This is so cool! Anybody remember how hard it was to catch your favorite drag racing or stock car event on TV back in '65? My only go to in my three-TV channel market was ABC Wide World of Sports, a weekly show that featured several sporting events in round robin format. OMG, I sat through so many hours of ice skating, tennis doubles and bowling just to catch a few treasured moments of racing so I could get inspiration for my next Revell or AMC model car build. Wonderful memories...
That is so cool. One of the best things about RU-vid is that people like you can chime in. It's almost unreal (considering if this was on tv, and you missed it, you would NEVER see it again!!!)
I grew up in Phoenix in the 60’s and 70’s. Back then I remember it as being out in the boonies at least driving from north Phoenix. I can still hear the radio adds. “Beeline Dragway.....BEELINE DRAGWAY....Saturday Night.....SATURDAY NIGHT!!!...” It truly was grassroots racing. The AHRA events would offer the chance to see a Garlits, Ramchargers, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Sox & Martin, etc. otherwise my local favorite was John Loper with his Chevy powered Anglia. First Gasser in the 9’s. N/A of course. Loper had a speed shop on East Camelback in Phoenix. Beeline was pretty basic..couple of porta potties and wood bleachers. I don’t even recall that they had a concession stand. We used to bring our own drinks and snacks. Great memories. Thanks for posting the video! John
Some go, SOME BLOW!!!! (I heard that was a 70s California radio spot) thanks for sharing the details about the venue. It's nuts that no one would want to sell concessions to 6k people in attendance!!
I love these old drag racing videos, as I'm a bit of a drag racing history enthusiast! I first discovered drag racing as a teenager in the early 1970s and remember some of these drivers' name in magazines of the time. Keep these video coming! Regards from Australia.
I grew up in Scottsdale Az..Beeline Drag strip was close to my home...it was on The Salt River Indian Reservation. It's been gone for years, after the strip was closed the military used the strip portion of the track for some kind of devise testing.
The AHRA allowed and promoted nitromethane fuel cars in the years when the NHRA would not... BUT... The March Meet at Bakersfield's Famoso Drag Strip was the bigger fuel event then. This video was made just when the NHRA relented and brought on the fuel cars. I lived it.
Great video with some of the first funny-cars . Landy's Dodge was one of my favorites back then . Chris "The Greek" still drives in top fuel to this day !
Yes! The very first funny cars! Very strange looking modified wheel base cars. Looks to me like they were trying to go incognito and get away with things that weren’t quite listed in the “rule book”!
My mom was queen at the winter nationals, in 1967 and gave Connie Kalitta a trophy. My dad was a photographer and raced a dragster the Desert Digger at Beeline.
It was actually just north of Mesa Az on Hwy 87.It is still called BeeLine hiway.Its about 2or 3 miles ne on 87 just past 1st dirt road after Gilbert road.not much left but the outline of the track can still be made out.I remember some of the best eliminator racing ever.Non stop back to back racing all day long.
Yep. Then a skeet and trap shooting range used that exit, sitting just next to where the track was, facing northward towards the Beeline. It was there until 2008 and the whole area has been abandoned ever since.
I remember the drive to Beeline from our home at 9th Ave and Northern back in the 60’s. It was a good 45 minutes to an hour drive. I saw Grumpy Jenkins there along with Dyno Don Nickerson and many in others.The AHRA events always drew a good selection of national contestant.also saw Bob Glidden and his two sons racing at the speed world track located out in the tulles in the rar NW part of valley. Those were the days.
I remember these so well I went to Hobbs NM a lot to race I love to watch Dick Harrell . Another favorite was fennel tubes from Lubbock and James Buttler of Morton Texas with ford falcon little red , and license plate that said ( remember Me )
Sadly, just a few weeks earlier John Milner was killed by a drunk driver while driving home from a day of racing in California, can't remember the track. He was a great street racer back in the late 50's/early 60's around Modesto California and with some decent sponsership they say he could have been one hell of a Top Fuel man....
But in a couple years Grumpy switched to Chevys and starting stomping on all who stepped. It comes and goes. The design of the big block Chrysler with the hemi heads though, would continue to dominate but only in top fuel. It worked so well under supercharger boost at high rpms with the timing set extremely advanced, to the point where that kind of thing was never seen before! Garlits said that he and his peers never really squeezed the full potential out of the 426 hemi until they changed the chassis to the rear engine setup, where they weren’t so afraid of loosing a valve and exploding the blower right in their faces. Once the engine was behind them, they found they could push it to extreme conditions and set new records on every outing! Garlits said that every run he would advance the timing another degree and the car would get faster and faster to the point where it would pop and crack and bang and he was sure it would blow during the run but instead it just put out more and more power and set record after record.
Kevin Tucker jenkins switched to chevys after i think 1964 and then competed in pro stock in late 60s to early 70s and did well but most of the time jenkins lined up against ronnie sox he lost . in 70 and 71 sox was so dominant with his hemi cuda that jenkins got wally parks to impose weight penalties on any hemi powered mopar starting in 1972 season . sox never won a national event after that bs and was this was a disgrace to the sport. decades later when ronnie sox was getting inducted into the drag racing hall of fame parks appologized to sox for screwing the mopars over. too much politics creeped into drag racing and now its a corporate shitshow where you have to be rich and have huge sponsorship dollars to even race
@@kevintucker3354 He did real good in sixty six and seven.But sixty eight through seventy one mopars dominated.lol They basically created pro stock so chevy and ford could compete.But sox and martin still dominated the first two seasons of pro stock.
Hmm, maybe you forgot about the domination by Pontiac with their 421 Catalinas and the 409 Chevys. Remember that GM, under threat of antitrust laws being applied because of their total market domination, forbade their divisions from racing. In 1962, GM had 53% of the market and the Justice Department was watching them carefully. If they got to 60%, they would have been broken up. There was no direct GM factory support until the early 1970s. Let's see, how many Can Am, Trans Am, LeMans and F5000 races has Mopar won?
B'Chayil Ben Dan You’re absolutely right, and I’ve finally learned in my older age that the picking side in historical car wars is only a personal preference! The more you look into all areas the less you can support your ideas of why one is better than another. Apply this to politics and set yourselves free!!!
It's a known fact that Chrysler fibbed about the shipping weight of their cars in the early 60's to gain an advantage in super stock. After being called out on the matter they released the Gen2 Hemi which was a racing only design and never a practical production engine like the Ford, Pontiac and Chevy. In other words, if you bring a machine gun to a knife fight there's no reason you shouldn't win.
I never heard (or don't recall) staggered starts back then.. How'd they know how much of a lead to give the car starting ahead of the other guy? Maybe it was an AHRA thing?
Not sure about AHRA, but stagger starts were in the NHRA 1959 rule book, we used those rules for the nostalgia races we put on years ago. From what I remember you got a car length per tenth ET difference. Didn't really work out all that well though, lol. For instance, when it came time for top eliminator at the end of the day one might be a 14 second car and the other a 9 second slingshot. The car would start half way down the track.
To help explain that better, in 1959 they didn't have a christmas tree, they had flagmen, which we also used at our events. So the flagman would have to walk down track.
What kind of starting system were they using at the Bee Line...? I don't see a tree and the starter hasn't got a flag... Looks like he brings his hands together up over his head then touches his fingers together... I have never seen that... The tree was available to most tracks in '63.
I miss my 67 Plymouth valiant 273 that had a swapped in 340 and 727... I don’t want to kick myself anymore but that lightweight car on around 350 horsepower was the loudest and most fun car I’ve ever had and if I had only....
No, different guy. This Tom Hoover was from Minnesota and raced Fuelers and Funny cars. The Father of the Hemi was from PA and worked for Chrysler corp.
which ( Vega ) in the hands of my old aquaintence Da Grump from Malvern Pa. later spanked the mighty Mopars with their dual distributor big blocks with little SBC . Also look up this vid " Tom Heatley Vega crash" that happened in 2001 at NED a friggin hose clamp let go on what would have been a 7.90 pass causing the right rear to lose traction and the car to shoot across the track hitting the Jersey barrier then tumbling and sliding across the finish clearing the return lane in the air and landing upside down . Tommy has a time slip with an 8.39 with a 6 so when he tells someone he's been faster on his roof than they've been on 4 wheels he ain't kidding . That Vega was a Vanishing Point chassis with a Pat Musi 632 w staged 500 shot of nitros. Y'all can thank our lovely camera guy for the great shot of the Jersey Barrier and the quote "ya gotta be bullshittin me" as the car shoots across the track instead of actually catching the action - - a little PS any of you reading this if you know anything of old Arizona racers from my days at Beeline - - Del Blades ( the Rapier), Joe Rundle ( the Red Rat), John Loper (Lil Hoss), Ronny Timbush (Born Bad) please give me a shout . And let me also say I hated this starter thank God for "the TREE" and actual handicapped starts from the same launch pad
GM officially got out of factory backed racing but continued to fund racers such as Grumpy Jenkins. NHRA became GMs bitch as GM sponsored behind closed doors the races by providing all support vehicles to NHRA.- thus the "factoring" of the Mopar and Ford Hemi's by making them run ballast to allow Chevrolets to win. Jenkins cried the Hemis had an advantage-- NHRA made the "inline valve heads " rule to eliminate the hemi's but allowed the BBC's porcupine heads as being "almost inline valve heads".THAT led to Ford and Mopar losing for a while. there is still no super stock that can compete with the 1968 Hemi Darts and cuda's.
I had a Vega- 74 Kammback Wagon with a Malibu 350 and TH 350 with a 2 stage kit- THEN I put some 292 heads on it! Low 11's in the 8th (we don't have a full size track here)
Those were the days. All the greats showing up in Phoenix in the winter. Heroes just doing what we all loved. Count the names of the legends at the "Winternationals". I was there at Beeline and wish these days had never ended. Thanks for the great memories.
This was when we had real drag racing! All this fun and excitement and it was cheap to go to and almost free. Then the NHRA turned it into a money grubbing greedy event for the promoters. I family guy can't bring his wife and kids because the prices fucking hijack you!
