High, Hot, and Handsome

I've always thought that street rodding could benefit from hot rodding's past--not by living there, but by revisiting some of the shapes that were the heart and soul of the owner-conceived, owner-constructed competition cars that were built 45 to 50 years ago. The pages of Hot Rod, Rod & Custom, Hop Up, and Honk (early Car Craft) are full of visual ideas that, with a few modern upgrades, could and would put a little bit of the hot back into the street-rodding scene.

I'm also reminded of how far the car manufacturers and dealers have come since Ohio George Montgomery hit up Cadillac for a free short-block back in the late '50s. About a year ago, I did a piece on Montgomery and his nearly three-decade career of surviving the Gasser wars. The engines of choice for his first cars were Caddies because his father was a GM union guy and he was able to secure a Caddy for his son at racer's list. But when Montgomery asked the local Cad dealer for help, he was informed that Cadillac built fine motor cars, not racing engines. On the other hand, if Montgomery had lived in Los Angeles rather than Dayton, Ohio, he would have been treated like a king and his request would have been a no-brainer thanks to the enlightened attitude at Yeakel Bros. Cadillac.

That dealership, led by Bob Yeakel, was a name in SoCal 45 years ago because many of its hands-on employees owned, built, and raced hot rods. For instance, Lou Baney--who teamed with Don Rackemann to run Saugus dragstrip and would later sponsor a number of Top Fuel dragsters driven * by Tom "Mongoose" McEwen and Don "Snake" Prudhomme--was the service manager. The service writer was Kenny Arnold, one of the top drivers during the '50s. Nick Arias, of Arias pistons, block, and head fame, was a Yeakel Bros. tuneup man.

Don "Rack" Rackemann says the Yeakel-sponsored '29 roadster was originally built by Danny O'Brien in 1953. Rackemann, who owned Don's Speed Shop at the time, began driving the dual-purpose highboy on a fulltime basis. This included land-speed stints at the Bonneville Salt Flats (where it won Best Appearing Car and Crew in 1955) and quarter-mile sprints at the drags (where it held six track records).

After the highboy was partially wrecked on the way to the salt flats in 1954, O'Brien teamed up with Rackemann and his former speed shop partner Baney to rebuild the car. In 1955, Baney, who had just gone to work for Yeakel Bros. Cadillac, talked Don Yeakel into sponsoring their lakes, salt, and strip '29 highboy.

When the Baney, Rackemann, and O'Brien roadster wasn't tripping the eyes to the tune of 189 at the salt flats, it was pounding the quarter at 137 and terrorizing the troops gathered around the various SoCal strips: Saugus, San Fernando, Santa Ana, Pomona, San Gabriel, Colton, Paradise Mesa, Bakersfield, and Lions. During its five-year career, the Iris blue, Von Dutch-striped highboy acquired a number of different powerplants--first a 296ci '48 Merc, then Nick Arias' 302ci Jimmy six, and finally a pair of Nick Matranga-owned, Baney-built 360-cube Caddies.

After the roadster was rebuilt in 1955 and joined the Yeakel Bros. stable of * hot cars, legendary striper Kenny "Von Dutch" Howard was commissioned by Rack to stripe his F-100 pickup, Baney's Caddy, and their roadster prior to the Bonneville speed trials. Dutch wrapped up the three-car graffiti project save for the roadster's grille-shell insert--that he took back to his shop to finish. Even though the opening of a Deuce grille shell is not symmetrical, he still mistook the fresh-air opening for the crank hole, and in essence, painted it upside down. "When I saw that Dutch had painted the head upside down, I was really pissed," remembers Rack, "But he thought that an upside down head was even more bitchin'--that guys will go through all kinds of contortions just to look at the face. And you know he was right! I still have photos in my album of guys at the flats, lakes, or drags with their necks twisted around to get a better look at our grille insert."

Even though the roadster was nearly unbeatable at the drags, it was plagued by tranny troubles. Fran Hernandez--one of the guys credited for introducing nitro to the hot rodders and who would become a major player with FoMoCo's various racing efforts--was hired by Ford during the early '50s. His job was to scope out the modified automatics that were being used by its competitors in stock car racing and in the famed Mexican Road Race. "Hernandez," recalls Rack, "cut a bunch of Hydramatics apart to see how they worked and then began selling beefed versions to the racers. They worked great with gas or alky, but when we switched to nitro the increase in torque really fouled up the converter. So we switched back to a Cad but blew Second at Saugus. Baney and I removed everything in the case but high gear and ran direct drive. When we pushed up to the starting line to race Art Chrisman--who was driving the Reed Bros. '29 at the time--no one noticed that Baney and O'Brien were wiping the rear slicks with wet rags to make the tires slip even more and not bog the motor. Chrisman opened up two cars on me, but I went around him on the top end. I can still remember him coming over to me and saying, 'I didn't hear you shift that thing.' In retrospect we should have left it alone and shortened the gears in the quick-change." Chrisman would get his revenge a few weeks later when he recorded a 140-mph run, beating Rackemann in the finals of the A/Hot Roadster class.

Rack recalls that they ran the car up until 1958 and then sold it. Still, its memory lives on. I got a call from Rack the other day. He said his brother had seen the piece I did on Von Dutch for Hot Rod and wanted to fill me in on the upside-down head story. That got me thinking. Why not do more for the readers of R&C than carry a photo of Dutch's boo-boo and augment Dutch's neck-twisting, inverted head shot? Here's the rest of the Baney, Rackemann, and O'Brien '29 roadster. Just a few Department of Motor Vehicle-imposed modifications could make it hot rodding's first triple-threat highboy: salt, strip, and street.