the car to another Brooklynite. A fellow named Curt Vogt who owns a business called Cobra Automotive traced the car to some crummy old storage building in one of the worst parts of Brooklyn in 1988, managed to purchase it from its current owner, restore it then sold it around 1991. A collector named Don Snyder purchased it from Curt and still owns it. The story about the "re-discovery" of the car can be found in a book called Hemi In The Barn by Tom Cotter.

And no, Heavy never owned this car, but he did own a fleet of other ex-race cars.

I have a plethora of photos throughout the car's life and information about it at the Archive of Street Racing group here on the HAMB: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/g...cussionid=1202 under the East-Coast Street Racing section (you'll find the information under the section for Tab Talmadge).

Here is the car as it sits today in Don Snyder's personal collection:


Earl Wade told me a story about getting a call from Tab, wanting him to tune his SOHC for a High Dollar street race, and offering to pay his air plane ticket, and cash for the services. Earl said he didn't, because if Tab lost the race, he didn't feel comfortable with the surroundings.

This is a killer thread, and I enjoyed all the pages of it. Thanks, Eric

 

1980s? New York?

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Was the BF Goodrich poster 1980's?

 

Glad to see that this thread lives on! What a shameless bump...

I now have a challenge to find old issues of Cars Illustrated and the like in order to recreate my youth.

 

Good observation. Late 1980s/early 1990s. I forget now.

 

Yeah, Cars Illustrated was really cool (and their offshoots) and the best mags to emerge from that era; they put the once-cool magazines like Car Craft, Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding, etc. to shame. And thanks to the exciting coverage of street racing action in the NYC area in those issues, I along with a couple of buddies, were prompted to take regular cruises from central New Jersey to Staten Island on Thursday evenings to the Masters shopping center on Hylan Blvd. to check out the assemblage of high performance iron in the huge parking lot. Later on that night, around 10:30 pm or so, we'd follow the locals up to the service road off the Goethels bridge (South Ave.) and watch some street racing action.

Really fun times those were...



Who's that moustachio'd man heating up the Corvette's rear tires?

 

MAN!! This clip is too good! My heart went BAM at 1:32-1:50 mark. That garage was full of goodie's! Great post.

 

Anybody remember "Al Cap " or Fark`s supercars?

 

bump

 

HAHAHA.............Seymour Balz.

 

P426;that is a way-cool little video there! Thanks!!!

Got a question: loved the garage shots early on,and saw a car of interest. There's a white '68 Barracuda with a Hemi/cross-ram engine;is that the Mutt Brothers former S&M ride? Saw another shot later of what looks like the same car on a lift getting service. Were the early shots from the Mutt Bros shop?

While I've got you here...We know Tab Talmadge had the Ritchey/Nicholson Mustang,and the Mutts had one Sox and Martin Barracuda(didn't they purchase the "1969" re-bodied car as well?);I'm curious as to what other significant(or somewhat so) former S/S and early Pro Stock cars went to the Apple to become street racers? I recall an article(Car Craft "Street Freaks" series) about a kid named Eric Petosa who had the S&M '68 Road Runner(or was it a GTX?);what happened to that? Thanks to this thread,we know where the Judi Boertman Charger went as well.

 

...Oh yeah;I'm sure the RR beat the Goat!

 

Actually,thanks IsettaJohn for the vid. My bad;that 1970's thing again...

Would still like to know what happened to the old rides,though. Oh,Mr. DeFeo?...

 

Not my video Al. It was made by some people I worked with in the film industry and was shot in NJ back in 2008 to look vintage. I also saw the video on this thread and just happen to know the cars, shop and people in it.

 

You called?....
Eric had the 68 S&M Roadrunner show car (Fake rollcage etc.). Had a very nasty sounding Tunnel Ram Hemi, but the car was a stone. His brother Mike had a big inch Chevelle at the time that was a bit more potent.
Years later, I had a deal to set up a Fuel Funny Car for the Petosa clan. I built the car...even built the shop it was housed in. Just as we were getting ready to hit the track with it, the deal went bad and I walked. Mark Oswald ended up driving the car for them and had the NHRA MPH record with it at 290-something.
...hmmm...maybe I should have hung around just a bit longer......