Funny Cars Trio (3 Book Set)

Blast through the evolving early years of Funny Car drag racing when door slammers morphed into flip-top rail monsters. The era features historic mounts from Arnie "the Farmer" Beswick, Al “the Flying Dutchman” Vanderwoude, "Jungle" Jim Liberman, Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, and many more!

The metamorphosis from door slammers to fiberglass flip-top dragsters wasn’t ever a cut and dry plan. As drag racers pushed the envelope for more speed, a series of innovations quickly evolved and refined the genre.

Funny Cars cut their teeth in the A/Factory Experimental (A/FX) and Experimental Stock (X/S) classes in 1964 with the 2-percent Mopars that looked funny with their axles moved forward. However, it was Jack Chrisman’s supercharged, nitro-fueled 427 Supercharged Factory Experimental (S/FX) Comet Caliente that trailblazed the class on which the NHRA turned its back and the AHRA fully accepted. Showmanship became the draw in the dawn of Funny Car with half-track burnouts and flame-throwing headers that packed fans five deep at the fence.

By 1969, the NHRA had no choice but to create a class for these nitro-breathing, flip-top-sporting rail bruisers, indoctrinating the Funny Car (F/C) class at the Winternationals with 40 cars vying for 16 places in the field. The rest, as they say, is history!

• This is the most comprehensive book ever on the early
years of Funny Car
• Funny Cars are the most popular variation of drag cars
• Tens of millions of fans have seen Funny Cars race

See the cars raced by many of the legendary names in drag racing, including Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen and Jim Dunn. Action shots as well as clear detailed under the shell shots in the pits. 

Various makes and models of cars that have been reconstructed as funny cars - everything from stock to modified Camaros, Mustangs, Javelins, Dodge Chargers, and Firebirds to oddball exhibition cars like the ''backwards pickup.'' Photographer Louis Hart has been covering drag racing for over 30 years."

Since the early 1960s, dealer-sponsored Super Stockers battled for supremacy on the quarter-mile and in the dealer showrooms. Evolving into the Factory Experimental class, these wild steel-bodied, altered-wheelbase monsters were stuffed with massive fuel-injected and supercharged engines that attracted crowds to the dragstrip! Legendary pioneers "Dyno" Don Nicholson, Jack Chrisman, Bill Shrewsberry, Butch Leal, Dick Landy, Arnie Beswick, Phil Bonner, Gas Ronda, Don Gay, Sox & Martin, Richard Petty, and many other A/FX stars were instrumental in the development of the funny car as it morphed from a heavy production car into seven-second 250mph aerodynamic fiberglass, tubular chassis missile. The popularity of funny cars led "Jungle Jim" Lieberman, Bill Lawton, Lew Arrington, Bill Flynn, Norm Kraus, and "Big" John Mazmanian to become household names. Tom "Mongoose" McEwen, Don "Snake" Prudhomme, Tom Hoover, Kenny Safford, Terry Capp, John Force, Kenny Bernstein, Jake Johnston, Larry Reyes, Richard Tharp, Roland Leong, Randy Walls, Jess Tyree, Rich Siroonian and others who achieved success racing funny cars are all featured in over 300 incredible color & b/w photos.