News and chewing gum for the eyes

NORTH AMERICAN EAGLE IS REACHING FOR …
THE SALT TO CACKLE BACK TO LIFE?

You’ll know of the nasty little schoolboy deed of pulling the wings off flies, well you’re looking at a kind of adult variation. This is the North American Eagle, a 42,500bhp contender for the World Land Speed Record currently held by Briton Andy Green with Thrust SSC at 763.05mph, but until its wings were pulled off it was a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. Yup, North American Eagle started life in 1959 as a US Air Force interceptor and at the end of its flying days was consigned to a scrapyard. However, before it could get turned into 10,000 Budweiser cans, the aircraft was purchased in 1998 by Ed Shadle for $25,000 and transformation to flightless bird began. The wing roots were faired over, canards added to the forward fuselage and all-new hydraulic systems installed. The Eagle team are confident the car/missile will hit 835mph --- fully supersonic but a little over 600mph less than maximum speed for a Starfighter at altitude. The Eagle’s attempt is planned for this autumn in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, where it will be joined by two other LSR hopefuls. Australian Rosco McGlashan will be fielding the Aussie Invader 5R, which he claims will run 1,000mph, while another crew is supposedly readying an ex-Craig Breedlove car which had been purchased by billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who disappeared while flying a light aircraft solo over Nevada last September

BUICK’S INVICTA CONCEPT:
CLASSY, GLASSY AND WITH GLOBAL INTENTIONS

Probably in recognition of the fact that GM sells more Buicks in China than it does in the United States, the Beijing Auto Show in April was selected for the debut of the Invicta concept. Jointly designed in Michigan and Shanghai, the Invicta is a mid-size four-door sedan but with a full-glass coupe roofline and it’s intended to give a strong indication of what kind of Buick GM has in mind for a “global” model that could be marketed in two completely different markets. The Invicta has a turbocharged two-litre DOHC four-cylinder engine coupled to a six-speed auto and revives a Buick name introduced in 1959, but dropped a year or so later

RECORD UK MARCH SALES BY MOPAR

Chrysler UK achieved their best-ever UK March sales with a record total of more than 4,000 cars and SUVs leaving the showrooms. Top seller for the group was the Dodge Caliber, which 710 buyers found a home for, followed by the Jeep Patriot (594 units) and the mighty 300C executive sedan (469). A total of 436 Dodge Nitros were sold, along with 422 Grand Cherokees. The record March sales figures were 20 per cent up on the same month of last year.

It’s NHRA Funny Car history:
Ashley Force dumps her dad and scores the first female National win

At the NHRA’s Atlanta Dragway race last year the Force family of 14-times funny car champion John and daughter Ashley met in the first round of the eliminations and 25-year-old Ashley won. This year they met at Atlanta in the final round, the 201st of his career, with John hunting for his 1,000th round win in 500 races, and this time Ashley dumped her dad --- becoming the first women to win in the nitro fuel coupe category and extending her position as the first female to lead the NHRA funny car points championship. Ashley stormed to 4.837 at 320mph, the second quickest time of the day, as papa lost traction almost immediately and went up in smoke. A historic final indeed. “We just knew that if we kept getting to the finals, we’d eventually get one. I kinda hated that it had to be against dad but I’m just happy to win an event.”             Mike Collins

Meanwhile, over on the duckpond …
239mph in 4.6 seconds --- now that’s steaming!

It’s not just on land that some amazing standing start quarter mile times are being recorded. This is St Louis team owner Lou Osman’s hemi-powered hydro that recently ran 4.685 seconds at 239.74mph with John Haas at the tiller. Best-ever unofficial time recorded by one of these fuel drag boats is probably a 4.55-second pass set by Dwayne Patton at Red Bluff, California – a run that was not backed up

A James Drew photo via dragracingonline.com and Mike Collins

TONY DENSHAM
Pioneer UK drag racer and British Land Speed Record holder

Sadly, we have to record the death of one of the true pioneers of British drag racing, Tony Densham. Tony, who died of cancer at his home on the Channel Island of Alderney on April 11, aged 78, played a major role in the establishment of the sport in the UK, successfully campaigning a 1500cc supercharged Ford dragster --- The Worden --- with fellow owner Harry Worrell in the early sixties and taking Top Eliminator at the first-ever Santa Pod meeting on April 11, 1966. However, it was in the following year, when Tony got behind the wheel of a much more powerful car --- the 427-inch blown and injected fueler (The) Commuter ---- that the real action was to start.

Commuter, a shapely full-bodied fuel dragster that evolved from the Harvey Aluminum Special brought to England in 1963 by Mickey Thompson, enabled Tony to run in August 1967 a 9.10-second elapsed time for the quarter --- the quickest time recorded for a British-built car. In October of the same year, Tony ran at the International Sprint Organisation’s Records Weekend at Elvington, York, taking Commuter to an FIA-recognised World Record with an average two-way standing quarter-mile time of 8.915 seconds in addition to snatching the 500-metre record at an average of 11.20 seconds.

1968 was the first year of UK Top Fuel racing and Tony was to be the man who would crack the eight-second barrier, on August 4 cranking the Ford down Santa Pod’s asphalt to a snaky and smoky 8.891-second clocking. Minutes later he came out again and shaved almost half a second again off the record.

In 1970, equipped with “tall gears” plus big wheels and tyres in readiness for an attempt on the flying kilometer record at Elvington, Commuter became the first British car to run over 200mph when Tony blasted through the Santa Pod traps at a reported 205.76mph. The following weekend Tony thundered down Elvington’s runway, achieving an average of 207mph to capture the British Land Speed Record, a mark never officially beaten in the UK by a wheel-driven car.

Commuter was superceded as Tony’s steed by a new full-bodied fueler from the Santa Pod stable, Firefly. Tony debuted Firefly, a Chrysler hemi-powered machine, in 1971, but just a year later announced his retirement from the sport. Today, Commuter continues to be maintained in show condition by Antony, son of Tony Densham’s close buddy and team technical wizard Peter Billinton.

Mike Collins, hot rod writer and friend of Tony Densham from the earliest days of British drag racing at the “The Pod”, has submitted the following:

Drag racing was a gentleman’s sport when it began in England; racers talked in guineas, wore deerstalker hats and smoked pipes! I never saw Tony Densham doing any of those things, but he was most certainly a gentleman who was involved with our sport almost since its inception. Along with Harry Worrell, Tony campaigned the Ford powered Worden dragster, appearing at Silverstone with Sydney Allard, Bootsie Herridge and Dante Duce back in 1963, and at Debden where they were joined by Mickey Thompson. Tony competed at both the 1964 and ’65 Drag Festivals and many races in between before Santa Pod opened in 1966.

By July 1967, Tony was driving Bob Phelps’ Fibre Glass Repairs new beauty, The Commuter. It sounded great when it was fired up, and looked even better on a few slow trips down track to check oil pressure with visiting American Bob Gladstone at the helm. Sadly, when Tony fired it up for his first pass, the magneto drive sheared! But then, especially in those halcyon days, nothing came easy in fuel drag racing.

Happily for the fans, and the hard working Commuter crew of Densham, Billinton and Phelps, Tony finally got to put in some power passes at the British Drag Racing Championship in August, with a 141mph run in 9.10seconds. The year ended on a real high when they took the car to the ISO World Record’s meeting at Elvington; Tony drove Commuter down the runway a bunch of times with quicker elapsed times than Allan Allard’s previous quarter mile record of 9.36seconds. At day’s end the Commuter team were proud owners of a new world record of 8.91seconds --- the two way average from a quicker 8.811 and a 9.08et --- and Tony was officially the quickest Englishman ever.

Over the winter the car appeared at AutoShow ‘68 in London and even went to Sweden where its good looks earned best of show. It was a long hard winter during which I joined a hardy bunch of folks working long hours changing the Santa Pod track into the configuration which still survives today. But it wasn’t all hard work; I even managed to get Tony Densham and Clive Skilton to our 1968 Junior Drag Racing Championship in Croydon for a special Match Race of Champions on a scaled down strip! It was great fun, and just as serious as if we’d been at the Pod, with Tony taking the win two out of three.

Back at the track we were still working deep into the night as racers were arriving, and even whilst the first cars made practice passes, but the track was ready for action on race day, and so were the fans. More than 10,000 turned out to see our first British built fuel dragsters in action on Santa Pod’s new “seven second surface,” although it took some years to hit that magic number, the three fuelers on hand that Easter weekend provided plenty of thrills. Clive Skilton drove the Allard Skilton dragster to top speed of the meet at 163.4mph in 9.138 seconds with the all new Tudor Rose of Sluggett and Priddle close behind at 9.40 at 161mph. But it was Tony Desham and the Commuter in all its sun-kissed Metalflaked glory which took low ET with 9.052 at only 147.93miles an hour.

1968 was a tremendous year for British fuel car fans. July 20 turned out to be the night that Commuter and Tudor Rose first thrilled fans with a taste of nitro power, and the awesome sound and fury of side-by-side blown and injected racing at Santa Pod. Here Tony’s experience came to the fore, with Commuter winning two out of three while Rex Sluggett got over anxious in Tudor Rose and red lit both times. Yet again Tony Densham took low ET, 9.036 at 163.93mph whilst Rex thrilled fans with the first 180mph top speed from a British built dragster in losing the second race! We all partied hearty that night knowing things could only get better, and they did. At the DragRod Trophy meeting on August 4th Tony Densham showed a touch of class, flying up and landing on the track when business commitments made him late for the race, the mark of a real Commuter! And then he gave us what we’d all been waiting for on a pass that saw Commuter getting wildly out of shape at the eighth mile; Tony lifted briefly and then got back on the power to snake through the traps in 8.891 seconds and 173.61mph. 45 minutes later Tony was back out again, promising fans he’d keep the boot on the bell housing no matter how much the Ford got out of shape. On the green and with less smoke that the first run, Commuter blasted off the line, again snaked around at the top end and stormed through at 180.83mph in 8.459 seconds – the most beautiful home grown numbers ever heard at Santa Pod. After more than a year of heartbreaking unreliability, the Ford had finally made up for it all, with Tony setting both ends of the track record. Fans accorded him a standing ovation on his trip back down the strip, and his smile was wider than ever as he accepted Santa Pod’s £50 cheque for running the first eight-second ET. Later that evening, he spent far more taking a bunch of us out to celebrate over dinner, while the cheque was taped to his car’s dash!

Tony ended the season as he’d begun, with a couple of stunning solo demo passes, not at the Pod but as the star of a show I’d organized for the BDRC Gold Leaf Championship at Silverstone, and what a demonstration it was. We were scheduled for the lunch break, and the moment that last race ended fans headed off for the burger vans. Then Commuter’s big Ford fired into life and lunch was forgotten as the crisp cackle of nitro power filled the air, sending fans racing back to their seats while Peter Billinton gave the engine a quick check over. Peter gave the thumbs up, our flag start man leapt high in the air, Tony dropped the clutch and the car moved, gently hazing the huge rear slicks before getting traction about five

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(With thanks to Classic American Magazine, from where most of these dates have been taken)