Here’s one of the oddities. Famed land speed racer Craig Breedlove built this all-aluminum-skinned, “Spirit of America” streamliner dragster in 1964. The car was fitted with a 494 c.i. Chrysler Hemi, but ran only a couple of times before Breedlove deemed the project unsuccessful and pulled it off the track. It then spent several years on the car show circuit before going to a Los Angeles car museum, where Connie Kalitta purchased it for experimental work when the museum closed. In 1983, Kalitta donated it to the Garlits museum.
The centerpiece in a trio of 1962 Max Wedge-powered cars is the Granatelli Brothers’ Plymouth Fury, in which Andy Granatelli reached a top speed of 163.05 mph while setting a standing-mile record of 111.50 mph for stock-bodied American-built cars. On the left is a recreation of one of only 25 Max Wedge Dodges made in ’62, presented to Garlits by Dodge Public Relations and which he and wife Pat both drove in Super Stock Automatic competition. The white car is a Plymouth with the same Max Wedge combo picked up by Lou Furlong at Chrysler in Detroit the same day Garlits originally received his red machine.
Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing features one room filled with all sorts of racing engines (check out that V-12 Allison-powered rail in the foreground), including mucho Mopar muscle.
The floppers are represented, too, including this ‘73 Barracuda-bodied beauty driven by Don “The Snake” Prudhomme originally in Hot Wheels livery, then in 1974 under the Army banner. This car, a Gatornationals and U.S. Nationals winner, has an Ed Pink-built 426 Hemi up front and ran a best of 6.26 at 225 mph.
