Anybody who knows the history of hot rodding knows that the roots of the hobby are interwoven pretty tightly with the sport of drag racing. Long-time readers will remember that features on dragsters made up part of the editorial mix of ROD & CUSTOM back in our "little pages" days of the late '50s. Since then, the sport of drag racing has evolved from a pastime for grassroots rodders into a huge high-dollar industry. The top-end cars have morphed from homebuilt rods with tuned-up bangers and flatheads to scientifically engineered apparatuses powered by 8,000-plus-hp supercharged aluminum Hemis. Impressive machines all right, but we still like watching the old-time Gassers and Altereds, doorslammers, and front-engined rails. Evidently we're not alone, since events such as the Antique Nationals, the March Meet, and the Goodguys Nitro Nationals have become extremely popular.
One of the most popular dragsters hitting the nostalgia drag racing circuit as an exhibition car is "Flathead Jack" Schafer's injected twin-engined flathead dragster. You've seen racing photos of it in magazines and on Web sites and in full smokey burnout mode on the cover of the Flathead Jack catalog. We have too-but never had a good up-close look at the car until we saw it "in person" at the Goodguys March Meet in Bakersfield last winter.
At first impression, the dragster just looks stunning. Of course, tandem flatties with a squad of 16 chromed 11-inch Hilborn injector stacks rising out of a hand-formed body shot by Art Himsl is a pretty cool eyeful. Even more impressive, at second impression, is the mechanical engineering that went into making the twin-engine setup actually work. Yeah, it's a nostalgic car and, yeah, they're flathead engines, but there's nothing old-fashioned about the technology involved here or the car's 8-second e.t.'s.
If you didn't know, Flathead Jack is a leading dealer in high-performance flathead components. He started building and racing flatheads-and earned his nickname-as a teenager in Northern California in the '50s. After several years of racing flatheads, and a few racing Hemis and small-block Chevys, Jack left hot rodding in 1969. His participation and his nickname were revived about 10 years ago, when he and Bill Reasoner built his well-known flathead '49 Merc custom. That engine led to the beginning of a parts dealership that has grown into a booming business. Given Flathead Jack's background, the creation of this elaborate flathead dragster was inevitable. Take a good look at one of the best-looking, quickest, and coolest hot rods running on the West Coast. And go out and see it in action when the season starts up again.