This Mustang appeared briefly at North Brother's Ford in 1967. Who built it and what became of it?

Note: additional photos at the bottom of the post

What is about Mustang funny cars? Not too long ago, with the help of several Vintage-Nitro readers, I explored and solved the Mystery of the Competition + Mustang, which I believe is the original flip-top Mustang funny car. Going through my photo archives, I have discovered another mysterious Mustang flopper. Hopefully a reader will step forward to provide the story behind the strange case of the North Brothers Mustang.

In the fall of 1967, I was relaxing after a day of High School when one of my friends came over with some tantalizing news: “My brother was just up at North Brothers Ford. They’re building a flip-top funny car in the service area!”

I was skeptical. North Brothers was the local Ford dealership in Garden City, Michigan. If someone asked you to name a high performance Ford dealership in the lower Detroit area, you would probably think of Splitter-Demmer or Stark Hickey Ford — both of which had their names plastered on local race cars. North Brothers  sold muscle cars, of course. Heck in 1967, even the Rambler dealerships sold muscle cars. But North Brothers didn’t typically delve too deeply into racing, especially at the funny car level.

Are they really building a Funny Car at North Brothers?

Still, we had to check this story out. None of my friends could drive, but at the time, North Brothers was less than a mile away. (Since then, the dealership, which is till active, moved a mile or so west of the location they used in 1967.) Heading out the door for the hike to Ford road, I grabbed my trusty Kodak Instamatic 104, in case there was indeed a funny car at the dealership.

It was a crisp, fall day, and it only took twenty or so minutes to walk to the dealership. The service bay doors were open because of the nice weather, and sure enough, there was a primered, notch-back Mustang flopper sitting silently inside one of the bays.

The car was obviously still under construction, with a roller chassis and a bare-block between the chassis rails. Still, it was an honest to goodness, flip-top Mustang. There was no indication of the owner or builder.

It was apparently a slow day at the dealership. There were a few cars in for service, but there weren’t any mechanics working on them. The service manager was behind a counter,  reading a newspaper.  He just shook his head when I asked him if he knew anything about the fiberglass Mustang. I didn’t believe he was telling the truth then and I still doubt it today.

Remember, there were only a handful of flip-top funny cars in 1967, so a Mustang flopper was something quite out of the ordinary. If you spent your days scheduling oil changes and tuneups, don’t you think the appearance of a flip-top Mustang might just peak your interest? My guess is he didn’t want a bunch of kids hanging around, so he denied any knowledge of the Mustang.

So what became of this Mustang Funny Car?

That was the end of the story. A couple of days afterward, several of us walked back to North Brothers again, hoping to see some progress on the flopper. There was no sign of the car anywhere. Almost 44 years after that sighting at North Brothers, I still don’t who was building the Mustang or what became of it.

Right about  now some of you are jumping up, saying “I know. I know. It’s Paul Stefansky’s Boss Hoss Mustang!” And you would be wrong. Or at least partially wrong.

Not Stefansky’s Boss Hoss; chassis does not match

Stefansky is a good guess, because the body of the Stefansky and Hatton car and the shell of the North Brothers Mustang are virtual clones. Stefansky ran a rare notch-back Mustang, rather than the more common fast-back. Both Stefansky and partner Paul Hatton have links to Garden City, Michigan, which matches the North Brothers location. But there is a major problem. The chassis is all wrong.

These photos were taken in September or October of 1967. I also have photos of the brand new Boss Hoss at the 1968 Detroit Autorama — three or four months afterwards. Stefansky’s Boss Hoss is riding on either a Logghe Chassis or a close facsimile of one. In contrast, the chassis on the North Brothers’ Mustang looks like a welding shop special.

A Logghe chassis was state of the art in ’67 and consisted of consistent diameter top and bottom round tubing with “ladder frame” uprights. This car appears to have large square rails on top, with lower rails of smaller diameter round tubing. The front couple of feet of the chassis morph into thinner diameter round tubing to support the suspension. This is definitely not a Logghe style design. In addition, Stefansky’s car featured a full roll cage, while the North Brothers car appears to have a dragster-style loop behind the driver.

So while the body shell on Stefansky’s funny car and the North Brothers Mustang are carbon copies, the chassis rails are decidedly different.

Let the guessing begin

I can think of three scenarios about the car in the photos.

The first is that this car has nothing to do with Stepaahnski and Hatton. The body shell probably came out of the same mold, but that is the only similarity between the two cars.  Perhaps the car raced locally and did not achieve much success. Maybe it was never finished. Maybe if you peek under a tarp inside a barn somewhere in South-Eastern Michigan, you’ll find a decaying fiberglass shell riding draped over some rusty chassis rails.

The second scenario is that Stefansky and Hatton built the car with this chassis, then decided to switch to a Logghe model before the car was finished. Maybe they actually ran the car and discovered the chassis did not run straight. Maybe some other racer talked them in to switching to a L0gghe chassis. Maybe rule changes made this chassis, without a full role cage, illegal. Whatever, it is possible that between the time these I took these photos and the debut of the Boss Hoss at Autorama, Stefansky swiched to a Logghe style chassis.

The final scenario is that someone got a good start on a home-made funny car, but couldn’t complete it. They might have lost interest, got married, got divorced,  lost their job, run out of money, got drafted; there a thousand reasons while someone would sell a race car before it is complete. Perhaps this car was put up for sale and Stefansky or Hatton decided the body shell would be perfect for the Ford funny car they were building. So they bought just the body and adapted it to a Logghe style chassis.

After 44 years, I still don’t know who built this funny car

After 44 years, I still know next to nothing about this mysterious fiberglass Mustang. Hopefully, somewhere in cyberspace a reader remembers this car and can tell us what became of it. I would love to hear from you!

Somewhat bizarre chassis uses square and round tubing of various diameters. Definitely not a Logghe style funny car chassis.

Another view of the Mustang flip-top inside the service area at North brother's Ford. Note the street cars awaiting service in the background.

 

Dodge Charger's were plentiful at Detroit Dragway's 1967 Midwest Championships, Larry Arnold was on hand with the Penetration Dodge funny car.

Dodge Chargers were everywhere at the 1967 Midwest Championships. This somewhat ungainly looking glass charger was campaigned by Larry Arnold of Berkley, Michigan. Arnold would go on to much more competitive rides in the future, but for ’67, this radical long wheelbase Charger was a stand-out on the UDRA circuit.

The body was ‘glass, but I don’t think the car was a flopper. Unlike most funny cars of the era, there was no windshield or side glass. Arnold sat far back in the rear of the car, with an injected 426 Hemi occupying the area where a real Charger’s dashboard would be. If you look closely, you notice a forest of short injector stacks to the rear of the lengthened hood.

Draglist gives Jay Howell credit for building the car, which was painted a royal blue with a wide white stripe on it’s flanks.

After 1967, Arnold moved into the driver;s seat of the fearsome Super Cuda, where he enjoyed much success. He drove the Super Ford for Larry Coleman, before taking the controls of the Kingfish Cuda.  He drove briefly for Mickey Thompson, before Roland Leong tapped him to drive the famous Hawaiian Monza in the mid-seventies.

Arnold looked strong in the early rounds of Detroit Dragway’s midwest championships, but he fell to eventual winner Steve McKesson in the semi-finals.

 

Dick Mack's ultra-short wheelbase Mash Basher takes on Bob DuBrock at Detroit Dragway

Yet another less than stellar photo from Detroit Dragway’s Midwest Championships. Hey what can I say, I was only a kid with an Instamatic back in 1967.

I wanted to include this photo, because it is the only one I have of fuel runner-up Dick Mack and his Satisfaction Chevelle. Take a minute to look at the wheelbase on the Chevelle (far lane.) It appears that Mack pushed the rear wheels forward nearly as much as Larry Swiatek’s Gray Ghost GTO. Unlike Swiatek, who also shifted the front wheels forward, Mack left the front axle in the stock location. Do the math. A 1965 Chevelle coupe had a wheelbase of 115 inches. It appears Mack reduced that number by at least 20 inches.

The result is a full bodied, A/FX funny car with a wheelbase approaching that of a fuel altered. Despite the truncated wheelbase, Mack managed to get down the track without incident, eventually claiming the runner-up slot to Steve McKesson’s Mustang flopper.

I don’t know much about Mack, but Draglist indicates he hailed from Ohio. Draglist features a photo of Mack cribbed from the November 1966 issue of Super Stock and Drag Illustrated. The car in SSDI photo is a stock wheelbase ’65 Chevelle. I’m not sure if it this is the same car, but it was also called Satisfaction. I’m guessing that sometime after the tame wheelbase car was photographed in 1966, Mack hauled the car into the garage and performed major surgery on the chassis and rear fenders.

Moving the front wheels forward would have helped weight transfer and probably would have made the car more stable at high-speed. For whatever reason, Mack left the front wheels alone, creating an extreme altered wheelbase match-racer. Draglist also indicates Mack campaigned a 1966 Chevelle in the ’67 season. If so, he must have swapped this match-batch racer for a newer model shortly after this event
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Mack’s first round victim was none other than Bob DuBrock, whose Mustang fastback was featured in an earlier Vintage-Nitro post.

Once again, I can’t say if DuBrock repainted the car he ran in 1966, or if this Mustang is a brand new entry. One thing is certain, Dubrock was running gasoline in 1966, but he was competing in the nitro category in ’67.

I think the man standing next to Mack’s car is Detroit Dragway’s long time starter, known as Heavy Duty. I’m not sure what his real name was. He proudly wore the title “Heavy Duty” stitched on the pocket of his track uniform. I’m not sure when Heavy began at Detroit Dragway, but I believe he was still active as a starter at both Detroit and Motorcity Dragway a decade after this photo was taken.

 

The Limelight Dodge funny car on the return road at Detroit Dragway in 1967 | 126 Instamatic image by Tom Bonner

One of my favorite images from Detroit’s Dragway’s Midwest Championships is this shot of Bill McKessson’s Limelight Dodge Charger funny car.

I’ve discussed Steve McKesson’s Mustang funny car at length in earlier posts. In 1965-66, brothers Bill and Steve McKesson campaigned an altered wheelbase Plymouth Fury funny car. It was typical of the early A/FX funny cars, with a steel body, altered wheelbase and an injected 426 Hemi. For 1967, the brothers split up. Steve built a flip-top Mustang, while Bill remained with Mopar and assembled the radical Dodge Charger funny car you see here.

The car was state of the art, with a full Logghe chassis and a injected, nitro-burning Hemi. I call it a jack-knife funny car, because of the way the body opened. The front clip tilted forward, gasser style. There is nothing very unusual about that; many early funny cars featured tilt front-ends. The rest of the car’s body however, was hinged at the rear and could be titlted up like a flopper. So when both front clip and the main body were titlted upward, the car opened up like a jack-knife.

To make things more interesting, the car had opening doors, which made quite a sight when the body was up, the front end was titled forward and both doors were wide open. I don’t remember seeing another funny car built in this fashion.

I have found several references to this car, including the usually reliable DragList, which claim the body of the Limelight was fiberglass. I’m sceptical about that, for two reasons.

First, when the body was opened up, it retained most of the attributes of a factory Charger, including openings for the heater core, the typical slots in the cowl and factory door hinges. Sure, all of these things could have been reproduced in ‘glass, but why bother?

The second reason I doubt the body shell is fiberglass is this photo. A fiberglass body built for racing wouldn’t lend itself as a perch for the driver while being towed down the return road. At the very least, the weight of an adult male would cause stress cracks. If any chuck holes caused the car to jounce up and down, I would expect a glass body to rip from the driver’s weight. The front clip, trunk lid and doors might have been ‘glass, but I suspect the body shell was original Chrysler steel.

Which brings me to the subject of the driver himself. There is some discrepancy over who was driving the Limelight in April 1967.

The Limelight was at the Detroit Autorama in January 1967. According to placards on the car, the driver was Del Hienelt, who I discussed at length in the Steve McKesson post.

The Drag News report on the Midwest Championships seems to imply that Bill McKesson himself was at the wheel of the Limelight that Sunday at Detroit Dragway. Ordinarily, I would trust the Drag News article, but many of the drivers of other cars at the event we’re not identified, leading me to conclude that the writer didn’t do much research into who was driving what.

As for me an my friends, we believed Hienelt was driving that day. I now know the Hienelt was driving for Larry Coleman by August of 1967, so he had to have left the Limelight’s driving seat sometime between January and August. Can anyone identify the driver in the photo? Is Hienelt? Bill McKesson? Or could McKesson have hired another driver after Hienelt left?

Bonus points if you can identify the person with the big hair steering the car on the return road.

I must have been near the top end when I snapped this photo, judging by the cars in the pit area across the track, The pit road bleachers have ended, and the cars assembled against the fence look like street driven vehicles. The street cars typically pitted near the top end, while the all-out race cars usually clustered behind the stands near the starting line.

One final question. What happened to Bill McKesson and the Limelight Dodge? I don’t find any references to either the man or the car after 1967. If you know something, leave a comment below.

 

Steve McKesson's SOHC Mustang won the fuel funny car category at Detroit Dragway's Midwest Championships -- Instamatic photo by Tom Bonner

Detroit Dragway, 1967 Midwest Championships: The overall winner in the fuel funny car division was Steve McKesson and the Competition + flip-top Mustang.

We’ve seen this car before, as some time ago I launched a campaign to discover the owner and history of the Competition +. After failing in numerous attempts to learn the car’s history, Daryl Huffman stepped up to identify the owner and driver as Steve McKesson of Michigan. Not long after that I discovered a report in Drag News covering Detroit Dragway’s 1967 Midwest Championships. Collaborating my sometimes faulty memory, the story lists Steve McKesson as the overall winner in the fuel funny car category.

Huffman had further information about the car. I was surprised to learn that Larry Coleman acquired the Mustang, and that this was the car that Del Heinelt was driving when he was killed in at the 1967 US Nationals.

A short while after hearing from Huffman, Lee Moore commented that he found a story online that seemed to contradict the assumption that Heinelt was driving the flip-top Mustang when he was killed. Heinelt, driving for Larry Coleman at a large funny car event in Memphis Tennessee, defeated a field that included Steve McKesson driving the Competition + Mustang.

Moore came to the natural conclusion that if Heinelt was driving a Mustang for Larry Coleman at Memphis, he couldn’t have been driving the Comptition + at the same event. And he couldn’t have been killed in the Competition +  a few weeks later.

After considerable study, digging through a variety of material and communicating with many knowledgeable experts, I think I finally know what happened to both Heinelt and the Competition + Mustang. Here is my analysis:

• In early 1965, Delmar Heinelt worked as fabricator and “head wrench” for Pete Seaton. By years end, he had moved up to driver of the famous “Seaton’s Shaker” Chevelle altered wheelbase funny car.
• In the fall of 1966, Pete Seaton replaces the Chevelle with a new steel bodied Corvair funny car. Heinelt steps down and Jay Howell takes over the controls of the Corvair
• In January of 1967, Heinelt is listed as the driver for Bill McKesson’s new Dodge Charger funny car. Ironically, Bill McKesson’s brother Steve is also building a new funny car, a Mustang he calls Competition +
• In the spring of 1967, Ford ace Dick Brannan dissolves his funny car operation and puts his fleet of steel Mustang funny cars up for sale. Hubert Platt takes over the wheel of the quickest and fastest of Brannan’s cars, a Holman and Moody prepared, long-nose injected Mustang. Sometime in the summer of ’67, the Mustang is sold to Larry Coleman
• Coleman gives the ex-Brannan car the name Super Ford Jr. It features a steel body and a much modified Mustang factory chassis. To remain competitive with the growing number of flip-top fiberglass funny cars, Coleman adds a supercharger to the car’s SOHC Ford powerplant. Sydney Foster is tapped as driver
• Shortly afterwards, Foster steps down and Del Heinelt signs on as driver of the Super Ford Jr.
• August 6, 1967 sees Heinelt capture top honors at a 23 car funny car event at Lakeland International Raceway (Memphis, GA)
• Although the supercharged Super Ford is holding its own against the floppers, Coleman intends to run the US Nationals, which is only a few weeks away. There the Super Ford Jr. will be facing the top funny cars in the nation, many with fiberglass bodies and superchargers. It is doubtful that the steel Mustang can stand up to the competition at Indy
• At the same Memphis race, McKesson loses the engine in the Competition +.  McKesson is planning to sell the car, but now fears the buyer won’t want the Mustang with it’s wounded powerplant.
• Either McKesson approaches Coleman, or Coleman makes an offer to McKesson. Whichever, Coleman takes ownership of Competition + in early August

It is a good deal for Coleman, as his blown SOHC Ford engines will bolt right in, replacing the broken injected ‘Cammer. The addition of a blower might require some minor aluminum work, and some of the tubing might need rerouting to accommodate the new induction system. With several weeks to prepare the car, however, this is easily accomplished. I can’t say whether Coleman repainted the car in the interim or not. By August 30, however, Coleman is at Indianapolis, with Heinelt as driver.

The stage turns tragic, however as Heinelt crashes during the qualifying on September 1. According to Daryl Huffman and Lee Moore, Heinelt suffered a heart attack, which caused him to loose control of the car on a 169 mph pass. Heinelt dies at the scene, either from the heart attack or injuries sustained in the crash.

Any suspicion that Heinelt might still have been driving the steel Super Ford Jr. car at Indy can be erased by a terse paragraph in the November 1967 edition of Car Craft magazine. The Car Craft report on the US Nationals states that “…the Larry Coleman-owned blown Mustang entry…got airborne…resulting in the death of Del Heinelt and the destruction of the fiberglass Mustang. ” The italics are mine. No one would have described the ex-Brannan car as a fiberglass Mustang.

I wasn’t at Indy for the 1967 Nationals, and I always wondered about the circumstances of Heinelt’s death. When I started digging into the history of the Competition +, I never suspected where it would lead.

Thanks to everyone who helped me unravel this mystery, especially Daryl Huffman, Lee Moore, John Gacioch, Perry White, Dorne Rigby.

Sources:

The Mystery of the Competition + Mustang funny car

• Comment: Daryl Huffman August 2, 2010
• Comment by Lee Moore, December 18, 2010
• Comment by Lee Moore February 5, 2010

Relevant Web Pages:

• HEINELT HUSTLES FOR CROWD
• The 1966 A/FX Mustangs – Dearborn Flashback
• Photo: Sydney Foster (Super Ford Jr.) vs Kelly Chadwick — Lakeland International Raceway
• Photo: Super Ford Jr. (injected) — LakeLand International Raceway
• Photo: Friends of the Old Detroit Dragway — Facebook
• Dragstrip Deaths — 1967

Printed Material

• McKesson Bros. Prove Too Much for Funnies — Drag News, May 26, 1967 Vol. 12, No. 48 | page 27
• 1967 NHRA Nationals — Car Craft, Novermber 1967 Vol. 15, No. 11 | page 18

 

Dick Smith's Firebrewed Dodge defeats Ron Ross at the Detroit Dragway Midwest Championships

This is the final for the Gas funny cars at Detroit Dragway’s Midwest Championships. I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a very great photo. The cars are blurred, there is a big sedan taking up much of the foreground, and there is a photographer in the way.

So the photo won’t win any prizes, but I wanted to include it for several reasons.

Here you see Dick Smith’s Firebrewed Dodge Coronet facing off with Ron Ross in an altered wheelbase Mustang.

I wrote about Smith before, when he drove the big Coronet to victory at a Detroit Dragway event year earlier. In 1967, the results were the same as Smith handled all comers and went home undefeated.

This is the only image I found of the Ron Ross Mustang. I can’t say much about the car, but it appears it was given the full funny car treatment. The front wheels appear have been moved forward somewhat, and judging by the injector tubes, the engine is now almost to the firewall. The front end is riding quite high, although some of that height could be caused by the car launching off the line.

I can find no information about Ron Ross as a driver. There was nothing on , and none of my usual sources provided any information on Ross.

I did find some references to a n engine builder and tuner named Ron Ross who was active a decade or more after this photo was taken, It isn’t uncommon for a driver to move from being a wheelman to a tuner, so it could be the same Ron Ross. On the other hand, Ross is a fairly common name, so the engine builder might have had nothing to do with the funny car driver.

I saw Smith’s Firebrewed Dodge run at two different events, and Smith dominated both of them.

 

The long nose Southern Style Dodge Charger on the return road at Detroit Dragway.

Another tough Dodge funny car at Detroit Dragway’s Midwest Championships was Jack Thorton’s Southern Style Dodge Charger.

Thorton was running in the gas funny car ranks that Sunday. I snapped this photo on the return road after Thorton lost to eventual winner Dick Smith’s Firebrewed Coronet in the first round.

I’m not exactly sure what the term “Southern Style” match racing come from. I know it is supposed to be summed up by no-holds barred, “run what you brung”  racing, but that mode of competition isn’t exclusive to the South. After all, the altered wheelbase match racer was basically invented in Michigan, and many of the top match-bash racers hailed from California, the Midwest and the East Coast. Nothing against Southern racers, but I’m not sure what makes this Dodge Charger all that different from the other funny cars at Detroit Dragway that day.

I don’t know that much about the car, other than it features an extended nose, the rear wheels have been moved forward significantly and the engine appears to have been set back to further increase weight transfer. I can’t say what sort of chassis the car used, although I can see a husky roll cage inside, and it looks like the car has a straight axle. I found another photo that indicates the rear suspension used leaf springs, which is a tip-off that the car may have retained a modified Charger frame.  Most of the tubular funny car chassis of the era used coil over shocks for suspension, front and rear.

Whatever the specifications, I really like the looks of the Southern Style Dodge Charger.  I can’t say how much longer the nose is, but  would guess it is at least 18 inches, possibly longer than a stock Charger. While some lengthened funny cars looked ungainly, the long front clip actually helps this car’s appearance, giving off the impression “I’m mean, don’t mess with me.”

Painted on the rear fender is the word NASCAR, followed by the competition number 89. From this we can deduce that Thorton ran the NASCAR funny car series in 1967. Since most of the cars running Detroit Dragway that day were part of the UDRA circuit, I assume Thorton also ran other UDRA meets.

I failed to find any more information about Jack Thorton, other than the car was sponsored by Thorton Auto Parts, which suggests he or someone in his family owned an auto parts store. As to where that auto parts store was located (and presumably the car was from the same location) I have no clue.

Anyone know where Jack Thorton and his Charger were from? Let us know in the comments.

 

Ron Pellegrini's flip-top Buick Gran Sport at Detroit Dragway in 1967

Of the funny cars at Detroit Dragway’s 1967 Midwest Championships, one of the wildest entries was Ron Pellegrini’s SuperBird Buick Gran Sport. Paradoxically, the SuperBird probably looked closer to a factory machine than any of the other nitro cars.

At first glance this could be any  Gran Sport you might see on the street. Except for the paint (and the drag chute), the only non-stock items are the wheels and tires. Lots of kids spent their after school work earnings to purchase fat tires and chrome wheels for their ride in ’67, so the tires don’t seem out-of-place.

There were only a handful of Buick funny cars in the 1960s, and Pellegrini raced two of them. The first was this 1967 Gran Sport known as SuperBird. The second was a truly radical ’68 GS called Beware.

SuperBird was a more or less conventional funny car, utilizing a Logghe chassis under the one-piece fiberglass Buick shell.

The Buick body came from Pellegrini’s own Fiberglass Limited, a company responsible for many of the early one-piece glass shells,

There is some mystery about the car’s powerplant. The ’68 Beware Gran Sport was a wacky racer, utilizing a 1957 Chrysler Hemi for power.  I have always thought SuperBird used an early Hemi as well, and that is confirmed by DragList, which reports the car used Chrysler power.

I have heard persistent reports that there was a 430 cubic inch Buick V-8 in the car at some point, but that may have came after Pellegrini sold the car. Still, Pellegrini had along history of running Buick and Oldsmobile powered dragsters in the early ’60s, so it is not out of the question that SuperBird started life with a Buick mill on nitro,

Interestingly, Pellegrini recounts that a some point he allowed a young and green Don Schumacher to drive the car when the future Stardust driver was just starting out. Most of the time, however, the driver was Pellegrini himself.

In 1968, Pellegrini built the wild Beware Buick, which was ten inches narrower than a stock ’68 Buick and ran on a radical dragster style chassis. The car had inherent handling issues and never ran as well as Pellegrini hoped. Beware was destroyed in a crash at Rockford dragway. Pellegrini completed the ’68 season in the SuperBird, before selling it for good.

I don’t remember how the SuperBird fared that April day in 1967. As the only blown, nitro flip-top car on hand, the Buick should have had the advantage. The car did not reach the semi-finals, however. I can’t remember how or why the SuperBird lost.

Still the stock appearing Buick remains a reminder that unlike todays overly massaged racing bodies, in 1967 it was possible to create a flopper that looked like an actual factory machine.

 

Wayne Gapp leaves on Jerry Harvey's Quiet One Mustang A/FX car at Detroit Dragway's 1967 Midwest Championships. 126mm Instamatic Photo by Tom Bonner

This one is for the Ford and Mercury lovers. Jerry Harvey, wheeling the Quiet One II SOHC Mustang takes on Wayne Gapp in the Chargin’ Cyclone at Detroit Dragway’s 1967 Midwest Championships.

I’ve discussed the Chargin’ Cyclone before, as Gapp ran the same car at the Detroit Invitational a year earlier. Gapp and the Hi-Risers returned in 1967 to again capture runner up honors in the gasoine funny car segment.

His opponent this round is Jerry Harvey. According to Dearborn Flashback, a site that seems to be an authority on Ford Racing History, the Mustang was originally built for Len Richer. It was updated by Holmon and Moody and turned over to Harvey for the ’66 and ’67 racing seasons. Harvey collected the A/FX crown at the 1966 Winternationals in the ‘Stang, and ran the car through 1967.

In later years, both Hubert Platt and Dyno Don Nicholson took turns running the Mustang at national events. A group of east coast racers then acquired it for street racing. According to the Dearbon Flashback article, the car still exists and has been restored to the ’66 configuration.

Although not as radical as the Gray Ghost or the Stardust Charger, the Quiet One II is indeed an altered wheelbase funny car, with the rear wheels moved forward three inches. The original Mustang chassis was heavily modified to accommodate the big 427ci Ford cammer powerplant.

Gapp moved on to a SOHC Mercury Cougar he called Top Cat Super Cat, then took possesion of Pete Gate’s Comet funny car. He draped the chassis with a fiberglass Mustang body and campaigned it as a gas funny car. Eventually, he teamed with Jack Roush to become a fearsome competitor in the early days of Pro Stock Eliminator.

If you’re wondering about all the pylons and the twin Christmas trees, those are for four lane racing. In 1967, Detroit Dragway ran the pro cars and match racers  in two car matches, but most of the other categories went off as a four car matches. The top two cars advanced to the next round, while two cars went home. In those days, when inexpensive Muscle cars were available at any dealership, a huge amount of street driven entries turned up every Sunday. By running them four at a time, the track was able to complete the day’s racing in half the time.

 

Don Shumacher and his early Stardust Funny Car at Detroit Dragway

Another “Star in the Making” at Detroit Dragway’s 1967 Midwest Championships was Don Schumacher and his Stardust injected Charger.

Schumacher, of course, would go on to much bigger and better things, but in 1967, he was just another UDRA Circuit regular. I’m not too sure what the chassis was like under the original Stardust Charger funny car, but it wasn’t a flip top. As you can see, this is yet another extreme altered wheelbase car, with both the rear and front wheels moved forward significantly. Interestingly, the front fenders do not appear to be lengthened –resulting in a stubby front end.

Schumacher soon became a major funny car star, eventually landing a huge multi-car sponsorship from Wonder bread. For a time, you couldn’t pickup a drag racing magazine without seeing one or more photos of Schumacher’s pokka-dotted Wonder bread machines in action.

Then suddenly, it ended. Schumacher sold all his cars and retired from the limelight. It seemed that the “shoe’s” racing career was over.

In the late ’70s, just over a decade after this photo was taken, I had become a full-time motorsports journalist. I wrote a regular column for Drag News and covered events all over the east coast. One day, I received a phone call from someone claiming to be Don Schumacher.

It wasn’t unusual for me to get calls from racers, I was at the track every weekend, and I knew many drivers and their crew very well. But those contacts came after talking to the racers at the track. This was different. I had never met Schumacher personally, and Schumacher had not been active for several years.

It was a strange call. Whoever was on the other end of the phone line seemed excited and talked very fast. The caller announced that he had a new major sponsor and would return to competition at that year’s US Nationals. He went on to describe a new multi-car team and indicated he intended to dominate NHRA major events.

I wasn’t sure what to think about this. The entire conversation was surreal, and I wasn’t sure if it was really Schumacher or not. When the call ended, I called my editor at Drag News. He hadn’t heard anything about Schumacher returning to competition. Neither had my editors at Super Stock and Drag Illustrated magazine. The following weekend I asked several funny car drivers if they had heard any rumors of Schumacher making a comeback. The answer was negative.

I decided against publishing anything about Schumacher’s return until I received more confirmation. When the US Nationals came and went with no sign of Schumacher, I concluded the call was some sort of hoax.

Schumacher eventually did return to racing, but not until the 1990s; installing son Tony Schumacher in a top fuel car. A lot of top fuel competitors probably wish Don and Tony had stayed away from drag racing, as Tony has become a major player in the top fuel ranks.

Every time I see Tony Schumacher on ESPN or read of his exploits in the newspaper, I wonder about that strange call in the seventies. Was it the real Don Schumacher? Did something happen to interrupt his planned assault on the US Nationals that year? Or was it hoax? If it was a hoax, who called and why?

I will probably never know.