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.
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