Front Engine Dragsters
Dragsters in the 1950’s and in the 1960’s were truly unique, as in, each one was somewhat different from all the others. We use to have front engine dragsters, rear engine dragsters, dual engine dragsters, three engine dragsters and even four engine dragsters. Some of the dragsters had four-wheel drive. Some of the multi-engine dragsters had engines mounted side-by-side, some mounted in-line. There were even some that were mounted sideways. Some had full bodies, some had partial bodies and some no bodies at all.
As far as engines, we had dragsters with Ford engines, Chevy engines, Pontiac engines, Chrysler engines, Buick, DeSoto, Cadillac, Packard, Lincoln, GMC, Oldsmobile, you name it. I don’t think you could name an automotive engine that wasn’t mounted in a dragster at one time or the other. We even had dragsters with aircraft engines.
In the early 1950’s when drag racing was still something new, the media called the dragsters “rail jobs”. This was because the early dragsters were not much more than a car with an engine mounted in frame rails. Get a car, remove the body, fenders pretty much everything else, and you had a “rail job”.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that before we had 18-wheeler “transporters” with tool cabinets that cost more than a house, we had single axle open trailers and a tool box we could carry with one hand. Our “transporter” was usually a trailer hitch on the of the family station wagon or pick-up truck. It was a different time, but it was our roots and it is our heritage.
Words and photos by Dan Ricks
