In a nutshell, Dodge was looking for some publicity for its new cabover-engine A-100 “pickup” (the front-engine D-100 had preceded it), and someone thought it might make a cool entry in the new Factory Experimental class.
74 DOGE DART SPORT BUMPR FULL
You can read the full story of how the Little Red Wagon became the sport’s first wheelstander in the tribute I wrote to Bill “Maverick” Golden after his passing in September 2015. Both were designed to be real race cars but quickly found new purpose. Wheelstanders were not born but evolved in a rather comical fashion when some experimental vehicles of the 1960s couldn’t manage to keep their front wheels on the ground, the most famous being the Little Red Wagon Dodge A-100 truck and the Hemi Under Glass Barracuda. If you want to take a look at the many, many, many other wheelstanders of all shapes and sizes, check out this hidden-gem website, Wheelstanders, Pioneers of the Twentieth Century.) (A caveat before we get started: This is not intended to be an encyclopedic look at every great wheelstander, just some back stories on some of the images that Reyes sent. After my recent profile of Ed “the Outlaw” Jones, the breed’s longest-running (and still active) wheelstander driver, I got some inquiries to delve into the history of the class and to show some of the oddball wheelie cars that have stood up and been noticed over the years, and Hall of Fame photographer Steve Reyes obliged with a blizzard of images from his amazing archives. Of course, wheelies in cars are a fine balancing act between ultimate weight transfer for traction and going too far, as our Top Fuel friends learned in the 1980s.Īnd then there are those who have perfected the art of the wheelstand and made a pretty good living doing it, making exhibition runs on two wheels at dragstrips all around the world. Seeing a car with the front wheels dancing 6 inches or a foot off the tarmac on a hard launch still gives me goosebumps.
Who could pop a wheelie on their Schwinn Stingray and ride it the length of the block? Then, as a teenager, I remember seeing wannabes with wheelie bars on their street cars (leading to the burn-ward-worthy salvo, “The only way that thing will get the front tires off the ground is if you drive it off a curb.”).Īs we grew, the ability to see a car pull the front wheels off the ground became the ultimate arbiter of whether or not it was badass, and never was that truer than at the dragstrip. As kids, I think we were all enthralled with wheelies.
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