Witzel said, "The idea is to smoke the tires. It's been as fast a 9.45/145, but I just hammer the throttle and smoke the tires for a 1,000 feet and hopefully light up the crowd. We run the car about 12 to 15 times a year, mostly at our home track Central Michigan Dragway. The car usually smokes better when the rear tires have some laps on them; these here are new Mickey Thompson 31x13s and we might have some trouble getting them to spin."

He was right on two runs, the car just whisped the tires. Nonetheless, though, this car just sitting stilling still in the pits is a show in itself.

BARNES & GLADSTONE'S 'MICHIGANDER'

There are nostalgia cars and there are nostalgia cars. In current terms, a nostalgia Top Fueler is really a modern dragster, which just happens to be front-engined. Most of these nostalgia circuiteers have cars built within the last five years, aluminum parts and/or motors, trick clutches, and modern magnetos. Not so, the "Michigander" out of St. Johns, Michigan. It IS a 1964 Top Fuel dragster -- all of it. Well, one or two mild exceptions.

Bud and Arlene Barnes and Bob and Kay Gladstone have a silver 125-inch Logghe chassied, Wayne Farr-bodied dragster that fell out of a time machine. Actually, it fell out of Barnes' barn.

"Bob and I built this car in roughly 1963 or early 1964," the 69-year-old Barnes said. "We raced it a lot in the Midwest, especially in Michigan and Detroit Dragway and I raced a lot of the good guys then ... Connie Kalitta, Dick LaHaie, Archie Leiderbrand, even Don Prudhomme, people like that. We ran it up to early 1969, ran a best of 7.37/207. I don't remember totally, but I think we hurt the engine in early 1969 and we both were sort of warn out. So we put it in the barn just as it was and let it sit. Sometime in 1994 we got to looking at it and thought why not run it again."

Outside of the iron Chrysler 392-cid short block and the M&H 13x16s, the car is totally original, as in 1964 equipment. The red diamond-tuck upholstery is repaired from minor damage by some raccoons feasting on part of it, but the Vertex magneto, the Engle roller cam, the GMC 6-71 blower, the homemade weed sweeper headers, the big Pirelli bicycle front tires, and the four-hole Hilborn
"Laguna Leanout" injectors are all the McCoy. In fact, if you look at this car head on, it looks a lot like Chris Karamesines' 1964 "Chizler" with its overall down-slanting profile. An absolute museum piece if there ever was one.

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