Cool. I've heard about these Toros. Front and back wheel drive simultaneously and 2 supercharged engines. I guess they were a handful!

this was the 2nd of 2 toronados, the 1st '66 car is in the olds museum in lansing michigan

this video is the last run made by the '67 car, it was dismantled after this wreck

The body was a 442 Cutlass, the chassis was custom built, the drivetrains were Toronado.  I believe there was only one car, starting with a '66 body and just rebodied for '67.

In defense of the driver, he was an experienced top fuel driver and was able to get 185 mph trap speeds out of it with all 4 wheels spinning.  Remember, there would be little to no steering response with all 4 wheels spinning - add in the instability should one wheel grab and let go and you have one handful to drive!  Also of note is that unlike a conventional 4 wheel drive, the front and rear wheels were powered by 2 independent powertrains.  Watch the video and it looks like the left front started smoking first then grabbed - then the rears started smoking and it looked like he was trying to power out of it with the front wheels hooking up.  who knows what else might have been going on but I'm glad it wasn't me behind the wheel...

Lots of info at the following links:

http://www.speedhunters.com/2010/10/retrospective_gt_gt_the_hurst_hairy_olds/

http://www.carguychronicles.com/2010/10/hurst-hairy-oldsmobile-ultimate.html

http://www.supercarsunlimited.com/info/photos/funstuff/67hho/67hho.htm

MC wrote:

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The body was a 442 Cutlass, the chassis was custom built, the drivetrains were Toronado.  I believe there was only one car, starting with a '66 body and just rebodied for '67.

In defense of the driver, he was an experienced top fuel driver and was able to get 185 mph trap speeds out of it with all 4 wheels spinning.  Remember, there would be little to no steering response with all 4 wheels spinning - add in the instability should one wheel grab and let go and you have one handful to drive!  Also of note is that unlike a conventional 4 wheel drive, the front and rear wheels were powered by 2 independent powertrains.  Watch the video and it looks like the left front started smoking first then grabbed - then the rears started smoking and it looked like he was trying to power out of it with the front wheels hooking up.  who knows what else might have been going on but I'm glad it wasn't me behind the wheel...

 

Lots of info at the following links:

http://www.speedhunters.com/2010/10/retrospective_gt_gt_the_hurst_hairy_olds/

http://www.carguychronicles.com/2010/10/hurst-hairy-oldsmobile-ultimate.html

http://www.supercarsunlimited.com/info/photos/funstuff/67hho/67hho.htm

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 Mark, thanks for sharing all those great links for that amazing drag car. Also there is clarification in the last link, as to why the car crashed in that video. Amazing stuff.

2drpost wrote:

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2drpost wrote:

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this was the 2nd of 2 toronados, the 1st '66 car is in the olds museum in lansing michigan

this video is the last run made by the '67 car, it was dismantled after this wreck

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 yup, they were both cutlass bodies, i had the 'terrifying toronado' on the brain, which also wrecked

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 Ah yes, another aptly named 4-wheel-drive drag car...

On the subject of interesting drag cars from the sixties, is Tommy Stringfield's Triple Trouble.http://www.dragzine.com/news/flashback-friday-tommy-stringfields-1128ci-triple-engine-nova/

By Tony DeFeo posted on Oct 8, 2010 in News

(10) Comments

Yknow, this Nova..its a really nice carI dig it and all, but it just seems to be missing something. Hmm, wait a minute, Ive got it! How about a pair of injected fuel burning small blocks in the back seat! Yeah, thats the ticket! And to keep the front end down, Ill just leave the original motornah, screw that Ill stick another injected fuel burner under the hood too. Im goin Funny Car racing dangit!

And at some point early in 1966, these were the very thoughts that went through a young Tommy Stringfields mind. But, unlike the rest of us, who would normally dismiss such ideas as being too radical given the practical limitations placed on us Earthlings, Stringfield actually went ahead and pulled the trigger.

The result was the Triple Trouble Nova. An exercise in extreme backyard engineering, the little Chevy sported a whopping 1128 cubic inches24 cylinders worth of very angry mouse motor wrapped up in an otherwise stock, steel production car.

How did it all work, you ask. This is beautiful. Under the hood, in the stock location was engine number one. It fed through a three speed auto, regular drive shaft, and on to the rear (more on that in a second). Engines two and three resided in the back seatfully exposed!  In the otherwise fully upholstered interior and fed through clutches and direct drive couplers, also to the rear.

Now, the rear is where things get really wild. The rear consisted of three, count em, three Early Olds units that were grafted together in line to form the most amazing axle in the history of man.

It was all so beautifully wrong that it HAD to be right, right? Well, not exactly. Tipping the scales at an ungodly 4000 pounds, and with enough torque on tap to turn concrete into confetti, the Triple Trouble Nove was a freewheeling slow motion projectile. In the only account we could find of the car in actual competition, it lost a best two of three match race to Fast Eddie Schartmans conventional Merc Fueler with an ET somewhere down in the low 11s.

Ok, so the plan didnt work out quite the way Stringfield had hoped. But, do you think such an enterprising individual was going to let this turn of events dissuade him from chasing his dream of fame and fortune on the Drag Strips of America? Of course not! Over the Winter of 66, Stringfield attacked the hind quarters of his beast with every destructive implement .at his disposal, hacked out the two rear mounted engines and stuffed a single diff axle in their place, turning Triple Trouble into a radical altered wheelbase wheelie car! And thats where the path drifts off into eternal obscurity. A couple of shots of this contraption exist, but no record of its performance in this configuration can be found.

Tommy Stringfield: Man, mechanic, visionary. The only real question now, is where is this man today, when Drag Racing needs him the most.

George, I read a reference to it on another forum and had to google it.  I too was stunned by its coolness.

Glad you enjoy! 

Great stories Earl.

I went to Drag City a few times as a kid, if I could convince Dad to take me - more often though I'd bug him to take us to the stock car track in Lucasville (Atlantic Speedway).  Seems the Sackville stock car oval only lasted for a year or so.

Didn't get to Maitland the first time around, but went there quite a bit in the late eighties when it was reopened for awhile.  Made a few passes there myself but mostly hung out in the pits with the guys I knew who raced on a regular basis.

Good times, they were.  The late sixties early seventies had to be the most interesting for drag cars IMHO.

i am assuming that when it became an altered wheel base funny car, it lost two of its motors. How could you fit three motors in there, with the rear diff being that far forward. Interesting never the less but i prefer the Nova the way it was initially with the three small blocks. What a wild hairy ride that must have been. All of the crazy drag cars that have been mentioned here, i remember because of the car magazines i got as a kid growing up back then. I also remember a Corvair pickup called the  "Back Up Pick Up" it was a wheel stander that went down the track backwards. Also a 64 or 65 Chevelle that had a V-12 Allison aircraft engine in it. Another wild ride i remember was a 1955 Chevy Nomad that was a beautiful looking wheel stander. Art Arfons of course was a automotive genius that built many interesting and amazing drag and land speed cars. This has been an amazing topic so far and it is real sweet seeing and reading about some of these great drag cars from the past. We should keep this going. Cheers. George.

long stroke wrote:

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i am assuming that when it became an altered wheel base funny car, it lost two of its motors. How could you fit three motors in there, with the rear diff being that far forward. Interesting never the less but i prefer the Nova the way it was initially with the three small blocks. What a wild hairy ride that must have been. All of the crazy drag cars that have been mentioned here, i remember because of the car magazines i got as a kid growing up back then. I also remember a Corvair pickup called the  "Back Up Pick Up" it was a wheel stander that went down the track backwards. Also a 64 or 65 Chevelle that had a V-12 Allison aircraft engine in it. Another wild ride i remember was a 1955 Chevy Nomad that was a beautiful looking wheel stander. Art Arfons of course was a automotive genius that built many interesting and amazing drag and land speed cars. This has been an amazing topic so far and it is real sweet seeing and reading about some of these great drag cars from the past. We should keep this going. Cheers. George.

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 Ok, here's a page about E J Potter.  Not only did he have the motorcycle with the small block Chevy, but he built a couple of frightening Allison-powered cars as well.

http://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/2013/04/30/remembering-ej-potter/

eeluddy wrote:

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The 60's & 70's were very entertaining on Sunday afternoon at the drag strip. I remember going to the old Maitland Air Force base where they had a flagman and arm drop drags on the old concrete runway. Real wild stuff going on.

When they opened Drag City in Sackville the wheelstanders came.

One was the Hemi Bug (name might be wrong) a VW pickup with a Hemi in the back doing full 1/4 passes on the rears only until it flipped over coming back up the track. One of my buddys got a Hilborn injector stack off the engine as it ended up in the grass.

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         I saw the Hemi Bug