Wheels Up WINNER! – Wheelie Wagon vs. Crusty Nova!

Long before wheelie contests became a fixture at nostalgia drag meets, exhibition cars like the Little Red Wagon proved a vehicle could win over a crowd without ever putting all four wheels down. This wagon-versus-Nova wheels-up showdown carries that tradition forward, pitting two very different builds against each other in a battle of who can stay airborne longest. Which one takes the win might surprise you.

Beautiful Wagon!!

A station wagon isn’t supposed to do this. Somewhere on a quarter-mile strip, a wheelie wagon and a beat-up, crusty Nova lined up side by side, and only one of them was going to keep its front tires anywhere near the pavement. Wheelstanders like this trace back to 1965, when Bill Golden stuffed a 426 Hemi into the bed of a Dodge A-100 pickup and accidentally invented an entire genre of drag racing showmanship. The wagon in this matchup carries on that unhinged tradition, planting the throttle and hoisting its nose skyward for the length of the track. So which one actually crossed the stripe first, the wagon riding on two wheels, or the Nova trying to keep all four planted?

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The Wagon That Started A Wheels-Up Revolution

The original wheelstander, nicknamed the Little Red Wagon, became a sensation in 1965 when Bill Golden mounted a 426 Hemi in the bed of a Dodge A-100 pickup. The engine placement threw so much weight rearward under acceleration that the truck did nothing but wheelie down the quarter mile, and it kept touring drag strips as an exhibition act for decades before finally retiring in 2003.

Nova’s Answer To The Wheelstander Craze

Novas eventually joined the wheelstander ranks too, with Richard Driesbach fielding a 1968 Nova and Richard Schroeder building a 1969 version. A lightweight compact body paired with a stout V8 up front made the Nova a natural fit for the format, proving wheels-up showmanship wasn’t limited to purpose-built trucks and wagons.

Why Wheelstanders Still Draw A Crowd Today

Modern nostalgia drag events still book wheelstanders as a headline act, decades after the format was born, because nothing else on a strip looks quite like it. Holding a car balanced on its rear wheels for the length of a quarter mile takes exceptional throttle control from the driver, since too much power flips the car over backward and too little drops the front end early. Builds on tour today follow the same basic formula pioneered by the Little Red Wagon and those early Nova wheelstanders: a heavy, powerful engine mounted well aft of the rear axle, a stripped interior, and a driver willing to trust the math. That combination of danger and precision is exactly why crowds still gather for it more than half a century later.

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