My First Dragster

My car isn't a genuine Sixties dragster, which is a relief, as they were mostly deathtraps. As far as I've been told, the car was originally built by Bob Nixon around 1993 as a slingshot, but is best known for running as 'High Fever' in comp coupe guise wearing a steel Topolino body with a long history in UK drag racing. The full story of the car can be found here on the excellent UK Drag Racing Nostalgia site, which is where I nicked this pic from:



The car had a revamp in 2003 - 2004 but after disgracing itself on the UK version of the Monster Garage TV show it seems to have fallen from favour, and by the time I got it was minus the engine, either the steel or glass Topo bodies and many of the detail engine parts. The bodywork was hacked about, the DZU fasteners that held it on had disappeared, the tyres were all perished, the gearbox was held in place with bungies and there was what seemed to be a mixture of brake fluid and oil forming a pool on the floor of the cockpit. So this is what I've got:

Dragstrip Virgin

Hello. This blog is about me resurrecting an old Sixties-style slingshot dragster so I can remedy the appalling situation of having got to middle age and never having been drag racing. I've never even driven a normal street car down a strip. I am, I'm ashamed to say, a dragstrip virgin.

I understand most people would start with something a little more sensible for their first drag car, but after losing my beloved Dodge Dart in a fire I was starting from scratch and wanted something a bit extreme to cheer myself up for my next project. So when an unloved, engineless nostalgic slingshot came up on ebay I set my maximum bid as 'everything I had in the bank, minus a bit for transporting it down to London' and it was mine.

Firstly, what's a slingshot? Basically, by the late Fifties cars were being built specifically built for drag racing rather than being adapted from production Fords. The late Mickey Thompson is credited with the slingshot design, which sat the driver behind a narrowed rear axle in a simple chassis with a light, wider front end, maximising the weight over the driven rear wheels. The slingshot name comes from the impressions that the driver looked like he was about to be fired from a slingshot stretched from the front of the car. The slingshot design lasted until the beginning of the Seventies, when rear-engined dragsters became the way to win races while also staying alive. Although others had built rear-engined cars, Don Garlits is credited with popularising the rear-engined design, after a serious accident demonstrated why having the drivetrain behind you is safer than in front. The excellent book Fuel and Guts by Tom Madigan has many tales of fiery death that convince you that Garlits was right.

















But slingshots just look better. Even when they're crashing.