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Two weeks ago, I blasted this column with a huge collection of photos from our files of Funny Cars that didn’t always make it to the national scene but were fondly remembered by local fans at their home tracks. Here’s the second installment.

Ron Pellegrini's Chicago-based company, Fiberglass Ltd., was the first to mass-produce fiberglass-replica bodies in the earliest days of the glass. Pellegrini's own altered-wheelbase Mustang, the Super Mustang, built on the framerails of the Dennison, Arlasky, and Knox fuel roadster, was the sport's first true fiberglass-bodied Funny Car and led directly to the founding of Fiberglass Ltd. I did a whole column on Pellegrini’s efforts, which you can find here.

George Reese's George's Corvette Shop cars were popular draws on the East Coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but none was wilder than this one, the Long & Lean II, a stretched '64 Corvette reportedly fitted atop a Top Fuel chassis running a small-block Chevy mill on a small load of nitro. Reese updated to a more conventional later-model 'Vette and then a Vega in 1972 before adopting the George of the Jungle moniker, driven by Tom Stephens, Mark Emery, and Tom Raley.

1960s Barracuda Funny Cars are cool, and brothers Tony (the driver) and Russ Wahlay ran this wild-looking, Logghe-chassised entry, dubbed Warlord, out of their Ohio base. The car was preceded by a gas altered of the same name and followed later by a Camaro.

Like fellow Michigander Connie Kalitta, Paul Stefansky was also a Ford guy with a 427 SOHC under the shell of his Super Stang entry that ran from the late 1960s through the early 1970s.

Bob Tasca III is not the only driver from the small state of Rhode Island to wheel a nitro Funny Car, preceded by a number of decades by Mel Perry. He was an early adopter, racing as early as 1966 with Norwood Chevrolet as his backer but switched to the Super Hugger name in 1969, not long before for a blower boomer at the Gatornationals that did this to the Camaro body.

Johnny Valadez and Bobby Rex teamed up on the Mexican Revolution Funny Cars of the mid- to late 1970s. Though they were based out of San Antonio, Texas, they ran all the way to the East Coast with the car. In 2011, Rex recreated the team’s first car, a Camaro, for cackle opportunities.

Texas Funny Car fans are familiar with Bill Wendt’s Smokey Bear Funny Car. Wendt started out in Stockers and altereds but became very involved in Alcohol Funny Cars, where he became very good friends with Pro Comp stalwarts such as Dale Armstrong, Ken Veney, and Simon Menzies, who taught him how to drive. Wendt also crewed for when he won Pro Comp in Indy in 1974-75. After he sold the Funny Car, he tried land speed racing, where he set two records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and also did vintage oval-track midget racing, both on dirt and asphalt. Lately, Wendt also has been saluted for a continuing string of attendance at the NHRA U.S. Nationals that dates back to 1959.

Ron Williams was a West Coast regular in the 1970s and ‘80s with his line of Shakey Funny Cars that included a Camaro, this Pinto, a Mustang, a Corvette, and a Dodge Charger.

Stan Shiroma is best remembered by history for winning Top Fuel at the 1977 91���� Fallnationals in Seattle, beating Rance McDaniel in a rare all-Chevy final round, but between his early days in the class in the late 1960s and his switch to Top Fuel in the mid-1970s, he also drove fuel Funny Cars, including the Ray Zeller-owned Midnight Skulker Camaro, shown in mid-wheelstand at Lions Drag Strip. Like Roland Leong and Danny Ongais, Shiroma was another Hawaiian import who eventually made it big on the mainland. The Honolulu-born racer was a championship-winning circle-track racer until Honolulu Stadium closed in 1963 and began drag racing, moving to Seal Beach., Calif., in 1967, where he raced a few years with his first partners then moved about, including a stint in Leong’s Top Fueler. He moved into Funny Car in the Midnight Skulker in 1971.

Larry Van Zandt raced this Monza out of Northern California. DragList says that it may have been an ex-Jim West car and maybe even the U.S. Marines-backed Olds Starfire wheeled for Mickey Thompson by Bob Pickett.

The Clay Miller & Ruben Palazwelos-owned Red Baron Omni went up in flames at Orange County International Raceway in 1982 with Rod Phelps in the hot seat. I don’t know that this California-based Rod Phelps is the same New York-based driver of jets and rockets, aka “Rocket Rod,” but could be.

Remember when Super Shops used to give away its branded Funny Car at the end of each season? George Shelton does because he got the 1980 car driven by Ed McCulloch to victory at that year’s U.S. Nationals (the same car had carried Pat Foster into the Cragar 5-Second Club the year before) because the raffle winner took the cash value instead and Shelton got a car on the cheap. In a nice nod to the car’s roots, Shelton even re-lettered the car with the same font and gold-leaf paint from the Super Shops car and ran the car with Chevy power in the alcohol ranks.

Oklahoma’s Rick Sherrill was one of those never-gonna-give-up kind of Funny Car racers in the 1990s who found more broken parts than success but didn’t give up until health problems got the better of him. This Trans Am is the ex-Kodiak Blue Max machine of Raymond Beadle that Sherrill bought from Gordon Mineo, but it was lost in a blower explosion in Dallas in 1993. Sherrill continued on with an Oldsmobile body he bought from the Austin family.

Long before he was winning Top Alcohol Dragster and then tuner to the stars – and even before he teamed with Peter Gallen to run the race-winning Poverty Stricken TAFC – Rich McPhillips had an injected Funny Car that he ran in A/Econo Altered. Still counts!

Marlis Williams, near lane, and Fred Mandoline were early stars of the UDRA. Williams, who had a long career as an automobile engineer for General Motors, Chrysler Corp, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Kia, passed away in 2016 of prostate cancer. Mandoline went on to fame in the NHRA, winning three national events en route to the 1983 Alcohol Funny Car world championship.

Peggy Pierce was a 30-year-old mother of two when she raced this sleek Corvette out of her Colorado base in the late 1970s. She’s pictured in Pro Comp running an Alcohol Dragster at International Dragway in Colorado Springs.

Hawaii’s Jim Neilsen was another driver with one of the sleek Steve McCracken-built Corvette shells with the tidy Night Witch entry in the early 1980s, but Neilsen later gained greater acclaim with a series of jet cars, including the first stretch-limo jet car.

Drake Viscome wheeled a series of Ford-bodied and -powered Vindicator injected-fuel Funny Cars on the East Coast Fuel Funny Car circuit, including this Boss 429-powered Pinto. A few years ago, Viscome shared with me the details and photos from the great circuit in this column.

Larry Velarde was on the ground floor of the Alcohol Funny Car wars, running cars like the clean-looking Thunderation Pinto on the West Coast.

Ohio’s Kurt Neighbor was also a big Ford guy when it came to Funny Cars, running a big-inch SOHC in his Cobra Venom Mustang Top Alcohol Funny Cars in the late 1980s. Reports have him returning recently to the dragstrip in the Mountain Motor Pro Stock class with, of course, Ford power.

And finally, Columbus, Ohio’s Lee Zimmerman sure chose an appropriate name for his Camaro Alcohol Funny Car in this mid-1970s photo as the shell is hauled away on the back of a truck.

And, with that, I'm gone, too. Thanks for reading!

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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