TANK WARFARE

WHAT IF THE WHOLE CAR WERE A GAS TANK?

- DANIEL PUND

TWENTY DOLLARS. That's what a 315-gallon auxiliary fuel "belly tank" for a World War II P-38 Lightning fighter plane cost in the late Forties at a military-surplus store in California. Alex Xydias, founder of So-Cal Speed Shop, bought one of the streamlined tanks back then, but cautions: "It's not as cheap as it sounds now. You could buy a whole car for $50 back then. But I would have paid anything for it." Xydias was going racing on the dry lakes northeast of Los Angeles. He had a chassis built using Ford Model T bits to go under his aluminum teardrop, and he mounted a Ford flathead V-8-60 in the tank's tapered tail. The So-Cal belly tanker wasn't the first, but its success on the dry lakes and later at Bonneville (where it hit 198 mph in 1952) has made it the archetypal example. Like most race cars, it was a constant work in progress. Over the years, it was fitted with different engines, wore a different streamliner body, and then was rebuilt with a custom chassis from und