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Ken ‘Big Stick’ Godsey’s 1964 Mercury Comet tribute to drag racing legend Ronnie Sox made its first nine-second pass at the NHRA Holley Hot Rod Reunion — a wheels-up, bouncing four-speed launch that still gets commenters talking about clutch adjustment and crash-box durability years later. Barely a minute long and almost entirely without narration, the clip lets the launch speak for itself. Watch to see the pass that earned it.
Pontiac drilled roughly 130 holes into a 1963 Catalina’s frame just to shave weight, then sold it through a regular dealership. It was one of seven street-legal factory drag specials Detroit built in the 1960s, each rarer and wilder than the last. Here’s what made all seven nearly impossible to insure.
Ford built roughly 100 Fairlane Thunderbolts for 1964 with fiberglass hoods, fenders and doors, Plexiglas windows, no heater or radio, and a trunk-mounted battery, all to get a 427 High Riser into the most favorable Super Stock bracket the rulebook allowed. The 425-horsepower rating on the paperwork fooled nobody in the sport. Gas Ronda won the Winternationals with one, and Ford lost money on every car it delivered. Read on for what separates a real Thunderbolt from a very good tribute.
Muscle cars didn’t start with a Pontiac GTO or a Hemi — the arms race traces back to a 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and escalated for two decades before ending in a nose cone and a 23-inch rear wing on the 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This rundown traces that full arc: the early V8 pioneers, the cubic-inch wars of the 1960s, and the aerodynamic homologation specials that finally forced NASCAR to change its rules. Read on to find out how a mid-sized Oldsmobile led, decades later, to a winged Plymouth built purely to win.