Early Funny Cars, 1964–1975
A History of Tech Evolution from Altered Wheelbase to Match Race Flip Tops
by Lou Hart
“Seeing how the NHRA refused to add Funny Cars, AHRA president Jim Tice welcomed the carnival-type atmosphere of colorful cars and drivers with open arms.”
Factory-altered experimental drag cars arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s first as demonstration teams touring the county, attracting visitors of all ages to the dealerships they visited. Dealers noted the uptick in sales especially of those models that had been altered from stock. The drag race tracks offered match races featuring these new tweaked and tuned cars that soon were being dubbed funny cars due to their different appearances. And, they noticed something else. “Funny Car drivers, as a group, were more approachable than the dragster racers. Drivers were readily available with the fans, using amusing antics and outrageous behavior to work up the crowds.”
It would take half a decade before NHRA accepted them and established classes in which they could compete. Not so other sanctioning bodies such as the American Hot Rod Association as the opening quote indicates even as “Detroit had been well known all over the world throughout the 1960s for mass-producing cars . . . now turned to mass producing a Funny Car with many new performance and safety changes for the new 1966 drag racing season.”
This book tells the story of some of the cars and those who became stars driving them, turning drag racing into a super well-attended entertainment activity for those who paid to watch. It’s not written by a professional writer but a true fan, “a devout car nut” as his bio describes Lou Hart. He attended “his first drag race at Lions Drag Strip at age 9.” That passion enables him to imbue each page with his enthusiast’s energy as he delights in seeing some of his memories put into print.
Hart also includes twenty-something sidebars that are first-person memories of others active in the funny car drag world. Too, notice those photo captions on the sample pages shown here. They don’t merely repeat sentences from the text, but rather add to and augment information for readers.
Once NHRA had relented and offered classes for Funny Cars, Hart has competitors for three sanctioning bodies to cover as NASCAR had gotten into the drag race world too for a time. Then there was the 1970-formed International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) and the following year the United Drag Racing Association (UDRA) was formed in the Midwest. It had reached a point where serious racers could make a decent living “as a professional touring racer, but it was a brutal. . . . Life on the road was not glamorous . . . as a professional racer” not the least of which was having to be on the road continuously for weeks at a time.
But then, you know you’ve arrived when you can attract sponsors with deep pockets and “drag racing and Funny Cars received a huge boost of revenue when the Coca-Cola and Sprite bottlers signed one of the largest non-racing contracts.” Hart devotes an entire chapter to covering the seven years of “The Coca-Cola Cavalcade of Stars.”
Then there’s another, about that day in 1969 when Mattel purposed to arch rivals Don “the Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “Mongoose” McEwen that they become teammates of a team fully sponsored by Mattel’s Hot Wheels. It took the guys a few weeks to iron out the details before forming Wildlife Racing Enterprises. Then they made magic for three years, 1970–71 and ’72 attracting friends and fans for themselves and, not incidentally, selling lots and lots of Hot Wheels.
Let Lou Hart’s enthusiasm and joys experiencing the world of smoky burnouts and especially the Early Funny Cars entertain and remind you of what it was all like “back then.”
Copyright 2025 Helen V Hutchings, SAH (speedreaders.info)
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