91����

Bill Shrewsberry didn’t stand in many winner’s circles and never climbed the stage to be celebrated as a world champion, but “Wild Bill” is still remembered as one of the sport’s finest at what he did and as a beloved member of our drag racing world.

What Shrewsberry did for decades was entertain the fans as the driver of a series of popular wheelstanders, and there were few better at it than him. He was a master showman with a bag full of tricks upon which he was always expanding.

We lost “Wild Bill” last Wednesday, Feb. 19, at age 86, and it’s a loss for guys like me. Although Shrewsberry plied his trade all across the country, the West Coast was his home, so as a Southern California fan, I saw a lot of him over the years at Orange County International Raceway and Irwindale Raceway.

I interviewed Shrewsberry back in the early days of this column, way back in September 2008, and I can tell you that it was as big a thrill as any nitro racer I’ve ever interviewed. He was kind and appreciative of my interest and told me some incredible stories. You can find that original article, “They didn't call him 'Wild Bill' for no reason,” right here.

As I related in an addendum to the end of that article, I had told Shrewsberry what a big fan I had been, and how I’d built the L.A. Dart model as a kid, and how I’d meticulously used Scotch tape as guidelines to paint the red stripes on the white body (and failed pretty miserably). A few days later, a package arrived at the office, and inside was a reissue of the original AMT kit that now included the stripes as decals. It sits unopened in my office as a treasured keepsake.

Before he became famous for the L.A. Dart and the Knott’s Berry Wagon, Shrewsberry drove all kinds of machinery on the dragster, including Mickey Thompson’s A/FX Pontiac, Jack Chrisman’s first Sachs & Sons Comet (the predecessor to his famous supercharged model), and even drove the famed Batmobile for some promotional footage at Irwindale Raceway.

His life changed when George Hurst offered him the seat in a new rear-engined Barracuda he had developed. With a huge Hemi engine planted in the trunk beneath the huge rear glass, this was the famed Hemi Under Glass Like the Little Red Wagon wheelstander before it, it was meant to be a real race car, but the front end wouldn’t stay on the ground and it became a wheelstander and launched his career.

In 1966, Shrewsberry teamed with the L.A./Orange County Dodge Dealers to campaign the car that became the famed L.A. Dart. Before you knew it, he was spinning donuts on the track, belching flames from the headers, and doing his most famous trick: driving while standing up through the car’s windshield area.

He only got to do it three or four times before NHRA brass called him on the carpet ("Jack Hart called me into the NHRA offices and told me, very politely, that he knew what I’d been doing and that I couldn’t do it anymore, but to tell everyone I got my ass chewed out really good about it," he told me), but Steve Reyes' great photo from Fremont lives on in infamy.

By the mid-1980s, the travel — which included multiple trips to Australia — began to sap the fun out of it, and he retired but couldn’t remain grounded and became a commercial pilot of Gulfstream jets leased to Warner Bros.

I last saw Shrewsberry at the celebration of life for his most notorious and famous boss, track promoter extraordinaire Bill Doner back in November 2019. Doner was Shrewsberry’s designated driver as he got older, and I had first met Shrewsberry in person five years earlier at Don Prudhomme’s Christmas party, and it was actually Doner who introduced me to him. Amazing.��

Shrewsberry sat down next to me at Doner’s memorial and nudged me in the side with an elbow during the video tribute that included Reyes’ famous standing-up-through-the-windshield photo, no doubt recalling the jaws he dropped and Jack Hart's kind rebuke.

We chatted for a while during and after, and I thanked him for all of the two-wheeled thrills he’d given us all over the years. I wonder what he and "the Dones" are cooking up now that they’re reunited ...

Shrewsberry in a promotional photo taken at the end of the runway at L.A. International Airport.

And enjoying his favorite racing publication.

The L.A. Dart wasn't always vertically candy-striped; this is early 1970s in Pomona.

The last L.A. Dart was this Funny Car-style entry in the mid-1970s. Shrewsberry crashed it in Ontario, Calif., one of three wrecks in his career.��

Playing on his last name, Shrewsberry got sponsorship from theme park Knott's Berry Farm for this '30 Ford Sedan Delivery in the late-1970s.

��

Phil Burgess can be reached at��pburgess@nhra.com

Hundreds of more articles like this can be found in the��DRAGSTER INSIDER COLUMN ARCHIVE

Or try the��Random Dragster Insider story generator

��

��

��

��

��

��