THE BIRTH OF NITRO
FUNNY CARS, PART 2

By Frank Oglesby
DRO File Photos
8/8/05

Click here to read Part 1

I need to tie up a couple of loose ends before we move on and give a couple more of the pioneers of Nitro FCs the respect due them.

Bob Sullivan’s 65 Barracuda “Pandemonium”, all steel, blown 392 direct drive on straight nitro was one of the earliest exhibition cars smoking the tire the full quarter. Another early blown nitro FC was the Don Gay Pontiac GTO, one of several to follow.

Before the Logghe Comets arrived on the scene you had two different types of cars competing. One was the very lightweight factory cars on injectors, made mainly from parts that were not for sale to normal humans (titanium K-members/alum body parts), and then you had the independent blown cars that couldn’t get the factory lightweight parts but were still quicker and a lot faster because of the blower.

The Mercury Comets built for Ford by Ron & Gene Logghe were the shot heard around the world and here is how it happened.

I believe the idea to build the Comets started with Fran Hernandez (Ford Racing Manager) looking at the Nitro Altered chassis Supercharged Nitro Motor/All Glass Mustang body of Ron Pellegrini and thinking AT THE TIME it was way too radical. A year or so later after his factory cars were being pounded on a weekly basis by the independent blown cars, Pellegrini’s idea didn’t seem so radical after all.

Al Turner was looking to make a big statement for Mercury and after talking with Hernandez they decided to move forward with the Logghe project with two provisions. The body would look as stock as possible—no altered wheelbase and no blower but everything else was on the table, the results were the Logghe Comets. (I was told this by Al Turner during the three years I was at Mercury/Ford a few years later.)