This Willys coupe appeared at the 1967 Detroit Autorama, looking like a throwback to an earlier time. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

I’ll wind up the 1967 Autorama with a throwback.

Even in 1967, this little Willys gasser seemed to have come from another era. It would have looked right at home at the 1959 Nationals held at Detroit Dragway.

While Willys gassers were still popular in ’67, this one appears to be all steel. Instead of the typical flip-forward front-clip, the car has the stock opening hood. This Willys is so stock that there is still a factory rear-view mirror inside the windshield.

Yet the front wheels look like they are actual magnesium, and there is definitely an injected V-8 under the hood. Note how the headers exit underneath the front fenders.

Judging from the collection of trophies, the car enjoyed a successful career as a gasser. There is a plaque that reads “Thank You Sad Sacks, for Your Help.” I assume the Sad Sacks must have been a local car club, although I can’t say for sure.

The big number 499 on the door is a true throwback to an earlier era. Big numbers are still required on circle track cars, like NASCAR ands ARCA, as the officials use the numbers to determine how many laps each car has run and in what order they were running in the case of a caution. Today, electronic sensors do much of the tally work, but back in ’67, the scoring was done strictly by eye.

Originally drag racers had similar numbers, but eventually everyone figured out there was no need for huge numbers like the circle track cars used. All that was needed was a small competition number that the tower could use to identify the cars on the starting line. The track crew used the same number to hand out ET-Slips on the return road. In 1967, the cars either had small numbers painted on the roof pillar, or used shoe polish to place a temporary number on the windshield.

No so this Willys gasser. It proudly carried its number on the door in foot-high letters. A throwback, alright, but a great looking throwback at that.

The Vette shop display at the 1967 Autorama featured two wicked looking injected Corvettes. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

The Vette Shop had a huge display at the 1967 Detroit Autorama. They probably didn’t anticipate that forty-odd years later there would be something called the Internet and that someone like me would be showing photos of that display.

These two Vettes caught my attention, in part because both appear to have injected big-block power plants.

The dark Corvette in the foreground is interesting. It is a Stringray model, and it is possible it is the more desirable 1963 split-window fastback, because I can’t see much through the rear window.

The factory retractable headlights seem to be glassed over, but oddly, there appear to be headlamps located behind the custom grille. My only question is why? with the injectors and lettering, this Vette is obviously a full-tilt race car. So why the lights? My only guess is they might help the driver navigate in the pit area at night, but that is stretching things. Most drag cars dispense with headlights and seem to do just fine.

I also wonder about those shafts on the ground next to the car. Are they some sort of performance axle shaft? Or are they simply part of a display that has not been set up as yet?

The white Corvette in the background is a wild-looking piece. I think it is a roadster fitted with the factory hard-top; it is definitely not a fastback.

Those tall injector stacks that protrude nearly as high as the roof are a tip-off that this is a big block Corvette, injector setups for the small block typically have shorter, smaller diameter tubes arranged in a less geometrical pattern.

I wonder what class the white Vette ran in. It isn’t an early funny car, but I don’t remember seeing any Corvette gassers. Probably ran in one of the altered classes.

Note the banner in the background claims the Vette shop has repaired almost 10,000 Corvettes. The first Corvettes appeared in 1953, and didn’t have much market share until 1957 or so. Since there wouldn’t be sufficient Corvettes on the road to support a dedicated shop until the late 1950s, that is an incredible number in 1967.

Assuming the Vette Shop opened in 1957, (In actuality it probably didn’t open until the early ’60s.) that would mean the place would had to have averaged over a thousand Corvettes repairs a year to make that 10,000 claim in January of 1967. That is a lot of fiberglass cars for a single shop in Detroit to have fixed!

Super Shaker Chevelle coming right at ya at the 1967 Autorama Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

Continuing my series on the ’67 Detroit Autorama, this is the Super Shaker. Or should I say yet another car called Super Shaker. I already featured T.W. McLean’s Super Shaker at Detroit Dragway. This car appears quite similar to the McLean car, but I don’t think there is any connection.

Like McLean’s Super Shaker, this Chevelle has a straight axle, and it appears the front wheels were altered by moving the front wheels forward under the fenders, without altering the location of the wheelwells.

Although it could possibly have run in the heavy-weight funny car classes, I’m guessing this might be some form of gasser, or because of the altered wheelbase it may have wound up in one of the altered classes.

Power was apparently a Chevy 427 rat motor. In those days, Chevy’s big block engine was known as the Semi-Hemi.

There does not appear to be an engine in the car. I think they displayed the Chevelle at the show, but the engine wasn’t installed. Because of that low-profile hood scoop, I doubt the car ran a supercharger or injectors.

The letters on the car read GMC, which I assume refers to the owner’s initials. Maybe there were three owners and they used the first letter of each owner’s name. That is just a guess, but this Chevelle didn’t have anything to do with GMC trucks.

Notice the front wheels have been moved forward under the front fenders. This Shaker is ready to run. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

Of course dragsters and gassers had names, long before the first funny car hit the track. When teams switched to the profitable funny car ranks, they brought their old names with them. Roland Leong utilized the label Hawaiian, made famous with his top fuel cars, on a series of successful floppers. Connie Kalitta used the name Bounty Hunter on several rails before adopting the title for his Mustang funny car. Stone, Woods and Cook recycled the name from one of their gassers for their popular Mustang dubbed Dark Horse 2. When a top-end crash destroyed the first car, they built a near-clone of the original Mustang. Rather than calling the new car Dark Horse 3, they christened it The Ghost of Dark Horse 2.

A wide range of events, activities and ideas inspired racers to select their car name. Roger Lindamood found his handle in a pop-county song from the early sixties. The song quickly faded into obscurity, but for more than a decade afterwards, Lindamood’s fans continue to cheer on the car known as Color Me Gone.

The Blue Max was both a movie and a famous World War I metal awarded to German heroes. It was also a highly feared funny car campaigned by Raymond Beadle.

Ford’s Mustang inspired a host of horse themed names, including the Trojan Horse, Boss Hoss, Stampede and Warhorse.

The most popular funny car driver of all time was Russel James Liberman. He first gained fame as the wheelman for Lew Arlington’s Brutus GTO, but he soon abandoned that seat for a touring funny car team of his own. Although Liberman painted the title Jungle Jim on the side of his cars, he obtained Elvis status with his fans and peers who always referred to him simply as Jungle.

As teams started adding superchargers to their cars, a rash of names starting with the term “Super” appeared: Super Cuda, Super Duster, Super Camaro, Super Stang, Super Bug, Super Charger and others.

Although “shaker” was originally a slang term for Chevrolet, it became a popular name on all makes of floppers. Al Bergler ran a Vega, Mustang and Corvette under the Motown Shaker moniker. Likewise, Hubert Platt campaigned his Georgia Shaker as both a Chevy and Ford. Other variations of the name include the Boston Shaker, Bear Town Shaker, Bluegrass Shaker, Tennessee Shaker and others.

Probably the most famous Shaker was Pete Seaton’s series of cars named Seaton’s Shaker. When he added a blower, he updated the name to Seaton’s Super Shaker. Later, Seaton sold his operation to driver Terry Hedrick, who renamed the car Super Shaker — a handy combination of two of the most popular flopper names.

Most drivers and teams retained the same name when they updated to a new car. After establishing their name, they wanted to carry on their brand with their fans, One man who bucked this trend was Arnie “the Farmer” Beswick. Although Beswick was always known as the Farmer throughout his career, each of his race cars had an unique name. These names included Tameless Tiger, Star of the Circuit, Super Judge and Boss Bird.

Don Prudhomme, of course, was known as the “Snake.” His most successful funny cars carried sponsorship by the US Army. While the white floppers weren’t actually named Army, a host of fans paid good money to see that “Army Car” in action.

Of course it would take a good size book to contain a complete list of funny car names. The stories behind Virginia Twister, Secret Weapon, Yankee Peddler, Warlord, Destroyer and Eastern Raider will have to wait for another time.

So what happened? Why don’t funny cars have names any longer? One reason is that match-racing is no longer in favor. Instead of racing several times a week at small, out-of-the-way tracks, today’s touring pros concentrate on the big national events. There are more of these than ever, many with full television coverage. Instead of racing for appearance money, today’s hero drivers rely on sponsorship dollars to pay their salaries. So there is no longer a need for a stimulating name on the side of the car.

Secondly, those corporate sponsorship deals involve huge sums of cash, and finding a willing sponsor is difficult. Sponsors willing to pony up big bucks to place their name on a race car aren’t too keen on sharing the car’s flanks with some form of nickname. In order to land to a lucrative sponsor deal, teams are usually quite willing to forego the practice of christening their car with a name.

I guess that ‘s progress. As for me, however, I’m glad I was active in the era when funny cars were Vicious, Hairy, Candid and 2 Much!

What is your favorite funny car name? If I’ve missed a fascinating car name, leave a response below. Let’s see how many car names we can come up with.

The Chevy Also match racer of Ron and Dan Elkins in better times. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

This was a difficult post to write, because I didn’t want to sensationalize a tragedy, yet I wanted to recognize a neglected car and driver.

Today, sanctioning bodies and track officials are fairly transparent when a fatal accident occurs at the race track. No one likes to see a racing calamity, but the leaders of the sport realize that mishaps do happen and they are open and above-board about it.

In 1967, it was different. Racing, particularly drag racing, had the image of an outlaw activity. Because of this, serious accidents were usually swept under the rug. No one talked about a wreck that ended someone’s life. Everyone acted as if the crash never happened. Which may explain why the Chevy Also funny car has been largely forgotten.

Ron and Dan Elkins campaigned their Chevy Also A/FX match racer throughout the 1966 racing season. The brothers took turns driving and did most of the work on the car.

The Elkins brought their match-batch Chevy to Cobo Hall to appear in the booth of their sponsor, Midwest Automotive, for ’67 Autorama

A play on the Chevy II nameplate, Chevy Also was given the old skool funny car treatment, with a lengthened front-end, altered wheelbase and an injected Chevy big block in the engine compartment.

I remember thinking the car didn’t look very competitive when compared to the flip-top entries like the Hemi-Hunter Camaro and Competition + Mustang. The car looked decidedly home-built. Don’t get me wrong, I love garage and barn built race cars because they display distinctive personality, unlike racers from major shops, which often look-alike.. But the steel body of the injected Chevy Also seemed to place it out the league of the fiberglass cars, or even the blown steel cars like Dick Jesse’s Pontiac.

Apparently the Elkins brothers came to the same conclusion. A short time after Autorama, the brothers slapped a GMC 6-71 supercharger on the big-block Chevy in an attempt to remain competitive against the onslaught of flip-top fiberglass machines.

The blower allowed the brothers to run with the big dogs, at least for s short while. Reportedly, the car hit 9.57 at 150mph on nitro.

Tragically, that extra power was more than the little Chevy II could handle. In August of 1967, while racing in Ulby, Michigan, Chevy Also got seriously crossed up and spun sideways at high-speed. The car rolled several times.

According to the website Dragstrip Deaths, Danny Elkins, who was driving that day, died in the crash.

Thus ended the colorful Chevy Also funny car. In 1967, funny cars were still evolving, and full-bodied cars were entering an unexplored area of high-speed aerodynamics. The physics of keeping light-weight cars on the ground and stable at speeds over 150mph was a little understood science.

My photo of the Chevy Also isn’t very good. It is dark with banners and advertisements cluttering the car. Still, it is a reminder of a different era, when it was possible to build a competitive funny car in your backyard. I think it is time the Danny Elkins and the Chevy Also received a little recognition.

Dick Jesse was not about to switch, so he relied on a blown Pontiac 421 to keep up with the hemis and rat motors. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

If you call yourself “Mister Unswitchable,” you can’t very well change to another brand of car or power-plant. So Dick Jesse started with Pontiac, and remained with Pontiac long after most indian-head funny car racers switched to Chevy or Chrysler engines under Poncho sheet metal.

Jesse’s GTO was another funny car that captured plenty of attention at the 1967 Detroit Autorama. Unfortunately, there are signs and advertising banners plastered over most of the car, but we can still glean some interesting info from this image.

The car is mostly original steel GTO, as you can see from the metal cowl in front of the windshield. If you look closely, you can also see a factory push lock button on the driver’s door. If you were installing a fiberglass door panel, would you bother to install the factory door lock mechanism?

Next, look at the gap between the hood and cowl. Like many match-bash funny cars, this GTO has the front fenders lengthened to accommodate moving the front wheels forward. Apparently Jesse lengthened the front fenders but didn’t bother extending the hood to match.

The secret of Jesse’s success with the mostly original Pontiac can be seen under that chrome “rat-fink” helmet. To allow the big GTO to run with lighter fiberglass, tube framed funny cars, Jesse bolted a supercharger to his fuel burning Pontiac 421 engine. After Jesse solved some oil-starvation issues, the Pontiac mill was more than sufficient to push Jesse to a number of match race victories.

Jesse managed to remain competitive through the ’67 season with the blown Pontiac, before upgrading to a radical chopped-top GTO in 1968.

The SOHC powered Mustang funny car known as Competition + at the '67 Detroit Autorama. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

Strangely enough, I can find no information about this car, despite exhausting my usual sources.

Draglist is my goto source for this type of information, but I couldn’t find even a scrap of knowlege about a 1967 Mustang named Competition +. I dug through old copies of Car Craft, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, Drag Racing, Drag Strip…with no results. Repeated Google searches came up blank for “Competition +.”

This car is a phantom…except for these photos and a couple more taken at Detroit Dragway, I can’t find any proof the car ever existed. Nor do I know who drove the Mustang and what happened to it.

(additional photo after the jump)

What’s so strange is this appears to be a top-of-the-line funny car. It has a Logghe chassis (confirmed by a photo at Detroit Dragway with a LSC sticker on the side.) The body and aluminum work look first class. Assuming that SOHC Ford engine had the right stuff inside, this Mustang should have been a strong competitor to the factory Mercury Comets. If you could run with the Comets in 1967, you could run with anything in the funny car ranks.

The car is set up so similarly to the Mercury machines of Nicholson and Schartmen, that it had the potential to be one of the top funny cars in the country in 1967. Yet it apparently received no exposure, and somehow disappeared into the mists of time.

Notice the stock appearance of the tail lights on this colorful Mustang funny car. Wish I knew who drove the car. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

So what happened? How could such an outstanding machine fall off the radar?

Surely some Ford fan will come forward to identify the driver of this incredible Mustang.

In 1967, Mike Nicopolis went funny car racing with this flip-top Camaro. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

Strolling through the 1967 Detroit Autorama, I came across the Hemi Hunter Camaro funny car. Owned and driven by Mike Nicopolis, the Hemi Hunter was undoubtedly one of the most unusual floppers I ever saw.

To begin with, the original Camaro was introduced in late 1966, as a 1967 model. Nicopolis had his car more or less complete in January 1967, making this one of the first — or possibly the very first — flip-top Camaro funny cars in existence.

You cannot tell from these photos, but the car was painted a glossy fawn brown. That is an unusual shade to paint a funny car, but it suited the Camaro very well.

The big surprise came when the one-piece body was lifted to show the car’s underpinnings. Instead of the standard tubular ladder frame, the Hunter rode on a square tube chassis.

(more photos after the jump)

I’m not sure if the frame rails were constructed expressly for the Camaro, or if Nicopolis modified frame rails from some early street machine.

Even in 1967, a funny car frame constructed if square tubing was a rarity.Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

I’m not too sure about the roll cage and driver accommodations. The cage looks like it attaches to the frame at odd angles, making me wonder how well it would hold up in a major crash. The floor board appears to consist of a thick sheet of aluminum bolted to the frame. The driver’s seat looks pretty marginal.

The engine is an injected rat motor, which according to Draglist, delivered power through a three speed manual transmission.

There is one final touch that sets the Hemi Hunter apart from any other flip-top funny car I ever saw. If you look closely at the car’s side, near the H in Hemi, you will see…an actual door handle. The doors didn’t open, of course, but Nicopolis apparently wanted to make the car look as much like a real Camaro as possible. So he bolted factory door handles to each side of the fiberglass shell.

There was a famous East Coast top fuel car named Hemi Hunter, but as far as I can determine, the funny car and dragster have no connection.

The Hemi Hunter carried sponsorship from Jefferson Chevrolet, which was located in downtown Detroit, just a couple of blocks from Cobo Hall.

Huge drag chute was used to slow the Hunter after a quarter-mile pass. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

What happened to Nicopolis and the Hemi Hunter? I never heard anything more of the car after 1967. Anyone know any further details?

Al Bergler's 1967 version of More Aggravation at Detroit's Cobo Hall. Notice Roger Lindamood's Color Me Gone Charger in the upper right. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)

Hopefully some of you caught the veiled reference to Al Bergler’s More Aggravation in my last post. Bergler is probably best known for his string of Motown Shaker funny cars, or as the aluminum artist who was responsible for the “tin” work on many of the nation’s top race cars in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

Bergler’s first claim to fame, however came with front-engine dragsters. His original More Aggravation earned Bergler the Ridler Award at the 1964 Autorama, which was also the very first time the Ridler was awarded.

That car featured a much modified Austin Bantam coupe body with a full-width windshield grafted on to it. After the jump, you’ll find a video that includes the restored version of the original Bantam bodied car.

For the 1967 Detroit Autorama, Bergler showed this version of More Aggravation, with a streamlined roadster body behind the big blown Chrysler.

I’m not sure if this was a an all new car or whether Bergler simply updated the older Aggravation. In any case, it was a eye-catcher, with that tiny canopy enclosing the driver’s head.

Like all of Bergler’s machinery, everything on More Aggravation was first class. And like the earlier version, it was also very fast. Bergler’s gas powered AA/Comp entries won several prestigious events, including Super Eliminator at the 1966 NHRA Spring Nationals.

I didn’t meet Bergler in person until many years after this photo was taken. In the late seventies, I covered some of the projects in Bergler’s Mount Clemens shop, and we did a photo shoot with the Motown Shaker Corvette at Metro Breach.

One thing I liked about Bergler was that he always referred to his race cars as hot rods, as in “Did you get any good pictures of my hot rod last weekend?”

I’m delighted to hear that Bergler is still around, and has taken an active interest in restoring old race cars. One of the restored cars is the original More Aggravation. Bergler found the old car and bought it back. Many of the original pieces were beyond salvage, but Bergler recreated the items that were no longer useable and returned the digger to it’s the Ridler winning appearance, with a Bantam Coupe body.

The following YouTube video shows More Aggravation running through the streets at a 2006 Cacklefest in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

I guess all of Brergler’s racers were hot rods after all…

The Milk Wagon appeared at the 1967 Autorama in Detroit's Cobo Hall

Unless you’ve spent time in a cold climate, you might not appreciate the significance of an event like the Detroit Autorama.

Although I actually enjoy snow and cold weather, it does tend to curtail most forms of motorsports. The local tracks usually close in October, and they don’t reopen until late March at best. The majority of hot rods and street machines usually go into hibernation during the same period.

If you are a gear-head in the north, the winter months are devoid of racing action. My friends and I followed the events in Southern California in the pages of Drag News, but it wasn’t the same as being at the track.

Thankfully, in the midst of the winter doldrums, Autorama would arrive, providing a reminder of why we were car-crazy in the first place.

Usually, we would attend Friday night, because we didn’t want to wait until Saturday. We would leave our coats in the car so we wouldn’t have to carry them around on the show floor.

We would arrive in the Cobo Hall foyer, shivering in the ghastly green flourescent light, as we waited in line to reach the ticket booth. Outside the floor to ceiling windows, the mounds of snow would look gray in the evening gloom.

That is how it was in the foyer, all cold and green and gray.

Then someone would open a door to the auditorium and we would catch a glimpse of summer. The lighting inside was orange and warm and inviting. Even more important we could make out chrome wheels, candy paint and meticulously detailed engines. It didn’t matter what the weather was like outside, inside the arena it was high performance heaven.

Of course most of the people were there to see the celebrity cars; the Batmobile, Monkeemobile or maybe the Bonnie and Clyde death car. Others came to see the outlandish caricatures of cars made out of bathtubs, pool tables or (I’m not making this up) outhouses. In 1967, I was quite impressed by the colorful “Milk Wagon” you see above.

But we weren’t there for the celebrities or the fantasy rods. We were there for the race cars. Fortunately for us, there was an abundance of racing machines at the 1967 Autorama.

The entry list included the ’67 ride of one of Detroit’s more aggravating racers. I’ll profile that car in the next post.