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The first rear-engine dragster, really
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Location: Blogs Running Wide Open |
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| Posted by: Joe VanHoose |
11/26/2007 9:57 AM |
Back in August I sat down with “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and toured his museum. Inside his museum sits what is considered the “First Successful Rear-Engine Dragster,” the Swamp Rat built in 1971.
After running the story, I received an e-mail claiming that this car was not the first successful rear-engine dragster. The same man who wrote me the day after the story published just sent me a packet with the real first successful rear-engine dragster, the 1963 Israeli Rocket built by Leroy Goldstein.
This car was built from the ground up and ran on a gasoline-powered Oldsmobile engine. It had no rear wing but did incorporate rack and pinion steering, aircraft front wheels and spherical rod ends to make the car handle better. The car ran the quarter-mile in about eight seconds, topping out around 170 m.p.h.
Impressive, indeed, but it didn’t change the face of drag racing and set the tone for what racecars we see today. The full sentence I wrote about Garlits’ dragster reads, “He also designed the first successful rear-engine dragster in 1971, the model that all modern dragsters are based on.”
The Israeli Rocket ran mostly in Florida and, while it earned top eliminator honors at Palm Beach International Raceway, neither the car nor the driver achieved national status. Want proof that this car didn’t have a big enough effect?
This car raced in 1963. Garlits’ car raced in 1971. The big names in drag racing followed with their own rear-engine cars in 1971 and ’72.
So, yes, this car raced successfully long before Garlits’ Swamp Rat took to the strip. But when Garlits’ car took to the strip and won everywhere, the racing nation noticed.
His car might not have been the first successful rear-engine dragster, but it was more successful. I’ll take the latter any day.
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