Classical Gasser

Resurrection of a Drag Strip Hero.

- Rod Short

Those who love the nostalgia era of drag racing will recall Ron Rinauro’s California-based ’55 Chevy 210 Club coupe from 1966. Aptly named Blown Hell, this altered-wheelbase shoebox Chevy was a regular at tracks like Fremont and Half Moon Bay. Back then, the car ran a 292-cid small-block with a GMC 6-71 blower, Hilborn fuel injection and a Vertex magneto on 10% nitro. Using a TorqueFlite transmission, the best numbers for Rinauro’s combination was a very respectable 9.73 at 146 mph.

Back in the day, teenager Jerry James was just one of many budding performance geeks sitting in the rickety wooden stands of those fabled raceways. James would grow up and served our county in Vietnam aboard the USS Ranger. One of the things that helped him through those times was that he never quite shook the memory of seeing cars like Blown Hell scream down the quarter-mile. After mustering out of the Navy in 1970, he went on to refine his mechanical skills racing stock cars and hydroplanes. Then, out of the blue, he was presented with an opportunity to recreate that old Chevy Gasser that was so fondly etched in his memory bank.

To hasten weight transfer off the line, altering a vehicle’s stock wheelbase was done early on in drag racing. This is best remembered by the factory Super Stock wars of the mid-’60s. Factorybacked Dodge and Plymouth altered wheelbase (AWB) cars became widely known first and were quickly followed by Ford and Mercury as the tales of their door-to-door battles filled the imaginations of baby boomers. AWB Chevrolets were seldom seen because of the factory ban on racing, although a number of independents, including “Jungle” Jim Liberman, successfully ran such cars.