Remembering Pro Comp (1 Viewer)

[Bobby Bennett]

Drag Racing Internet Magazine - Competition Plus.com - REMEMBERING PRO COMP: AN ELIMINATOR FOR ANOTHER ERA

 

[Nunz]

Great article Bobby! I think the Pro Comp era was special, and like the article says, can never really be duplicated. I remember Indy would get as many as 100 cars show up for 32 positions (I think I'm right about that anyway), and the variety was unreal. Some of my all-time favorite cars came from that class:

Boggs Bros. & Carter "Poison" AA/A
Manzo's AA/A
Armstrong's "Alcoholic" BB/FC
Veney's Vega(s)

Think of all of the stars that started in that class, drivers and tuners, it's a bunch.

 

[NONE]

I loved Pro Comp! Dale Armstrong won all the races that I saw him run at the Southern Nationals. In IHRA it was Butch Osmon, "The Wizzard Of Oz". I remember an IHRA points race held at the Crossville Drag Strip, now I-40 Dragway, in Crossville, Tennessee. When Butch and his oponent (can't remember who) came up for the final, it started to rain. The track officials asked the drivers if they wanted to run in the rain and they said yes. Butch was very smart and left the line slow to keep from spinning, while his opponent went up in smoke. For the record, they were running 4.40's on the eighth mile track.

Wayne.

 

[Demon]

There was a good variety of cars in that class.I always liked the Foust,Menzies and Armstrong T-bucket(?) and the Alcoholic Plymouth.

 

[rocketman]

Great story. Here in the northwest we are trying to get a pro comp class or an association going. The difference would be from the old class is that we will add in a 6.50 or so index meaning you can't go faster than that. There would be no weight rules as its sort of a run what ya brung. The reason for that is to rein in the costs so its affordable. Complain if you want about the index but who's paying the bills?

I strongly believe such a class is needed again as there's a a lot of blown cars out there with no place to go and can't afford to race in TAD of TAFC. Plus we have it open to Pro Mods too. Right now Top Eliminator West is the closest thing to it. Go to Capitol Racing if you want to know more.

 

[Toejam]

That had a Pro Comp style race here in Albuq. back in the 90's called the "Supercharged Outlaw Series" or SOS. At First they allowed anything alcohol, after a year or two the FC guys quit showing up cause they couldn't run with the Dragsters. The Last few years they made it Front Motor cars only.

 

[yoda]

Any of you "old timers" remember this one?

My stepdad's last seat time car- he had a fire at Pomona that put him in the sand and in traction for about a month... Recent advances in back surgery have just given him painless posture again

He went on to partner with Tom Ridings (Winternationals winning Pro Comp car), Tom Blandford in the Holocaust Charger BB/FC, and a few more Pro Comp cars before it became cheaper to race thorobreds... We just saw some old footage of his Gasser days (Blue Power Chevy panel, Cook & Steward Corvette BB/GS) on the new Lions Part 3 video...

We're trying to dig up pictures of the old cars, but they seem to be hard to come by... Dad ran all the way up to Vancouver, and as far east as Texas in the day, so hopefully some old photo collections have got a shot of "Who IS that?" in the bottom of the box...

 

[Nunz]

The closest thing to a modern day Pro Comp was IHRA's Pro Outlaw class from a few years ago. It was a cool class with dragsters featuring different engine combos and altereds with blowers & alky. They killed it after just a couple of seasons, didn't really give it a chance to grow.

 

[yoda]

Looks like somebody is trying to keep it alive, in a convoluted kind of way..

NPCA :: Home

 

[MM]

the NPCA is a great organization....we ran at a couple of there events this year with the Goodguys and they put on a great show and you see a really neat variety of cars


...and of course we are privileged to have the Pro Comp 1 champion from 2008 on the mater....our very own Sean DeWitt

 

[Butch]

Now this takes me way back. In my early 20's I worked for Dick Titsworth at Seaport Automotive, in Toledo, OH. Out of his shop he ran a BB/FC that I helped out on. Also the Gottschalk & Mihalko BB/FC was out of this shop also. It was a great time back then racing all over the midwest. Ron Pellegrini ran the Pro/Am Division 3 F/C circut that we raced in, along with the normal NHRA div. 3 races. The Pro/Am circut had some good cars in it. The Boggs Brothers, Don Gerardot, Vern Moats, Fred Hagon, Ken Venny, Phil & Dave Sebring, Tom Trish and lots more.
It was very common that AA Dale would spend the week before Indy at our shop servicing his car. We had Simon Menzies stopping in at the shop also when need be. It would be fun if they could bring something like that back today.
Looking back, It was some of the most fun I could have had.

 

[coyotedale]

At Bradenton they run a class called open outlaw, which has a flavor of pro comp. We run my friends roots blown alky flopper there, and run against blown alky diggers and altereds. The class is tremendous fun, and has a good turnout of cars.

 

[JHOLE]

Harry,

Yeah good times - when those people stopped by, I had to sleep in the basement, or a tent.

Just kiddin' - they were good times. - The best of times.