Don Garlits Top Fuel Dragster - Where It All Began

[Ed Blown Vert]

Don Garlits Top Fuel Dragster - Where It All Began
Big's Front Driver
Last month we named Don Garlits' '71 rear-engined (or front-drivered) Top Fuel dragster as the fifth most influential hot rod of all time. This month we've got a feature story on Big Daddy's new innovation, the blown-fuel late-model 392ci Hemi crate engine. In conjunction with the October 2007 passing of chassis builder and driver Connie Swingle, we couldn't help but pay tribute to the historic '71 car once again with this radical photo of Big on the starting line at Lions Drag Strip during the AHRA Grand Nationals on January 8, 1971.
It was almost exactly a year earlier at Lions that Garlits had the famous clutch explosion that cost him half a foot, but 11 months after that incident, in December 1970, the front-driver car was tested at Sunshine Dragstrip in Florida sans body panels. Another month later was the Lions race shown here, and in February the car won the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona. Professional drag racing was never the same after that. The safety afforded by the engine relocation was as important as the current design efforts of John Force Racing based on discoveries surrounding the recent racing death of Eric Medlin and the horrific accident suffered by Force himself.
This photo is one of more than 200 historic Hemi images appearing in the special HOT ROD Archives Series edition called Hemi Power that remains on sale through January 15, 2008. Go get a copy.-David Freiburger

Photo Gallery: Don Garlits Top Fuel Dragster - Where It All Began - Hot Rod Magazine



Read More | Digg It | Add to del.icio.us




More...

[Spaz]