History For the "old guy's", who built the 1st "funny car"?

Mazooma1 nailed it. Research with Dave Wallace of Hot Rod Nostalgia, the curator of the NHRA Museum, or old issues of Super Stock and Drag Illustrated from the period shud verify that.

 

You guys are all screwed up. Poverty flats had the original altered wheelbase deal. Or was it Laurel and Hardy?

 

I think Bucky's current retro car has taken care of that "slug" problem!

 

http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.com/landys64.html

http://www.ehow.com/about_5348791_history-funny-cars.html

 

Ol' Bucky has several cars that have taken care of that problem. (went to high school with Bucky).

 

the first flip up body I remember was Dick Landys Dart that in turn went to Petty and ran in 66 it went off the track and killed someone in the bleachers with petty driving. I have the rag with picks of Landys brother working on the car. BUT i think this car was a gutted steel body not sure. I think Gene Snow had the first Glass car I remember.

 

Nope...Petty was driving a Plymouth Barracuda.

 

You said it Doug, now it's just a circus.

 

I can't tell you the definition of funny car but, like pornography, I know it when I see it. Good to see Mazooma and Rick Finch back in the discussion. Even if you nail the definition it's hard to say who was first as things were evolving so quickly.

 

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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"Guffey"
is the hand's down expert here.

I did look this morning in the book, "The Garlits Collection" about the cars Dig Daddy has in his museum.
One of which is the 1964 Dodge of Dick Landy's.
The movement of the wheelbase was minor at first. It wasn't until the 1965 season when Chrysler engineers that , "well, if a little is good, then a bunch would be better".
That's when the wheelbase alterations went completely nuts and we saw the real radical wheelbase that we identify with the cars like Landy's Coronet in 1965.

This is what was reaffirmed by the Garlits book, Steve Magnante (who owns three AWB cars and has written a AWB book) and experts like our own "Guffey".

The Jack Chrisman '64 Comet was more inline with today's funny cars, being that it was blown and on fuel, but the term "funny car" was applied by the track announcers and drag racing journalists, referring to the "funny" looking body-chassis alterations of the first cars.

Again, the 1964 Chrysler drag cars wheelbase alterations were miner, at first. Keeping the firewall intact and moving the wheelbase, instead of moving the engine rearward, kept these '64 mild versions less on the radar of the officials. There was no rule, thus far, about moving the wheelbase. There was a rule about moving the engine rearward.

The Alexander Brothers modified a handful of cars for Mopar. This is the same Alexander Brothers that created "Deora", the wild show truck from the same era.

It was a crazy time to be a kid with a camera here in Southern California.
Between Lions, Fontana and Irwindale, I could choose what strip was having the wildest show on the next weekend by reading the ads in the weekly "Drag News" that I got in the mail on thursday.
Then I had to convince my parents to drive me to the strip (I could ride my bike to Irwindale) and then pick me up in the late evening.
This was turning into the era of "match race" mania.
2 out of 3 and even 3 out of 5 races were advertised. The promoters always made it sound like the end of the world was coming, but before that time, they were going to crown a new "king".
Gassers and the AWB cars were most inline with the cars selected for these matchups.
Sometimes the promoter would set up a match race with a T/F car and a jet, like Ivo vs. "the Untouchable" at San Gabriel or GBP vs. "The Valkyrie" at Lions.
Or, even two wheelstanders, like "Little Red Wagon" vs. "The Chuckwagon" which ended in the "Chuckwagon" crashing through the fence and onto the highway..............

eh......I could go on for hours, but I don't want to bore you youngsters with my ramblings.....now...run along kids, and don't get your new Levis dirty.....!!!!!

 

Factory instructions for building an altered wheelbase FX, dated 1/65.
Larry T

http://www.moparmax.com/features/2006/images/05-report/report.pdf

 

I think it is very hard to pinpoint an evolution.

 

Yep the 64 A/FX Mopars got the ball rolling,in 65 they took it to the next level.

 

doesnt any body remember the big al drag car? 34 ford sedan fiberglass lift off body will an allison aircraft motor?this came before the comets i think he has more bragging rights to being first over the factory teams the steel bodied version was alive in 63 and he soon went to fiberglass cmon now im a young guy

 

A few more pics. I believe there were a few different versions of the car.

 

sorry, fella...that's not a funny car, not even close.

 

I think Lippy got it right.ha,ha...Frank Kunkel

 

Actually most of the experts say that Chrisman's topless glass mercury with the logge chassis was the first funny car. We could debate it all day long but most of the experts give that little place in history to Chrisman.

 

Frank Ogleby was there driving and building...read about his birth of Funny Cars...
http://www.dragracingonline.com/features/vii_7-nitrofc-1.html

Frank Kunkel

 

I have heard that Bruce Larson's 1966 Chevelle was the first glass funny car.

 

Who are these so-called "experts" that you refer to? A quick Google search even places it with those Dodge's out of Detroit.

 

They live in your part of the country or at least some of lived in your part of the country. Old Dad was one, at least when we last spoke which would have been in the '70s he said that Crisman had the first funny car.

A lot of people want to call the altered wheelbase cars funnies. But in acuality they were not funnies at all. They were FX cars. Maybe they paved the way for what we call funnies but they were not, they were factory cars with the rear axle moved forward, if they had to be classed at all outside of the class that they ran it it would be closer to fuel coupe or altered class than funny car class. The Chrisman Mercury was the first recognized car with a tube chassis and a glass flip top.

Anyway like I said you guys argue all you want every time I read something along the line of funnies by respected writers on the field they give it to Chrisman.

I guess if you really wanted to stretch it you could call the Orange Crate a funny car. It was a tube chassis flip top car.

 

Gotcha... I understand you, I think. Your definition of funny car BEGINS at the point there was an actual classification for them, as opposed to those same cars prior to that distinction of being recognized by a sanctioning body. Is this correct?

 

I think the plain and simple fact as stated by others is,the altered wheelbase Mopars were the first to be called funny cars.One year before the fiberglass Mercurys.

 

Best damn thread I have read since being on here. Doug aka Mazooma1, I just feel like going to your house right this moment and have milk and cookies and listen to you talk about a time i only witnessed thru Wide World of Sports and magazines. And that don't amount to a hill of beans.

 

That works for me. Actually I think that during the era that Chrisman was running the mercs they didn't have a class for them but they didn't fit into any other class either. They were match race cars. Someone started calling them funny cars because of the way that a lot of them looked almost like a showroom car only different. I could be wrong on that point they may have already had a class for funnies when Chrisman started running the topless merc but I am pretty sure that they were still match race cars.

The reason I pulled the Orange Crate out of my hat is because it is recognizable to about everyone. A well known car, it was a flopper before there were floppers, ran the with the engine setback, tube chasis car perhaps a little on the crude side but still a tube chassis car. But no one has ever considered it a funny, at least no one I have ever talked to.

 

I don't know who the "experts" are that you speak of but the Chrisman topless glass Merc came much later than the Merc 2-doors.
They first actually debuted at Iwindale and, yes, I was there.
That was the first funny that had the full race car spec chassis and the entire glass one-piece body which was a tilt up.
Any car that was a tilt-up body didn't automatically make it a funny car.
Some gassers had tilt up bodies, too.

So, the Chrisman topless car was later than the Logghe Comet of Nicholson, which makes your "experts" knowledge questionable.

The first funny was in '64 when Jack was running the stock-bodied Comet of Helen Sachs....blown, but stock bodied.
In fact, I don't recall Jack ever driving an AWB car.

By the time the real, factory-born full-on race cars were on the scene, the term "funny car" then applied to them also. Ny then, 1966, the full on race cars were referred to as "funnies".
But the origin of the term "funny car" was based on the factory bodied cars with altered wheelbases.

So, if your "experts" are saying that the title for "first" goes to Chrisman for the white '64 Comet, they are wrong.
If the "experts" say that the title for "first" was Jack's topless glass Comet, they are wrong....way wrong.
By the time that Jacks topless came out, the term 'Funny car" had been around for almost two years or more.
The steel bodied Comet would later become know as an exhibition funny car to some folks, but it, then, was thrown into the pool of which were called "funnies'. Just like the Comets were, now called funny cars.
The Comets were more akin to what we have today. Purpose build, flip-top cars with race car chassis.
==========================
By the way, that first day after Don Nicholson made a few passes, he went storming through the lights at Irwindale and the wind tore the body off the chassis.
Of, course to us at the finish line, we thought the entire car had gone airborne. Our eyes were, naturally trained on the body going skyward. What we didn't see for a few seconds was that Don was safely coming to a stop still strapped into his seat.
The body was the only thing that took off.
Thats just one of those events that one doesn't forget.

 

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good example, Guffey...!!!



Here's the Gas Ronda Mustang made by the Logghe Bros. Shop. just like the Comets, but Gas' car is still a door slammer..
With no class for which them to run in, the rule books only could provide a slot for them in the dragster classes. On odd occasions you'd see them entered as "altereds" depending on which strip they were at.
Just like a Anglia gasser which one time ran on fuel at Pomona was forced to run as an altered. Same thing. You go where the rule accommodate you.

 

So, were the Chrysler "two percent" AWB cars funnycars, or were the first funnycars the ones that could tell with the naked eye (like 8" AWB)?

I can see where things can get kind of fuzzy.

And am I wrong thinking Chrismans first Comet was basically built to show up and harrass the Factory Chargers? I know that's what it was used for. If it was it was not the first.
Larry T

 

Here's a picture from the book, "We Were the Ramchargers." Note the caption. I'll paraphrase it, "Ramchargers fuel Funny Car at Martin Dragway June 1965." I think they knew what they had. Additionally, here is a picture of an ad for a 1965 Dodge for sale that appeared in a 1967 edition of Drag News. Note what the owner/driver said the car was. "1965 Dodge Funny Car." Obviously, he knew what he was selling.