We talk a lot about the Merrill Ice Drags which has been a Wisconsin institution since 1965 and that’s because they still personify the spirit of drag racing in its purest form. Maybe it sounds funny for some of you but the reality is that these guys are out there having a blast in the same way they have been for 51 years. To show you how little (or how much) has changed over the years we found this video from the early 1970s, the heart of the muscle car era that shows a typical day at the Merrill drags back then. The cars are great and they show about the same range as today in the fact that there are plenty of street driven machines and there are clearly some asphalt drag cars that have been “converted” to run on the ice.
There are still two lanes with big snow berms. There’ still a little tree that tells the cars when to leave, and there are still lots of people lining the course and freezing their buns off watching the action. Our favorites? The big red (nearly new) Plymouth, the handful of Chevy Novas, and the Mopar that is interestingly painted in the AMC factory colors are all cars that caught our eye. There’s a really sweet 1955 Chevy in there too and we see it run a couple of times.
The resourcefulness of car guys is seen everywhere around the globe. From Cuba where any means necessary are used to keep cars on the road to Merrill where people have refused to let the winter stop their fun for the better part of half a century.
