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[Cliff]

Yes, those days were special. I was at OCIR for the Mfgr meet, the year (1972?) that the Blue Max ran 6.72 ET. I was astonished he ran so quick. The Max also has the narrow body the cars have now, but it was a new idea back then. I got out there when the gates opened and Gary Cochren was there with a front motor AA/FD. He ran a 6.72 on a test pass. That was why I was so surprised that the Max ran that quick - he was running T/F ET's.

 

[junglevsbrutus]

Yes, those days were special. I was at OCIR for the Mfg meet, the year (1972?) that the Blue Max ran 6.72 ET. I was astonished he ran so quick. The Max also has the narrow body the cars have now, but it was a new idea back then. I got out there when the gates opened and Gary Cochran was there with a front motor AA/FD. He ran a 6.72 on a test pass. That was why I was so surprised that the Max ran that quick - he was running T/F ET's.

Cliff, the great 6.72 run by the Blue Max-Jake Johnston occurred at the 1970 Mfg. Meet. Before that race the best funny car ET was a 6.80 by Candies & Hughes at Indy. Snow's Rambunctious Challenger ran a 6.79 at the Mfg. Meet too. Many FCs recorded 6-sec. runs at this mega FC event. Because of all the above 1970 was the best performance-wise of the Mfg. Meets. Johnston met Big John-Siroonian in the final and won. Jake promptly quit the team to drive Snow's 2nd Charger for '71. Richard Tharp took over the Max and drove at the inaugural Supernationals/OMS just a few weeks later.

Despite the great performances the '70 Mfg. Meet is not in my top two list. The reason was the lopsided team rosters. While the Plymouth and Dodge teams were stacked the Chevy and Ford teams were noticeably absent of the major headliners. As I said the '68 Mfg. Meet was my favorite but my 2nd is the '71 event, to me the last great Mfg. Meet. It was the last time there was major national FC participation. From '72 onward the non-CA funny cars began to pass on making the trek to OCIR. And '73 was even worse because the Irvine tracked switched to AHRA and Bill Doner took over from Mike Jones. Now the Mfg. Meet was just the simple 32-car eliminator race. Oh, I probably would rate the first Mfg. Meet at #2 but unfortunately, I didn't attend that race.

 

[Cliff]

Something you wrote jogged a memory. There were catagories for Ford, GM, Chrysler & Outlaw, which was.say, a Mustang with a Chrysler engine, etc. I can remember quite a lot of floppers with same engine as the body. There was a Camero I saw at Lions with a Rat motor, & had 16 spark plugs. King Camero??? Argh long time ago. Anyhoo, engine had plugs on both side of the heads. It sounded different compared to the other engines. They had to pull the heads to get to the inside plugs. I'm guessing the engine had dual mags. Saw the car run many times, don't remember seeing the engine. Back then, having a Chevy or Ford body with a Chrysler was heresy; now it's all they run. I have a friend also named Cliff, lives in Oregon. He was a crewman for Wild Willy Borsch, on both the AA/FA and the Charger F/C. Willy decided to run a Chevy rat motor in the Charger. At the time, it was cheaper to run than the Chrysler. but it never made the power the Chrysler made. Everyone told Willy he was nuts for switching. Some of the T/F cars were running Chevys then. Larry Dixon Sr ran in the 5's with a cast Rat. I think he was part of the Crager 5 second club. Dixon switched from a 426 Chrysler to the Rat, but he ran good with it. Guess that is why Willy switched.

 

[junglevsbrutus]

Something you wrote jogged a memory. There were categories for Ford, GM, Chrysler & Outlaw, which was.say, a Mustang with a Chrysler engine, etc. I can remember quite a lot of floppers with same engine as the body. There was a Camaro I saw at Lions with a Rat motor, & had 16 spark plugs. King Camaro??? Argh long time ago. Anyhoo, engine had plugs on both side of the heads. It sounded different compared to the other engines. They had to pull the heads to get to the inside plugs. I'm guessing the engine had dual mags. Saw the car run many times, don't remember seeing the engine. Back then, having a Chevy or Ford body with a Chrysler was heresy; now it's all they run. I have a friend also named Cliff, lives in Oregon. He was a crewman for Wild Willy Borsch, on both the AA/FA and the Charger F/C. Willy decided to run a Chevy rat motor in the Charger. At the time, it was cheaper to run than the Chrysler. but it never made the power the Chrysler made. Everyone told Willy he was nuts for switching. Some of the T/F cars were running Chevys then. Larry Dixon Sr ran in the 5's with a cast Rat. I think he was part of the Crager 5 second club. Dixon switched from a 426 Chrysler to the Rat, but he ran good with it. Guess that is why Willy switched.

Cliff, the 4 team categories you mentioned only occurred once, at the '69 Mfg. Meet.
During the first 2 years OCIR permitted mix 'n match FCs like the '67 Chapman Automotive Camaro and '68 Dick Loehr's Stampede Mustang, both hemi-powered. The '67-'68 were also invitation-only events. That is, Mike Jones/OCIR selected the 5 cars for each team. I preferred this method cause it guaranteed that the headliners would be in the show (more on this below). There were 6 teams at those early Mfg. Meets: Dodge, Plymouth, Chevy, Ford, Mercury and Pontiac. This is my favorite period because the majority of FCs had matching bodies and motors. Most even had the "proper" trans and rear ends! This was also the height of "psychedelic paint jobs," the era of cobwebbing, lace, wild striping and dramatic color fade patterns.

OCIR decided to change the MM format in '69. Due to the increase of Hemi-powered and AMC funny cars they created the "Wacky Racers" team. The name was borrowed from a Saturday Morning Cartoon show. Participating FCs included the Brutus Firebird, Frantic Ford (both Hemi-powered), ftrends and Doug's Headers Javelins, and even the Holy Toledo Jeep! The other 3 teams were Chrysler, GM and Ford-Mercury. Going from 6 teams to just 4 was compensated by increasing the team count to 8 cars per team.

The other major change to the MM was making it into a 2 day event w/ open qualifying on Friday. Yes, the race was now twice as long but each FC had to earn a spot on the teams. One could argue it created the best performing teams for the Saturday race but I just hated when the Eastern cars I waited to see didn't make the show! The most glaring example of this was Jungle Jim's '70 Camaro. After wowing SoCal fans w/ his tremendous fire burnouts in the previous month JJ was noticeably absent at the '70 Mfg. Meet.

Yes, the '71 King Camaro was the 16-plug, big block FC, campaigned by Dean LaPole.
However, I think the most impressive Chevy-powered FC after 1970 was the Burkhart-Therwhanger Camaro, the maroon and orange one.
Therwhanger won the very first IHRA race at Rockingham in April '71 over the Hawaiian-Butch Maas. Charlie also won a ton of match races that season and kept up w/ the Hemi's. I waited to see that FC all season but it failed to appear at the Mfg. Meet. Instead, Therwhanger tuned Kelly Chadwick's Chevy powered Camaro and he was one of the few to run in the 6.7 range while most were 6.8's at best!

 

[Cliff]

James, I am gonna start calling you The Brain, cuz you remember all this stuff. I moved to AZ in 1981 and went to Firebird when it first opened. Charlie Allen had some good F/C shows, including a couple of 32 car events. But, it was nitro, alky, 7.50 cars, etc, so not like OCIR. I do remember how similar Firebird was to OCIR in general layout, except for the lake & the timing tower. Since the Tribe took over the track, not much like Charlie Allen had anymore.

 

[junglevsbrutus]

James, I am gonna start calling you The Brain, cuz you remember all this stuff. I moved to AZ in 1981 and went to Firebird when it first opened. Charlie Allen had some good F/C shows, including a couple of 32 car events. But, it was nitro, alky, 7.50 cars, etc, so not like OCIR. I do remember how similar Firebird was to OCIR in general layout, except for the lake & the timing tower. Since the Tribe took over the track, not much like Charlie Allen had anymore.

Cliff, "Brain?" Naw, I consider myself more of a "FC Nerd!"
That is, I kept a lot of stuff I accumulated and still reference them today.
Besides the magazines and newspapers I have many souvenir programs where I used to fill in the race results.
The craziest thing I did as a kid was to create my "Funny Car Notebooks" from 1970 to about 1975. Since I had to share a bedroom w/ 2 brothers I couldn't keep my growing piles of National Dragsters. But I couldn't bear to part w/ all of that valuable information. So I kept the national event issues (just the pertinent pages) and then wrote down key info for all of the fuel meets. Then I would type them up, 3 hole punch the pages and put them into a book report binder. I still refer to these notebooks today!

Here's the most rare things I have in my collection.
When the '68 Mfg. Meet ended I was so enamored w/ the race that I called up OCIR and asked for any freebies they could send. Yes, this was at the well-seasoned age of 13! They sent me the manuscripts to the Drag News/National Dragster reports that they submitted for publication!
Not only that, I've got the rosters of every team car that raced at the Mfg. Meet, all hand written by a secretary in the tower. Each line shows the 3 runs w/ ETs-speeds. The alternates are listed too. The only person I would guess could have a copy might be Charlie Allen but I doubt he saved such paperwork.

Regarding Firebird Raceway in AZ, there was a rumor when it first opened that Charlie Allen saved the OCIR octagonal tower and was going to transfer it to Firebird! I went there in the mid '80s for two of the early NHRA Fallnationals. The key highlights for me was seeing Dick LaHaie win TF in his beautiful blue-silver JOB Silver Lights dragster. Remember, this was before all of his World Champion success w/ Larry Minor's Miller team.
John Collins also got a rare FC win in his JVC Camaro. Another vivid AZ memory was being on the top end to see and HEAR Buddy Ingersol's V-6 turbo Buick, a Comp Elim. Regal that was running quicker than the Pro Stocks! Maybe that convinced me to eventually buy a Grand National.

 

[Cliff]

Wow, I wish I had my notes from "back then". I usta write down the rounds & who won, speeds & ET's, etc. My most prized possession is a Lions Last Race poster. I went to that race & it was bittersweet. Carl Olsen won T/F. Tom McEwen beat the Snake for F/C. Don't remember all the winners. I really wanted to see a 5 second run, but low ET was 6.02 by Don Moody. I had seen Moody run that 5.91 at Ontario at the Finals race. What was strange was that when Lions closed, everyone went to Irwindale. The Grand Premiere was at Irwindale in Jan 1973, & it was so strange to see Larry Sutton as the starter there. Irwindale was never as good as Lions as far as the air, so you didn't see the ET's there that you did at Lions. Well.... The races you went to at Firebird were the same ones I went to. I've been to most of the nat'l events there, including the first one. You can actually run some good numbers there in testing, in Jan. Temp is cool & the track is tight. I saw Leah Pritchett run that 3.65 this year in testing & I about fell outta the stands! Wow, what a pass. The 2 best races there are the nat'l event and the Div 7 race, which is the week after. After that, not too much going on. Oh, the Heritage series has a race in Jan, and that is a great race. No F/C or T/F, but A/FD is the premier class. Rest of the year, it's too hot to live (heh) so I "go to the drags" on line. Watch a lot of Pro Mod races. Those cars are cool.

 

[junglevsbrutus]

Wow, I wish I had my notes from "back then". I usta write down the rounds & who won, speeds & ET's, etc. My most prized possession is a Lions Last Race poster. I went to that race & it was bittersweet. Carl Olsen won T/F. Tom McEwen beat the Snake for F/C. Don't remember all the winners. I really wanted to see a 5 second run, but low ET was 6.02 by Don Moody. I had seen Moody run that 5.91 at Ontario at the Finals race. What was strange was that when Lions closed, everyone went to Irwindale. The Grand Premiere was at Irwindale in Jan 1973, & it was so strange to see Larry Sutton as the starter there. Irwindale was never as good as Lions as far as the air, so you didn't see the ET's there that you did at Lions. Well.... The races you went to at Firebird were the same ones I went to. I've been to most of the nat'l events there, including the first one. You can actually run some good numbers there in testing, in Jan. Temp is cool & the track is tight. I saw Leah Pritchett run that 3.65 this year in testing & I about fell outta the stands! Wow, what a pass. The 2 best races there are the nat'l event and the Div 7 race, which is the week after. After that, not too much going on. Oh, the Heritage series has a race in Jan, and that is a great race. No F/C or T/F, but A/FD is the premier class. Rest of the year, it's too hot to live (heh) so I "go to the drags" on line. Watch a lot of Pro Mod races. Those cars are cool.

Cliff, it appears that we went to many of the same SoCal drag races of the early '70s.
I attended the Lions' Last Drag Race, the 5-sec. Supernationals and the '73 Grand Premiere too!
It is interesting to note that the closing of Lions was sort of the beginning of the end for the Golden Age of Drag Racing in SoCal.
Besides the closing of the most famous of all drag strips there were other ominous signals that began to foretell the slow demise of
the sport.

The Gatornationals debuted in 1970. Prior to that it was a must for any serious team to make the Winternationals, long tow or not.
The Gators doubled in car count and crowd size a year later and soon many Eastern teams decided they could wait one more month
for a much more convenient new year's debut in Florida. If you note the cars and stars of the March Meet you will notice that this major CA
event also started to decline in out of state entries. Ditto for the OCIR Mfg. Meet. The non-CA funny cars count fell dramatically in 1972 and thereafter.

Of course, the worst culprit was the outrageous rising costs of campaigning a fuel car but the success of the Gators really affected Pomona
after let's say the '73 Winternationals. So we were very lucky to have witnessed the true Golden Age of SoCal drag racing!

 

[Cliff]

64 car Top Fuel show at Lions, early 60's. That was kinda, sorta, the Golden Age for T/F. No funny cars to get in the way....