The reaction to Jack’s Comet set several people to thinking that if you combined a Blown Nitro motor with something stock-appearing and it was a real race car, you would have a real crowd pleaser. Chrisman was the catalyst, but the class now known as Nitro Funny Cars was started in the Chicago area and by Independent Racers. The name “Funny Car” came from the publicity pictures of the first altered wheelbase Mopars which showed the cars with stock tires and wheels on the back. After those pictures we are lucky they are not known as Silly Cars.

Arnie “the Farmer” Beswick (Jon Asher photo)

You will notice I said NITRO FCs, as using anything other than Nitro was not considered a Funny Car until NHRA created the Alky FC class about 20 years later. The first three Supercharged Nitro Funny Cars built as race cars were Ron Pellegrini---Arnie Beswick----Gary Dyer/Mr. Norm all with in a 100 miles radius of Chicago.

For the record I was running the Dyno at Grand Spaulding Dodge (Mr. Norm) at the time as well as being friends with Beswick so I knew all the players. Ron Pellegrini took a tube frame Supercharged Fuel altered and mounted his own Fiberglass Mustang body; to say he was ahead of the time would be a huge understatement. Beswick had the blower on his GTO by now but was running of all things “gasoline” with me calling him every 15 minutes trying to get him to go with Nitro.

As I was working at Mr. Norms, I watched Gary Dyer building the first of many Mr. Norm Nitro FCs. This first car was not factory backed and in fact Norm (soon to be the biggest selling Dodge dealer in the US) was told by Dodge not to build it. I had left Norm’s to crew chief on Arnie’s GTO and to convert it to Nitro with the promise of driving a second car to be built later that year. (Old Fuel Dragster guys were in big demand during the early FC days).

So by June of 65 the first three 3 Supercharged Nitro FC were running and then something happened that would change drag racing for ever. Track owners/promoters started to call wanting to pay money to have Nitro FCs at their track as the Fans were wild about them. If you hired Nitro FCs, your track made money. It was as simple as that.

For whatever reason (probably because it was too radical for the time) Ron Pellegrini’s Mustang-bodied fuel altered never gained the recognition it deserved, but both the Mr. Norm Dodge and Beswick’s GTO were in such demand they could have had paid race dates five days a week.

During this same period the factories were hiring/building and promoting Injected Nitro FCs to showcase their brands. In most cases the factory cars were about one half to one sec and 20 mph slower than the supercharged independents. The factory injected cars, while having hundreds of magazine stories written about them, were not major players in the real world where bookings were decided by both performance and popularity.

During that year the blown cars mainly raced each other as the factories wanted no part of this. By the next year their were several new blown cars added to the show including Lew Arrington’s “Brutus” and Steve Bovan’s “Blair’s Speed Shop” both from California, Dale Creasy Sr. from Chicago, Al Vanderwoude’s “Flying Dutchman” from Kansas and Bobby Wood from Alabama.

In 1966 Ford got a little tired of the independent blown cars making their factory cars look like red- headed step children and the Mercury division fired back with the Logghe-built tube frame one piece fiberglass-bodied 427 SOHC Comets.

While Nicholson and Schartman were still on injectors, at 1740 lbs they were a match for the heavier blown cars—that’s for sure.

In my next feature, we may go on thru the “Golden” years of Nitro FC match racing and I will tell what ended it then and what may bring it back again.