Every once in a while when cruising Youtube, you find gold. I found it five times with these 5 videos from the "Big Go" the US Nationals from Indianapolis, Indiana from way back in 1969 when they just called it, "The Nationals". Called the "Tournament of Champions" and presented by Hurst Performance Center you'll hear the late great voice of drag racing Steve Evans narrating.  The videography's cool too. You'll have no doubt, this is the late 60's! Even cooler for me is that these are from 1969! The year I was born and like me, they're about to have their 20th birthday, again. I haven't heard a single drag racer, especially the current pros, mention any other race ahead of the US Nationals. This is THE race of the year and it looks like it has been for 40 years. Enjoy these 5 nostalgia drag racing videos from before corporate sponsors and big dollar teams. The 4-speed bang'n, the tire smoking, the love of drag racing shows clear. Here's part 1: Featuring the intro and credits. Don't want watch the first minute of this one, then skip on...

Stromberg Headquarters—Kookie car clone wins the ultimate accolade and more running genuine Stromberg 97 carburetors at the 2009 Detroit Autorama. Stromberg is pleased to announce our involvement with the new “Kookie” car clone, owned by Detroit’s Ron Kregoski and built by Reno Rods and Customs in Oklahoma City. Featured in hundreds of magazines and a highlight of the 1950s television series 77 Sunset Strip, driven by Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, the original Kookie car is one of the best known hot rods of all time, originally built in the 1950s by actor, artist and hot rod legend Norm Grabowski. Running a hopped-up 1952 Cadillac engine with four chromed Stromberg 97 carburetors, Ron’s clone is as accurate as possible to the 50-plus year-old hot rod. He contacted Stromberg back in 2008 because their new and improved 97s are faithful in every detail to the original 97s Grabowski bolted to the Caddy’s rare Horne four-carb intake manifold. The Genuine Stromberg 97 bowl and airhorn castings, stainless steel linkage and miscellaneous screws and fittings were all shipped to Advanced Plating in Nashville, TN, for chrome plating or polishing, then shipped back to Stromberg...

Andy from Andy's Pinstriping gives us 5 Steps for painting Vintage Door Art on Shop Trucks 1. The first thing I like to do is use some wax and grease remover and clean the panel to be painted. This simple step is honestly one of the most critical and most often overlooked steps in any paint project. . . . . 2. I like to make a stencil to help draw out the design. There are several methods I use to achieve the stenciled on pattern. One of the easiest ways is to use a pounce wheel & chalk, but on this particular truck I had no colored chalk, and obviously white wouldn't do, so I went old school on it and cut the pattern out of poster board with an exact-o knife....five blades and several blisters later ta-da, a handmade stencil. . . 3. Finally to the fun part, let's thrown on some paint! I start by tracing the pattern (after centering it on the door) with a stabilo pencil. After that it's pretty self explanatory...just fill in the spaces with the one shot color of choice. ....

Stromberg Carburetor is proud to announce the first World Land Speed Record powered by New Stromberg 97 carburetors. Congratulations to Bobby Green and the Old Crow Speed Shop crew from Burbank, CA for shattering their 104mph 2008 V4/FS record with a new 127.270 mph pass at Bonneville’s Speed Week in August 2009 with their belly-tank lakester. The traditional belly tank lakester has been a Bonneville favorite since Bill Burke fixed a war-surplus aircraft drop tank onto an early Ford chassis back in 1946. The natural streamline shape of the tanks, used during the war to hold extra fuel on aircraft which could then be jettisoned or “dropped”, was the perfect ready-made streamlined race car body. The Old Crow Team was put together specifically to maintain this tradition. In the FS (Fuel Streamline) class, the design of the body is restricted only to the extent that at least two wheels must be covered. The V4 engine class is for Vintage (pre-1935) 4-cylinder engines. Says Stromberg owner Clive Pew, “I met the Old Crow guys with heads in hands on Monday as they couldn’t get enough fuel into the very hot H&H...

Not all of you ladies and gents can imagine a car being raised to the status of an icon or art form. In fact I haven’t always myself. However, the more I get to work on and see cars, the more enamored I’m becoming. After attending RM Auctions “Icons of Speed and Style” my car love-o-meter has just shot through the roof! An auction doesn’t sound that exciting you say? What if I told you that all of the 80 iconic cars being sold in this no-reserve auction were available to peruse up close and personal? Yep... you could even touch em'! At most car shows, the best cars are roped off to keep you admiring from a distance. There were no ropes at the Friday preview before RM's "Icons of Speed and Style" auction at The Peterson Museum in Los Angeles, California. With nearly seven million dollars being drawn in by the auction, people putting out the money needed to really see what they were paying for. So when I arrived during preview day, I was able to get as close as I wanted to each car. With...

Talented Bassist Gene Schwartz hangs up his guitar for a weekend of racing at the Auto Club Famoso Raceway, Oct. 16-18 BAKERSFIELD, CA – Gene Schwartz is a former NHRA record holder in his 1952 Chevy, but underneath his racing suit Gene can’t stop singing the blues. That’s because his “day job” is as a bass player. For over 30 years, Gene played bass for legendary blues guitarist Robert Lockwood Jr. When not jamming on his bass guitar, Gene has managed to build his skills as a champion racecar driver setting National records in the 60s to present day. The Euclid, OH resident has made the annual trip to the National Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky on numerous occasions, but has yet to visit McFarland, CA for the California Hot Rod Reunion. Fans of both Gene’s music and his racing raised money to surprise him with an all-expense-paid trip to the California Reunion this October. Gene was surprised, thrilled and eager to join fans and friends at the Reunion. Gene’s car will be a sure crowd pleaser. His ’52 Chevy racecar is one of the few nostalgic...

Start getting excited NOW! Mark your calendars for October 16-18 in Bakersfield California for the best of Nostalgia drag racing at the California Hot Rod Reunion. It's a "Reunion" because is more than just a huge gathering of vintage styled racers and the real-deal, too valuable and historic to actually race diggers... it's a social gathering of friends and competitors from all over, but certainly the hot rod-packed southern California scene where the 1320-craze started.  The Reunion includes 3 days of nostalgia drag racing, a car show of hot rods, a growing swap meet and manufacturers midway and a gathering of drag racing legends from years gone by. If you can make it to only 1 drag race, make this one. (pssss... bring your camera!) Press release from the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum Top 5 Things to See at the 18th Annual California Hot Rod Reunion, presented by Automobile Club of Southern California Auto Club Famoso Hosts Vintage Drag Race Event, Oct. 16-18 BAKERSFIELD, CA (Sept. 1, 2009) – The cackling noise a vintage dragster makes when fired up. Rubbing elbows with legendary racers. These are a few...

Bonneville Salt Flats: Streamliner Race Car The Record setting crew from Arizona. This model T powered 'banger' is for real! I was thrilled to find Tom Brawner of Scottsdale as a member at MyRideisMe.com.  Not only does Tom have a killer 1956 Chevy with perfect looking Real Rodder wheels with the Dow 7 coating, but he's also got pictures of the the Corsair 3 T land speed racing streamliner powered by a turbocharged 4 cylinder! Tom crew's on the Corsair owned by Joel Young of Phoenix, Arizona.  He set a new world speed record for 4 cylinder flathead engine under 220 cubic inches with a speed of 130 mph. An amazing feat considering he was running on a 99.448 mph record set in 2004. Even more amazing, due to problems with the transmission shifter this record was set using only 1st and 2nd gear! With the shifter problem resolved Corsair 3T bumped its previous record to 166 mph on its third run and backed it up the next day with a run of 154 mph for an average of 160mph. The slower speed on the forth run was due...

Words and Pics by Keith Harman (I only posted it for him!) In just over ten short years, the Goodwood Festival of Speed has become a worldwide ‘must-see’ for car enthusiasts from every genre and hobby, there is quite simply, nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Held at the sprawling Goodwood Estate in Southern England the show is a mass celebration of speed in all its wheeled forms where famous racing drivers past and present rub shoulders with fans and celebrities alike and glorious racing machines from collections all over the world are fired up and run in anger up the long winding hill from outside the stately home. No matter what your tastes in cars, there will always be something to marvel at. Held over three days, we managed to blag a couple of free tickets for this year's event and went along on the Friday to have a look, I'd heard that this year's American theme was NASCAR (it was Top Fuel dragsters last year and Bonneville before that) and so with British fans having never seen these cars in action, I was interested to...

Hot Rod Roadster from the Grand National Roadster Show When you compete for the biggest roadster prize there is, America's Most Beautiful Roadster (the AMBR as it's called) you've already won. When you're the second woman in the Grand National Roadster Show's 60 year history to compete, there's got to be a story brewing for MyRideisMe.com. I first noticed Kim Vranas' 1927 Ford Touring Roadster resting quietly, not 30 feet away from the eventual AMBR winner  named "Hot Rod Special" built at Willet Specials. Owning a 1927 roadster myself, that is in fact a cut version of the very same Model T touring body Kim chose. Trouble is, two people barely fit in my "lakes style" modified roadster. That's why, this uncut touring was easily one of my favorites at the show. It could be a "Family Hot Rod"! Following the GNRS, the roadster took a short ride into Los Angeles to accept an invitation of the Peterson Automotive Museum.  The So-Cal show in Pomona, CA marked the "outside" debut of Kim's hot rod with her husband Chuck getting the chance to pour in some 108 octane and blue...

Leaving hard at Speedworld's Nostalgia Drags, this inline 6 powered Nostalgia Dragster's different but so right! I bumped into Wayne and this cool front engine dragster at the Nostalgia Drags here in AZ at Speedworld. Always on the lookout for something different, I couldn't help but notice the the six cylinder, a not-so-obvious choice for an engine, let alone in a vintage dragster. Travelling into Arizona from Alamogordo, NM for the drags, here's some info about Wayne's digger: I decided to build an inline car because I raced my Flathead car with the Denver Flathead Inline guys and saw there weren't many "Late inline" dragsters and when there were, they all ran Chevys... so I thought about the best engineered inline and came up with the Ford. (12 port head and very Strong bottom end). Chassis: 1968 Race Car Engineering (Woody Gilmore) 182" wheelbase. Engine: 1975 Ford 300 cu in, bored .030 with Weisco flat top forged pistons with zero deck clearance. Crankshaft: is out of an F-650 which is steel. Rods: Crower H- beam. Cam and lifters: Crower (flat tappet) Head: From a 240 cu in Ford (much...

For #3, MyRideisMe.com went in search of Nostalgia Funny Cars.  We scored a great find when we discovered the  www.70sfunnycars.com website in our internet search.  The website itself is vintage too, as it was established in 1998...was the internet even around back then? Ha Ha "Remember when Funny Cars actually resembled their street driven cousins? Real Funny Cars, and not show cars, actually appeared at car shows? Funny Cars had names, showed up to the races on open ramp trucks, and used tow cars often supplied by spectators after the crowd was pulsed by the track announcer for "volunteers?" This Vintage Funny Car website has many hidden jewels and is sure to bring back memories!  You'll need a couple hours to soak in all this 'Nostalgia'.  We'll launch into more in the future from 70sFunnyCars.com...we've only just gone through the waterbox and started our 1st burnout (..."Remember when Funny Cars would do 5 burnouts")! Have your own pictures or stories about your favorite Nostalgia Funny Car from 'back in the day'? Please share them by emailing to: nostalgiaFC@MyRideisMe.com Or, leave a comment below, you don't need to be a member.   If you like what you see, please Join us! as a member...