Detroit dragway

[Smirnoff]

Detroit Dragway was allot of fun to watch the "big names" in drag racing come to town, all of the kids in my neighborhood who were old enough to drive "drag raced" their cars or their parents' back then.....1966 was the best, the year of Don Nicholson's Comet Cyclone Funny Car & Doug Nash's Bronco Buster Funny Car [[Truck).....

Attachment 12317

[Ronjm23]

Detroit Dragway was allot of fun to watch the "big names" in drag racing come to town, all of the kids in my neighborhood who were old enough to drive "drag raced" their cars or their parents' back then.....1966 was the best, the year of Don Nicholson's Comet Cyclone Funny Car & Doug Nash's Bronco Buster Funny Car [[Truck).....

Attachment 12317

I spent a lot of Saturday nights, yes, they also raced on Saturdays at DD. I have fond memories of Roger Lindamood’s ‘Color Me Gone” Plymouth and the Golden Commandos Plymouths as well. Loved the smell of the burning rubber and the spent niro-methane. I remember TV Tommy Ivo’s 4 Buick engine dragster. Lotsa smoke but not as fast as the blown Chrysler hemi’s. This was from 63 – 66 and a great time to be living downriver.

[shovelhead]

Detroit Dragway was allot of fun to watch the "big names" in drag racing come to town, all of the kids in my neighborhood who were old enough to drive "drag raced" their cars or their parents' back then.....1966 was the best, the year of Don Nicholson's Comet Cyclone Funny Car & Doug Nash's Bronco Buster Funny Car [[Truck).....

Attachment 12317

NHRA would not let the Bronco Buster race in 1967, it got parted out and some of it recycled, some of it scrapped.

In 1970 I was offered the Fiberglass body shell for free, while most of the lettering was sanded off there was still enough of that and the graphics visible on it. Person who owned it was moving out of state and could not take it with him. My problems were mainly "where the hell do I put this thing?" As is I had one car stored at a relative's farm, a blown up motorcycle in the back yard of the upper flat that I was renting and barely enough money to to live on while trying to finish HS and work part time in the city commuting 40 miles a day in what was to become my vocation for close to fifty years.

I read that someone had found the original frame, restoring it and was seeking the original body for it. I answered that it was once in my grasp, I had to decline the offer. The person that had it has passed, none of our mutual friends that are still alive knows where it ended up either. I would hazard a guess that it is buried somewhere in the landfill outside of Salem, in the bulk residential customer dropoff area.

Wonder how much that body would be worth today? Don't even want to think about it.

[Smirnoff]

NHRA would not let the Bronco Buster race in 1967, it got parted out and some of it recycled, some of it scrapped.

In 1970 I was offered the Fiberglass body shell for free, while most of the lettering was sanded off there was still enough of that and the graphics visible on it. Person who owned it was moving out of state and could not take it with him. My problems were mainly "where the hell do I put this thing?" As is I had one car stored at a relative's farm, a blown up motorcycle in the back yard of the upper flat that I was renting and barely enough money to to live on while trying to finish HS and work part time in the city commuting 40 miles a day in what was to become my vocation for close to fifty years.

I read that someone had found the original frame, restoring it and was seeking the original body for it. I answered that it was once in my grasp, I had to decline the offer. The person that had it has passed, none of our mutual friends that are still alive knows where it ended up either. I would hazard a guess that it is buried somewhere in the landfill outside of Salem, in the bulk residential customer dropoff area.

Wonder how much that body would be worth today? Don't even want to think about it.

When the Buster was sold....it raced under another name. Frame wound-up somewhere near Chitown where a Hemi was installed, unsure whether it ever raced again or not?

[shovelhead]

It may have been, I'm not sure. I never was really interested in Funny Cars anyhow. Altered wheelbase FX classes were more my style together with gassers. All I know, the body was there, paint was dull, had been sanded down, metalflake IIRC. The graphics were still there but thin and dull. Maybe the Nash team had multiple bodies if one was damaged, don't know. But supposedly this one was from the race truck. The friend that had it knew the whole story, back then it was just another piece of junk that nobody wanted, If memory serves me correct he worked for Doug Nash and that is how he got the body. He wanted to build it into a street car but never got to it and moved to the West Coast about 1971.

Building that into a legal street car would have been a challenge back then to me, I was piecing crashed and worn out cars into drivers and racers at the time.