 Can you imagine walking into...  Can you imagine walking into the service department of a high-end Cadillac dealership and seeing an Iris Blue, Dutch-striped 29 highboy up on the rack with Fords legendary Fran Hernandez repairing its automatic transmission? |
 Don Rackemanns F-100...  Don Rackemanns F-100 pickup, Lou Baneys Cadillac, and the Danny OBrien, Rackemann, and Baney highboy were painted the same Iris Blue, then striped and flamed by Von Dutch. The Yeakel crew included (from left), Nick Arias, Bill Likes, Danny OBrien, Don Rackemann, Jo Rackemann, Rich Rackemann, Nick Matranga, Lou Baney, and Ted Evosavich. |
 Rack likes to point out that...  Rack likes to point out that the Baney-Rackemann-OBrien roadsterwhich ran 189.416 in the D/Fuel classmay have been the first hot rod sponsored by a new-car dealership. The Dzus-fastened three-piece hood was also unusual for the time. |
 Can you imagine driving this...  Can you imagine driving this roadster into a car show without the spectators coming unglued? Dutch had a rule about flames: Never cross over licks. Note how the frame horns have been bobbed and the 32 grille shell lowered to achieve the proper rear-to-front tip. A trunk-mounted radiator would make the solid grille opening immaterial. |
 No matter what the angle,...  No matter what the angle, the classic shape of a 29 on Deuce rails remains the essence of hot rodding. The decklid was louvered to release trapped air, and the license plate and 39 teardrops were used because the car was flat-towed to the salt flats. The rubber combo included 5.50x16 and 6.00x18 Firestones. |
 Nick Arias devised a fuel...  Nick Arias devised a fuel delivery system that allowed the roadster to run from the starting line to the 2-mile where Rack could switch from straight alky to a fuel mixture containing nitro. The 29 ran over 160 with Arias 302-inch GMC. |
 A terror at the drags as well,...  A terror at the drags as well, here Rack is shown making a pass at San Gabriel. Eric Rickman recorded the action on July 6, 1956. |
 The roadster was fitted with...  The roadster was fitted with either Arias 176.227-mph, 302ci Jimmy or one of Nick Matrangas Baney-built Caddies. The Hilborn-injected one displaced 358 ci. Modifications included a Herbert roller cam, milled 52 heads, 11.5:1 Venolia pistons, and a Vertex mag. |
 Its carbureted brother was...  Its carbureted brother was said to be bigger, but we dont know by how much. Go-fast goodies were an Edelbrock four-pot intake manifold, Howard cam, and modified 48 carburetors (the venturis were bored out to 1-1/8 inches). |
 See what I mean about how...  See what I mean about how it could be streetable? The driver compartment features a left-hand 40 columnrather than a center-steer setupand a gutted steering drop attached to a Bell three-spoke midget steering wheel. The shifter leads to a Fran Hernandezmodified Hydramatic trans. Engine coolant was circulated to the engine from a trunk-mounted tank by a live-bait-tank pump. |
 The roadster chassis was based...  The roadster chassis was based on a pair of 32 rails fitted with tubular crossmembers that, in turn, support a dropped-I-beam axle, tube shocks, split radius rods, ladder bars, and a Halibrand quick-change rearend. |
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.