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REVIEWED:  “Drag Racing Funny Cars: Factory Flyers to Flip-Top Fuelers” By Lou Hart
Written by: Gregg Leary   
04/29/2009
Charlotte, North Carolina
 
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Foreword by “Jungle” Pam Hardy

“Drag Racing Funny Cars” begins with “Jungle” Pam Hardy echoing “THE” word in the Foreword…”Sunday. Sunday. Sunday!” She takes me back to my teenage years in Northeast Ohio where I heard the screamer ads on my AM transistor radio…CKLW…beckoning me to head to Milan Dragway where I could witness the likes of “Jungle Jim” Lieberman, “Wild Bill” Shrewsberry’s “L.A. Dart,” Roger Lindamood’s “Color Me Gone…” What memories. Pam describes a typical week on the drag racing circuit with “Jungle Jim:” Budds Creek, Maryland, Epping, New Hampshire and Cayuga, Canada. She dedicates her Foreword “To all the Nitrogeezers and Funny Car fans everywhere, this book is for you.”

A brief history of the Funny Car is excerpted on the back cover.

“Since the early 1960’s, dealer-sponsored Super Stockers battled for supremacy in the quarter mile. Evolving into the Factory Experimental class, these wild steel bodied, altered-wheelbase monsters were stuffed with massive fuel injected and supercharged engines that attracted crowds to the dragstrip!”

“Legendary pioneers “Dyno” Don Nicholson, Jack Chrisman, Butch Leal, Dick Landy, Arnie Beswick, Phil Bonner, Gas Ronda, Don Gay, Sox & Martin, Richard Petty, and many other A/FX stars were instrumental in the development of the funny car as it morphed from a heavy production car into seven-second 250MPH aerodynamic fiberglass, tubular chassis missile, becoming the most popular class in drag racing.”

Lou Hart’s book contains “over 400 action packed photographs.” It’s a quick quarter mile launch down funny car memory lane. The photo captions are the meat of the book. They contain entertaining information about the car, driver, owner, sponsor and often the builder of the vehicle
in the photograph. The drag strip is often indicated as well as any other pertinent information.

As I paged through the book I quickly realized that Funny Car Drag Racing may have the most cool nicknames of any sport… with the possible exception of boxing and WWE Wrestling. The great thing about drag racing that moves it far above the other sports is the fact that the drivers AND the cars often have great monikers. Some examples:

DRIVERS:
Don “The Snake” Prudhomme
Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen
“Dyno Don” Nicholson
“Jungle Jim” Lieberman
Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney
“Berserko” Bob Doerrer
“Wild Bill” Shrewsberry
“Wild Bill” Flynn
Arnie “The Farmer” Beswick
Malcolm “The D.C. Lip” Durham
“Dandy Dick” Landy
“Gentleman Jack” Sharkey
“Mr. Norm” Kraus
Don Gay “The Texas Whiz Kid”
“Fast Eddie” Schartman
“Rapid Ronnie” Runyon
“Admiral” Gene Conway
“Big John” Mazmanian
“Professor” Kelly Chadwick
“Flash Gordon” Mineo
“Big Ed” Lenarth
“Fearless” Fred Goeske
“Mighty” Mike Van Sant
“Lil’ John” Lombardo
“Slamin’” Sammy Miller
Don “Beachcomber” Johnson
“Big Jim” Dunn
Jerry “The King” Ruth
“Nitro” Gene Snow
Paul “Wrong Way” Radici
Paula Murphy “Miss STP”
Kenny “The Action Man” Goodell
“Smokey Joe” Lee
“Fearless” Frank Federici
“Okie” Steve Bernd
“Wild” Willie Borsch
“Broadway Freddy” DeName
Ed “The Ace” McCulloch

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