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| Piston-driven drag race cars were not the only ones that ran more than one engine. The excitement was doubled with the addition of an extra engine on jet dragster jockey Steve Cotuguno's ride. It ran a best of 6.36/249. (Jeff Burk photo) |
In the dinosaur days of drag racing (1949-1955), all kinds of wild contraptions were created to produce maximum speeds on the dragstrip. Pulling off all the body panels on a roadster to produce a dragster, mounting a 4-71 blower, putting on eight two-barrel carburetors, and stroking the Mercury Flathead with nitro- methane as well as the Chryslers were just some of the methods used to gain an edge. At some point in this time frame, some brilliant soul decided that an extra engine, a second engine, might produce favorable results.
As early as 1951, Joaquin Arnett, Carlos Ramirez and "the Bean Bandits" team out of San Diego, Calif. ran a front-engine, twin Mercury Flathead. in 1955 Lloyd Scott became the first drag racer over 150-mph with a front and rear-motored dragster called "the Bustle Bomb." Don Jensen, in 1956, debuted a twin-rear-engine Mercury Flathead dragster called "the Head Hunters" out of Hayward, Calif.
If there was a heyday for these behemoths, it was probably the very late 1950s and early 1960s. The first national event-winning twin was the Chet Herbert- "Lefty" Mudersbach twin injected Chevy that won Top Eliminator at the 1961 AHRA Winter Nationals in Henderson, Nevada. A weekend later, NHRA had its first twin winner when Jack Chrisman took Top Eliminator with the Howard Cam Spl. blown twin Chevy dragster at Pomona, Calif.
Racers such as Eddie Hill, Chris Karamesines, Don Westerdale, Bill Tibboles, Jack Moss, and dozens of others ran the twins with varying degrees of success. Chet Herbert even ran one with three engines and "T.V. Tommy" Ivo put one down the track with four injected Buicks. When Pete Robinson drove his then ultra lightweight "Tinker Toy", single-engine, blown small-block Chevy gas dragster, to the 1961 NHRA Nationals Top Eliminator title, a lot of racers converted to the fact that the twins were too heavy and that less weight equaled more horsepower.
By the mid-1960s, save for John Peters' thundering "Freight Train" twin Chevy Top Gas dragster, most every racer of any significance had gone the single-engine route. However, the twins roared back to life in the final two years for the Top Gas class (1970 and 1971) and remarkably scored national event wins. Teams like Motes & Williams and "the Freight Train" bunch as well as Gordon Collett, Walt Stevens' "Odd Couple," and Jim Bucher. Drivers like Ray Motes, Dale Funk, and Rhoades (and others) got speeds registered over 210 mph.
By the time Don Garlits had revived the rear-engine Top Fuel dragster, the twins were gone. The last fuel twin of any note was the Carroll Bros. twin, inline Chrysler fueler which driver Buddy Cortines drove to speeds approaching 240-mph.
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