Exhibition Cars

* Exhibition Cars *

 

An exhibition car could be any vehicle that doesn't fit in any class at a sanctioned event. It could also mean it was built just to get crowds excited between rounds. When a racer has a new idea that they want to try and it is not considered mainstream the race event staff might call it an exhibition run or a test session. 

Most vehicles were built to run the quarter mile on the just rear wheels. The first official wheel stander was the Dodge A100 pick-up truck built by Dodge to show off their new 426 HEMI race engine & their new compact A100 pick-up truck.

The Little Red Wagon pick-up truck was introduced in 1965,and was the first wheel standing truck and was the world's fastest truck at that time. The vehicle was not originally intended to perform wheel-stands. The slight rearward weight bias caused the nose to lift in the air for nearly the entire quarter-mile run. Its first drag strip run netted a mid-11 second quarter mile at 120 mph on just the rear tires !

Chrysler's Director of Marketing,Frank Wylie arranged for Super Stock Champion Bill "Maverick" Golden to purchase the truck,and  Golden turned the A100 pickup into the first exhibition wheel-stander that toured the country. The Red Wagon suffered wrecks in 1969,1971 and 1975. After the 1975 wreck,Golden converted a non-operable show truck and campaigned it until he retired in 2003.

 

 

 

                                                                           What remains post crash from 1975.

 

In 1977 with a 4,230 foot long bumper dragging wheelie,Bill Golden entered the Guinness book of world records,the wheel stand was approximately the length of three quarter-mile drag strips.  

After the Little Red Wagon set the bar,other tail- dragging strip monsters soon followed. Other brands got involved as well. Ford used their Econoline pickup as well as Chevrolet with their Corvair van and pickups.

 

 

In this photo you can see "Wild" Bill  Shewsberry's L.A. Dart, which featured a supercharged HEMI in the trunk.

                                            Other versions of the L.A. Dart followed with cars built based on the Duster body. 

                                                              Wild Bill tanking flight in front of Keith Black's shop !

 

 

                    Another well known Chrysler product was the Hurst-Hemi Under Glass Plymouth Barracuda .

The Hemi Under Glass was developed by Hurst Corporation to showcase their products in the A/FX class,the precursor to funny cars. In 1965 George Hurst hired "Wild Bill" Shrewsberry,an accomplished drag racer who had raced for both Mickey Thompson and Jack Crissman to drive the Barracuda.

The same concept was used as the A100,a big injected race HEMI was placed where the back seat once resided. Later incarnations featured a supercharged power-plant.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

The A990 Race Hemi with fuel injection !

 The latest and greatest Race Hemi features an 8-71 supercharger!

 Shrewsberry left at the end of the 1965 season to pursue his own project,the L.A. Dart. For the 1966 season,Bob Riggle became the second driver of the Hurst Hemi Under Glass and campaigned the cars with Hurst as the sponsor,until the Hurst company was sold to Sunbeam. At that point the car ran without the Hurst logo and was simply known as the "Hemi Under Glass." Riggle's career ended in 1975 with a severe accident at U.S. 30 Dragway in Gary,Indiana. 

 

The mind of a Drag Racer can think of some crazy things,such as this wild Chevy Crew Cab pick-up truck. It was campaigned by Richard Schroeder and called Emergency West .

This was powered by twin big block Chevy engines with an 8-71 superchargers,backed up with twin TH-400 transmissions. All the horsepower is feed to a heavy-duty 12-bolt dually rear end.

It featured a full factory steel body and full length diamond plate running boards.When most racers opted for light weight parts,Richard went the opposite direction.

Schroeder also campaigned an AMX wheel stander called The AMX Wynn's Stander .

There were other cars that fit in with this category that weren't piston powered. They were Jet powered or turbine powered.

Jet engines & turbines were pulled from Army/Navy surplus shelves for penny's on the dollar. They run on cheaper fuel and have less maintenance between rounds . 

When racers installed afterburners they had the perfect recipe for getting the fans on there feet.

Art Arfons was a land speed record holder with his turbine and jet powered  Green Monsters. When he Drag Raced he had a piston powered car with a WW II 16 cylinder engine.

                             Then in the late 1950's he transitioned to Land Speed racing where he spent the remainder of his career.  

Art's son Tim built a front engine Dragster in 1972 with a turbine engine. After some minor accidents Art convinced him to switch to tractor pulling. After a long successful career with pulling,he decided to restore the original Dragster and start touring the country again.

                                                              Art watching Tim do a burn out at Dragway 42!

The resurrected  Green Monster went faster then the original car and shut off at 700 feet.

 

 In October of 2012, it went 170 mph. Eventually, it ran its best ET,a 7.15 at 201 mph. Green Monster #19 is still performing in Europe. 

 

 

          The best for last has to be T.V.Tommy Ivo's 4-engine Dragster called The Show Boat !

 

 

Tommy Ivo was an actor who raced when he wasn't acting. At one point when the studios found out what he was doing on his off camera days they demanded him to stop racing . He didn't listen. After the studio told him to stop,he would enter a race and use a different name.

He raced front engine Dragsters and Funny Cars,one car he built was a dual-engine Dragster that featured two Buick Nailhead V-8's that were joined together by inter-meshing flywheels. One engine ran counter clockwise. The car ran well but he felt if two engines were fast then four must be faster.

When Tommy left acting after 19 years he then raced full time,throughout his career he ran 36 cars that competed in 12 different classes.

 In 1961 Tommy Ivo created a beast that drag racing has never  seen before or since.

The engines on the left side drove the front wheels,while the engines on the right powered the rear wheels. The 4-motor car was a monster with 32 cylinders and 1,856 cubic inches of displacement generating about 2,000 horsepower.

The car would smoke all four slicks to half track,and it took longer for the smoke to settle. Tommy had to point and pull the trigger and hope it went straight or it would be curtains,lights out & kaput for him.  Thankfully it never came to that and the car and Tommy survived.

                                                                 T.V. Tommy giving the spec's on his Show Boat.

 The NHRA was concerned that four-engine cars might become commonplace as well as a high risk factor. They just wanted to play it safe and  relegated the “Showboat” to an exhibition class and limited Top Fuel cars to one engine.

In 1963,Ivo opted to return to Top Fuel racing and sold the Showboat to crewman Tom McCourry, who later gave it a second life by adding the famous Buick Station wagon body, crafted by legendary body man Tom Hanna. 

Hanna hand-formed the entire body,which sported a real roof rack and the first escape hatch in a Funny Car-type body. McCourry campaigned the car as the “Wagon Master” for another 15 years.

The car was on display at the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala,FL for a number of years until May of 2022,when it was sold by it's owner via Mecum auctions. 

 

 

                       Tommy Ivo retired from Drag Racing in 1982,he is 86 years old as of 2022.

                                             There are more of these wild creations out there,but I can't add them all.

                                                              More great articles coming soon!