What's wrong with this picture?

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by Ed Wright

Last I heard he was trying to build a slant 6 bracket car for local 1/8th mile tracks. He doesn't race with us, not sure why he is concerned about it.

I go back a long way, with Stock (and, almost as far, with Super Stock) Eliminator.

I ran an NHRA-legal Stocker from 1965 to 1971, part of the time, with my friend (and, current Stock Eliminator Div. V racer, Harry Sparks) as a partner.

We ran one of the first (of many, to come) hydro-equipped '57 Chevy sedan deliveries in H/SA (220 hp/283) and then, M/SA, when NHRA changed the class weight breaks.

Prior to that time, I had worked at the Carlisle (Arkansas) strip, the Stuttgart (Arkansas) strip, and the Little Rock (Arkansas) drag strips on the Stocker tech lines, classifying cars. Dale Ham (Div. IV Director, at the time) suggested that I should be an "Area Tech Advisor" for NHRA (an UN-paid position) and he had them send me the Stock Car Classification Guide, and the mountain of tech bulletins that went with it, all 3-hole-punched, and in a BIG notebook. I got weekly updates with notifications that told me which pages were superceded by the new ones. I tok on that responsibility in about 1961.

It was FUN...

When I moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in mid-1964 (pre sedan-delivery days, for me) I learned that the Des Moines Dragway was looking for a tech guy for the Stocker line, so I applied, and got the job. I was tech for the Stockers there until the strip closed in about 1968 or '69; I can't remember which. Took me a year to get the strip's sanction changed over from AHRA to NHRA (those AHRA Stock classes were driving me crazy.... a trophy for EVERYBODY!!! lol!) Overall, I worked the Stock tech thing for about 10 years.

Built my sedan delivery in the strip manager's garage...

I have never been able to afford to race a class-legal car, since sellout to my partner in about 1972. Raising a family was expensive and I watched the cost of class-legal racing escalate much faster than my income, so I did other things to keep involved... took up photography as a hobby and wrote articles for Super Stock magazine and National Dragster, with my friends' cars as the subject matter, usually. Cultivated friendships with active racers.

Div. IV A/SA racer Bobby Roper called me on the phone one day in the early 1990's and told me he hadn't run a drag car for 20 years, and wanted to get back into it; and, what would I suggest?

I sugested a 396/427 '69 Camaro. He found a nice one on the street (a 350,) put a class-legal big block in it, and raced it pretty successfully, for almost 20 years... recently sold it.

I am only writing this way-too-long diatribe to explain why I wrote the initial "What's wrong with this picture" post.

You need to know where I'm coming from. Ed suggested that, since I don't currently campaign a car in this Eliminator, then WHY would I care about it?

I've loved Stock Eliminator for a long time (since about 1955,) and have close friends who still race. I take National Dragster keep a current rule book, and religiously monitor race results on Fast News.

When I think about drag racing, my (historical) perspective includes flag starts, NO handicapped racing (yes, everything was HEADS UP,) and a variety of cars coming to the starting line to do battle that was anything BUT boring...

To have 27-percent of the entire Eliminator made up of cars that all looked pretty much alike, would have been un-thinkable.

That's what we had at Reading...

I probably shouldn't have writtten that (What's wrong...") post, because it gave everybody (apparently) the idea that I was some kind of "Camaro-hater." Nothing could be further from the truth; I'm the guy who recommended one as a potential race car to my friend, Bobby Roper, 20 years ago, remember???

No, in my dotage, I just remembered the variety we enjoyed so much (Pontiac and Oldsmobile Top Fuelers, etc.,) and Stock Eliminator seems to be the last bastion for the potential for true variety (except COMP, which you need to be a millionaire to race in,) and what do we have?

Twenty-seven percent of the field is the "same" car... Different classes,sure, but they all look the same to the folks in the stands....

Like I said; I know there are no easy answers, but, we need to take a good, hard look at why these cars are so desirable.

I don't for a minute believe that it's because they're pretty... (which they surely are.)


Below: My race car from the last millennium... Click on to enlarge...