Stunning Video: Behind The Scenes And On The Track With The Greatest Wheelstanders Of The 1960s
If you are a fan of old school drag racing and the exhibition vehicles that wowed crowds and kept people in the seats during the 1960s,this video will be your nirvana. It opens with Bob Riggle, Jack Ermantraut, and (I believe) Chuck Poole messing around at the shop and getting both the twin engine Chuck Wagon and the famed Hemi Under Glass prepared and loaded onto the hauler for a trip to US 30 Drag Strip in Gary, Indiana. There the boys would meet up with the likes of The Little Red Wagon, the Thunder Wagon, the LA Dart, the Paddy Wagon, the Backup Pickup, and others. This is the coolest wheelstander video we have ever seen.
Perhaps most fun in the whole thing, outside of the antics at the shop is watching these things go down the track. Guys get into the grass, they change lanes, and it is just pure entertainment. The Backup Pickup puts on a great show but the real heart stopper is the Thunder Wagon. As you can see, it has a cool curved pipe rack looking thing that runs up and over the bed and the cab area. The idea here was that the machine would be able to roll completely over backwards and most of the time it worked pretty good. Somehow during this performance the roof caves in and scares the hell out of everyone. You can see the safety people report with their fires extinguishers and what looks like a well used hearse/ambulance to help.
There is no sound here because it was all shot on 8mm film but this is an amazingly entertaining video for students of the game. As many of you may or may not know, Riggle recently crashed one of the existing Hemi Under Glass Barracudas with Jay Leno in the passenger seat while filming a TV show. Both were OK but the car was pretty banged up.
This is a time machine video for sure! Watch!
Press play below to see some of the most wonderful wheelstanders ever –
