RACING IN THE STREETS: Postwar America and the Emergence of the Teenage Drag Racer

Hot Rod (1950),  

by Henry Gregor Felson, 

glamorized hot-rodding.

Now on through the deserts we did glide, 
a-flyin’ low and a-flyin’ wide,

me an’ that Mercury was a-takin’ a ride,

and we stayed exactly side by side.

Now I looked in my mirror and I saw somethin’ comin’,
I thought it was a plane by the way it was a-runnin'.

It was a-hummin’ along at a terrible pace, 
and I knew right then it was the end of the race. 

When it flew by us, I turned the other way,

the guy in the Mercury had nothin’ to say,
for it was a kid, in a hopped up Model-A.

Excerpt from the song “Hot Rod Race”, 1950, written by George Wilson and performed by Arkie Shibley & His Mountain Dew Boys.

The spirit of competitive racing, matching one racer against another, evolved from the earliest form of foot racing into the mechanical prowess of today’s racecars. In 1867 Isaac Watt Boulton and Daniel Adamson participated in the first prearranged race of two self-powered vehicles, driving on an eight-mile course that took them from Ashton-under-Lyne to Old Trafford, Manchester, England in under one hour. Two years earlier, in 1865, Parliament created the “Red Flag Act”, which prevented “road locomotives” from traveling any faster than 4 miles per hour on the open road and 2 miles per hour in towns. The Boulton/Adamson race obviously disregarded this law, traveling an average of 7.5 miles per hour on public roads.

The cover of the January 1953 issue 
of SPEED Mechanics was reused 
on the Fall 1958 cover of HOW.

As automobile performance and speed improved so did America’s public highway system. With dirt roads being paved the temptation to race on them was increasing. By the 1930s an illegal form of street racing, called drag racing, took advantage of the roadway and automobile enhancements. Drag racing matches lined up two, and sometimes three hot-rodders and their rebuilt cars in head-to-head races down straight stretches of road. Generally, the driver’s goal was to have their car be the first to reach a speed of 60 miles per hour from a standing start. It was customary for a car to carry a passenger to confirm the 60 miles per hour mark. 

During the postwar years, from the mid-1940s through early-1950s, American teenagers popularized drag racing across the country. Hot rods were modified from older stock passenger cars, which made them highly unsafe and even deadly if they were in disrepair. Racers “soup-upped” their cars for added speed, which now had the ability to accelerate an excess of 150 miles per hour. “Hollywood” mufflers were added to increase the car’s speed while producing a loud “zooming” noise. Drivers became synonymous with “road hog,” reckless, irresponsible, and a menace to public safety. Towns perceived drag races a nuisance and created laws to prevent the match-ups from happening on public roadways.
 

Music acted as social media in the 1950s.

Songs, movies, novels, and magazines encouraged the hot rod phenomenon, which quickly became associated youth rebellion. Arkie Shibley’s song “Hot Rod Race” spun-off four sequels and encouraged other artists to record similarly successful hits, including Charlie Ryan’s “Hot Rod Lincoln”, Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene”, and Gene Vincent’s “Race With The Devil”. Movies like Hot Rod Gang, Hot Rod Girl, Hot Rod Rumble, and Rebel Without a Cause included drag racing as a way of dealing with the pressures of teen angst. A popular novel of the time, Hot Rod, by Henry Gregor Felson, glamorized hot-rodding with its pulp-like cover. First published in 1950, the story turns out to be a morality tale in which the main character reforms his defiant ways.
  
According to a nationwide survey taken in 1957 by the Gilbert Youth Research Co. two-thirds of the teenagers queried favored drag racing under controlled conditions. However, only nine per cent of the same group thought that drag racing should be encouraged as good, clean fun. The girls advocating legal steps against drag racing outnumbered boys two to one. Nearly 26 per cent opposed the pastime compared to 12 per cent for the boys.

Movies like Hot Rod Rumble (1957) 
helped encourage an image of bad behavior.

 
During this era there was also a serious breed of drag racers that were attempting to organize drag racing into a legitimate sport. Many of them were in their 20’s and recently discharged from the armed services at the end of World War II – men who had picked up technical skills while serving. Their goal was to organize local clubs to create safer venues for racing, often taking advantage of local airport runways. Their priorities included teaching safety of both driving techniques as well as making sure that vehicles are not “broken-down automobiles with one wheel in the grave.” 

Wally Parks is generally the person who is associated with organizing drag racing as a sport in the early 1950s. The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), organized in 1951, and later the American Hot Rod Association (AHRA) in 1956, were formed as governing bodies to organize and promote drag racing as an official sport. Rules encouraged drag racers to help gain national respect for their sport as a safe and worthwhile competitive enterprise, while discouraging street racing.

The aftermath of an illegal drag race in 1958.

While not as popular as NASCAR or Indy racing, drag racing today is viewed as a legitimate sporting event, with major sponsorship in the United States and in other countries. The distance raced is traditionally ¼ mile, with vehicle class ranging from unmodified cars to purpose-built dragsters. Top fuel dragsters can now reach speeds of up to 329 mph, and although the vehicles can reach higher speeds, the cars are confined to this speed limit due to safety considerations.

Although a great effort has been taken to make drag racing a controlled and safe sport illegal street racing remains a nuisance and is on the rise among young drivers. With a lack of a nationwide database to collect racing related fatalities it is left up to local authorities to keep track of the driver and bystander deaths caused by the illegal activity. Authorities believe that movies like the Fast and Furious films and spin-off video games help create enthusiasm for speed contests. In addition social media sites make it easier to coordinate race locations and times, or to move them in a short notice if necessary. Today groups like the NHRA continue to discourage illegal racing and educate drivers. Others, like racetrack operators, are trying to figure out how to attract the “street racers” to their facility, giving them a place to race without the risk of doing it illegally.

•   •   •

My preteen reading, I spent hours 
drooling over images of dragsters.

As a preteen I admired drag racers the same way my friends followed baseball, basketball, or football players. I was especially in awe of the powerful top fuel dragsters and funny cars driven by the likes of “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, and “Jungle Jim” Liberman. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to see them perform in person (that wouldn’t happen until adulthood), I would read about them in publications such as Drag Racing USA or Hot Rod Magazine. I was mesmerized by the images of their flame blowing engines and tire-melting burnouts.
 
Illegal street racing didn’t seem to be a problem in my town where I was raised on Long Island, as the majority of streets were too short and winding to enable a match-up. However, it didn’t stop my friends and I from building a go-cart that was powered with a lawnmower engine, with the goal of drag racing our neighbor’s store-purchased go-cart in a legitimate event. We attempted to get permission from the high school to use their long parking lot but met resistance right from the start. “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

Sources:

A detail from my 
middle school art project.

Auto racing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_racing 
viewed on January 2, 2017 

High Performance, Robert C. Post, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1994.

“Teeners ‘Sold’ on Drag Racing – On Track, Not Public Streets”, Eugene Gilbert, Gilbert Youth Research Co., Times Union, Albany NY, September 13, 1957 
 
“When was the first motor race held?”, Bob Blackman/Engine Punk, January 27, 2010 http://anarchadia.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-was-first-motor-race-held.html 
 viewed on January 2, 2017

•   •   •

PHOTO FINISH

James Walker's 1937 Chevy at the 2016 Syracuse Nationals.