Maybe it was the era we grew up in, maybe it was our genetic coding, and maybe it was just plain opportunity; but long before the movie “Top Gun” came out, Barry, Jeff, and I surrendered to the need for speed.
American automobiles had begun their march towards more muscle and more speed shorty after World War II when in 1947 NASCAR was founded. In 1949 Oldsmobile debuted the first 300+ cubic inch V8 with dual overhead cams producing 135 horse power in a 3580 lb car, or 26.5 pounds vehicle weight for every horsepower. In 1951 Chrysler introduced the Hemi engine. Chevy introduced the small block V8 the same year Barry was born (1955).
In 1957 the year between Jeff’s birth, Chevy introduced Fuel injection; Ford and Studebaker introduced Superchargers; and Pontiac had both factory fuel Injection and factory equipped “Tri-Power” or three two barrel carburetors on a six cylinder production engine.
But even more “mind molding” was the true explosion of American Muscle that was launched in 1964 When the Pontiac Grand Turismo Omologata’s (GTO) 389 cubic inch, 3 double barreled 348 horse powered ground pounder tipped the scales at an exciting one horse power for every 8.9 pounds of vehicle weight, only to be outclassed 6 months later by the lean 1964-1/2 Ford Mustang that tipped in at an amazing one horse for every 7.8 pounds of vehicle weight.
And the race was on.
By the end of the 60s; 5 short years later, classics like the 351 Cleveland 385 stock HP, and the Dodge 426 Hemi 425 stock HP had dropped that vehicle to horse power ration down to 6.5:1. Several American manufacturers were turning out V8s with an astounding 500 plus cubic inches. For you Rice rocket fans, you’d need an 8.5 liter engine to equal the size of those monsters.
And while cars today run faster quarters than back then, it’s only because the engine armament race slowed way down in the early 70’s thanks to the federal government’s imposing tighter fuel restrictions, and then even more in the late 70’s with the first of the environmental laws.
At the same time out on the salt flats of Bonneville there was a tremendous battle raging over the fastest car on earth, primarily fought out between Craig Bredlove’s Spirit of America and Art Afron’s Green Monster.
In 1962 Craig Breedlove became the first man to exceed 400 miles an hour behind the wheel of the Spirit of America. In early ’63 the Green Monster topped that record with a 409 mph run. A couple months later, Spirit was back on the salt and grabbed 434 mph; late ’63 rolled around and Afron ran a 458 mph run, only to be eclipsed a week later by Bredlove at 522 mph. 1964 saw Green Monster run a blistering 536 mph, Spirit answered with 552 mph; in summer Green Monster appeared to slam the door with two successive 571 mph runs (that is about 2-3/4 football fields end to end in one second).
August slide by, and September, then just before the end of the racing season when everyone thought the issue had been permanently decided, Craig Bredlove laid down a stunning 600.6 mph run to stamp Spirit of America firmly in the history of land speed racing (a full three football fields and an astounding 5% faster that the Green Monster).
And while Bonneville had become dominated by jet powered vehicles, the local Drag Race scene was alive with poor boy’s home built thunder machines. Straight 6 engines and V8’s ran side by side and door to door. There were 8 or 9 quarter-mile dragstrips within an hour’s drive of our small town and at those strips, along with the local boys, men like Don Garlits came calling. “Big Daddy” Don Garlits had a run of speed records in the 60’s becoming the first man to exceed 170 mph from a standing start in a ¼ mile run. Then he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down being the first man to exceed 180, then 200, 240, 250, and 270 mph from a standing start in under ¼ mile.
And all the while Garlits, Afron, and Richard Petty proved that this was all about the driver and the skill, and not the money.
Garlits blew up a transmission on a slingshot dragster that took off part of a foot, and during the winter break invented the rear engine dragster design that remains dominate today some 50 years later. And a year later he was the first to start running alcohol for fuel instead of gasoline.
Afron powered his Green Machine with a wounded jet engine he bought from a scrap dealer after a bolt had been sucked through the blades. He pulled out the broken blades, threw them away, and reassembled the engine; balancing it by distributing the remaining blades with empty slots all without manuals or drawings, which were all classified at the time.
And while Richard Petty ultimately seemed to print money, he started out dragging a car around on a trailer from event to event and ultimately racked up any number of records on dirt tracks, figure 8s and asphalt ovals. Petty started 1,184 races in his career, pole position on 127 races, finished over 700 races in the top ten drivers, won 200 races, 27 in one year alone, and won both the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR annual championship 7 times.
Yep, the times we grew up in were filled with the throaty roar of machines that existed only to turn oil, gasoline, and rubber, into sound, speed, and black stripes on the asphalt. Machines that existed not as the engineer designed them, but as the mechanic-driver breathed life into them.
Just as Barry, Jeff, and I were beginning to wrench on cars of our own, those monster muscle cars of the early 60’s were being sold off as affordable used cars. Ten years old, and 100,000+ miles and they were in need of much more repair than the average working man wanted to have waiting for him every weekend.
The seals were worn, the parts were loose, the bolts were rusty, and the windows leaked. But for a few hundred dollars and some sweat and parts, a boy could have a fire-breather of his own to fuel his dreams of real speed; limited more by his effort than his wallet, and an inspiration to every other boy in the valley.
Is it any wonder then that we gravitated to the now clichéd “need for speed”?
Barry’s first car was a 1960 Ford thunderbird. Native 360 cubic inch displacement, rolled off of the assembly line faster than the police cars of the same year.
Jeff’s first machine was a 1964 Chevy Impala with a native 327 that ended up over-bored, shaved, and fast with a capitol F.
And a few months before I turned 14 years of age I bought a 1935 Ford PU and paired it with a ‘48 Mercury flathead V8. It was thirty five years later in the early 1980s when Detroit came out with a production engine that pound for pound developed more horsepower than that ’48 Merc. And coupling that powerful, torquey flathead to a three speed and 4.11:1 rear end meant that truck flew from 0-55mph faster than anything else around.
I shut down Camaros and MGs, Corvettes and GTOs; home builds and custom shop rods, whatever came along. If we were racing light to light, that pickup's rear bumper was clear out the far side of the intersection while the competition was still trying to get its rear bumper into the intersection.
Sure, it called for time and effort. And often enough we found ourselves making hasty repairs on the side of some road somewhere while we were supposed to be back at school.
Is it any wonder that we carried pocket knives to school back then? If we hadn’t, our finger nails would have always been rimmed in greasy black dirt.
© Copyright 2017, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
