Helping a mechanic dad work on cars when only old enough to race bicycles my view was performance early in life.

Late 1950s
Drag racing was as much street racing as on local drag strips at old airports and some abandon roads. Modified 1930s and 1940s coupes/roadsters were the norm with wide assortment of engines (rat rods as we call them today). Late model Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile and Pontiac mostly ruled. Chrysler cars were really not in the game yet except for the first generation 1950s Hemi engines being used in rails, coupes and roadsters. Guys were discovering roots type blowers and how well they worked on those late 1950s Hemi engines. A few racers like Vic Eldelbrock were experimenting with nitromethane, later outlawed by somewhat newly formed NHRA. Because of limited resources my experience was like most of that day, I modified and raced what ever I could get my hands on using mostly junk yard parts. My only said memory of those years was witnessing a crash of rear engine dragster at drag strip in which several people were badly or fatally injured. No guard rails in those days, people just pulled cars up to trackside and mostly sat on their hood or finders of their cars. Yes, I said rear engine dragster, it was very short and obviously not easily controlled. That might be why the rear engine concept did not evolve for many years to come.
Trick carburetion of era was mostly 3, 4 or 6 two barrel carburetors with a few 2 four barrel setups here and there. Of course Chevrolet was playing with Rochester fuel injection but it was not widely used on drag cars. Also popular was use of Paxton rotary superchargers using special carburetors to allow pressurization from air cleaner position. AHRA was formed in late 1950s to compete with NHRA as a sanctioning drag racing body.

The 1960s
The 60s began mostly dominated by 409 Chevrolets, 406 Fords and 421 super duty Pontiacs all with multiple carburetion. Chrysler cars were still not a major player in drag racing. But that abruptly changed in 1962 when Chrysler produced the max wedge version of their 413 engine and stuffed it in cheap bodied lighter Dodges. Man did those cars rule and sparked my interest in Mopars as they would later be called. In same year Chrysler introduced the new aluminum case A727 Torqueflite automatic transmission. Racers quickly learned that with some modifcations no human could out shift these automatics. The manufactures went crazy in 1963; Chevrolet and Ford with 427 CID engines and all major players making availible light weigh fiberglass and aluminum body components.
We low budget racers that could not afford these factory race cars simply continued stuffing the biggest engines we could get into the lightest thing we could find, forcing sanctioning bodies to further expand the gas and altered classes started in the 1950s. Also we were buying high performance parts from a growing list of race parts manufactures, such as Iskenderian, Weiand, Holly, Hedman, Mr. Gasket, Eldelbrock, Moon and the list went on. Because of these parts manufacturers and change in racers attitude, the rat rods were becoming more refined and more finished in appearance. The professionals were still the dragster guys such as Don Garlits and others, many of which were sponsored in some form by many of these manufactures.
Some of the late model cars were beginning to show up at strips with sponsor names on them, mostly from local car dealerships. In 1964 Chrysler made another leap forward with introduction of the 426 stage II and III max wedge and the return of the Hemi at 426 CID in Dodges and Plymouths, both with some fiberglass body components. Not to forget Ford cramming their 427 high riser into a mid size Fairlane with fiberglass lightened body parts and calling it “Thunderbolt”. Who ever said the GTO started the muscle car revolution? It was merely another in the long string of muscle cars and would have been little more than an appetizer for some of the fore mentioned cars.
Another major step in 1964 was the return of nitromethane as a legal racing fuel, which would move the dragster guys to the next level and wet the appetite of others. The mid 1960s was mostly dominated by the mopars which I joined with a 1964 two door no frills Plymouth. I installed a 426 stage III max wedge and removed anything it did not need to get from point A to B, but keep enough to stay legal in Super Stock classes of the time. By this time NASCAR had also entered drag racing as sanctioning body. I planned to street race it and run on the strip. The street race part didn’t work out very well as the sound of that thing was enough to scare the devil himself. So it became a drag strip only car and lead to my association with Dave Lewis, as he had a lot of mopar parts and was excellent at torqueflite transmission modification. Dave was already running super stock mopars in partnership with Dan Smoker. I always felt the Super Stock cars of mid 60s were prelude to the later Pro Stock class. As mid 60s progressed we started moving rear wheels forward to add weight to rear for traction, some even moved front wheels forward as well to add even more traction and maintain wheel base. These altered cars now had fiberglass components, altered wheel locations, plexiglass windows, so why not put Hilborn’s straight tube injectors up through the hood on top of those big thirsty Hemi’s. At first the sanctioning bodies didn’t know what class to put these cars in, so many times they just ran as exhibition. They finally created the A/FX class for factory experimental. Some even started running nitro in these much altered cars. You had to run injectors and big gear pumps to move the volume of nitro need for correct fuel/air ratio. Others then decided why not just build short dragster type chassis and install complete fiberglass bodies on them. The cars were said to look funny and so it was that the “Funny Car” was born in the late 1960s.
The fabricated chassis and hinged full fiberglass bodied funny cars were nicknamed “Floppers” to separate them from the earlier altered steel bodied cars. The floppers were now moving towards the professional category to compete with the dragster guys for popularity. However the dragster guys were continuing to set records as they were all on nitro by then. Dave had a flopper with a Hemi, Hilborn injection running on gas and didn’t seem to have desire to move on to nitro. So I bought it from him and set it up to run injected fuel (nitro) in the relatively new class A/FC. Since the two funny car classes were so new, occasionally tracks had to run AA/FC (blown nitro) and A/FC (injected nitro) together to have decent number of cars.
The race parts producers were producing more sophisticated and new advanced parts in late 1960s. The gasser and altered guys were building better looking and running cars using these new and sophisticated parts. Unfortunately this was also driving the cost of racing higher for all concerned. The rat rod had mostly come to an end by this time.
In late 1960s the car manufactures jumped into performance with both feet. Creating muscle cars for the every day car buyer who could simple purchase and go racing on street or strip. GM putting big block 396 or 427 CID engines in the Corvette, Chevelle and Camaro. GM also gave the Pontiac GTO 389 and 400 CID engines. GM continued with Oldsmobile 442. Ford putting everything from 390 to 429 CID engines in the Mustang. Chrysler stuffed the 426 CID Hemi in the Plymouth Barracuda as well as some larger bodied cars. There were some dealerships like Yenko and others that would further modified these new cars. If you were aware you could even place a central office production order (COPO) through GM to build you a super car, like a Nova or Camaro with an all Aluminum 427 CID engine. These cars terrorized everybody on the street including insurance companies, who in turn terrorized the buyers with huge rates.

The 1970s
The 70s began with manufactures reaching their performance peak with big block engines in just about every body they produced. Engine sizes reached areas like 440, 454 and 455 CID. These cars dominated the stock classes at drag strips. Unfortunately in 1971 this pattern began going in the opposite direction with lower compression ratios, ever decreasing cubic inches and the factory muscle car era died.
I began 70s with the injected fuel funny car running Tom “Smoker” Smiths “East Coast Fuel Funny Car Circuit”, by that time we were running in the 170 mph range at basically the flat 8 second range. However it was becoming harder to find events to race since the blown fuel cars (AA/FC) were becomig more plentiful. I then made a few changes to the car to run B/A. Some changes like motor location, changing over to gas and replacing the torqueflite transmission with a clutchflite. If you never heard of a clutchflite, your not alone many have not. Basically it was a torqueflite with front bell housing (converter area) cut off right in front of main body. The input shaft was replaced with modified shaft that could be used with standard clutch and then bolted to standard clutch bell housing. You used clutch to launch car and shifted by just moving lever or pushing a button depending on mechanism you used. This had been conceived a couple of years earlier and I believe contributed to the introduction of the Lenco transmission that was just becoming available at this time.
The professional ranks continued to be dragsters and now the funny cars that were becoming more popular with spectators, being a little wild and hard to handle because of the short wheel base. Even Dave got the fuel bug in early 1970s when Pee Wee Wallace wanted to sell his fairly new AA/FC “VIRGINIAN” to drive Billy Holts “ALABAMIAN” car. Dave and I bought Pee Wee’s car and went blown fuel racing with Frank Lesueur’s circuit. The car was competitive right from beginning since it was a turn key purchase. Dave had hoped for financial help from one of the local car dealerships that had sponsored some of his cars in the past but that never materialized. We ran some special events but stuck mostly to circuit and match racing because we needed the money, more than the press (pictures/ink) from divisional racing. The fuel racing was taking toll on us financially. We decided to switch to alcohol BB/FC and run Smoker Smith's “East Coast Fuel Funny Car Circuit”. Not long afterwards Dave wanted to sell his share which I agreed to buy with the stipulation I could continue to run the “BIG RED” name.
The next couple years running Smoker's circuit was quite an experience. Running east coast tracks from Great Lakes all the way down through Florida, sometimes two or three different tracks a weekend. There were good times and bad, the bad were mostly travel experiences like break downs, wrecks and the gas embargo. Although there were some track experiences that were not too good. Competing at the tracks always required a lot of work and little time to socialize. Covering this period with detail would take a book by itself, but it is a period I chose to cherish in memory. As the mid 70s came I was trying to support a wife and young daughter. Since I had no financial support to race for a living it was time to move on.
I sold turn key operation to Mac King who had mostly been involved in custom show cars. Mac made mostly cosmetic changes and ran it under the name of “QuickSilver”. After a period Mac was having mechanical and performance issues, he requested my help with these issues. I started building engines and correcting other problems for him, while at same time teaching his then teenage son Lance. The cars performance and reliability improved as well as Mac and his sons experience level. Near the end of 1970s after some body damage at a race, Mac decided to completely redo whole car and man did he ever! Mac and his son lance put all their show car abilities and race car abilities together to build the best looking funny car I had ever seen. He also purchased all top notch race components to ensure it ran as good as it looked. He ran the car into early 1980s as I faded out of the picture.
By the end of the 1970s my racing career was done. NASCAR was out of drag racing and IHRA had started. Rat rods were gone. Factory muscle cars were gone. What was left was a bunch of very dedicated hard core drag racers that would go on to push the sport to unbelievable highs and performance levels.

There it is ones view point of Good Old Days of drag racing.