The debate that began five minutes after a guy bolted a Fronty head onto his Model T and continues today surrounds what a street car is or isn’t. When we look at the accomplishments of guys like Jeff Lutz and Larry Larson, along with Andy Frost and a small cadre of others in drag racing the sides get split right down the middle. Some champion the fact that these ragged edged machines are capable of bring driven legally on the streets while others say that just meeting the letter of the law does not qualify anything as being “streetable”.
The reality is that most people argue what a street car IS and this debate goes a different direction to ask the question a different way. We’re trying to figure out when the “not a street car” argument started and which car or small group of cars may have actually kicked it off. The ones we will show below represent the heaviest duty iron of their respective eras and most likely the point that most guys thought could never been topped. Gary Kollofsky’s 1955 Chevy was a 10-second street car when such animals did not exist. It was featured in Hot Rod during the 1970s and was put on the 100 greatest hot rods list a few years back as well. Tell us this thing isn’t pure evil! Street car?
There was the street racing scene in Detroit that birthed creations like Steve Lisk’s Challenger which was a barely tamed down 1970s pro stock car on the streets complete with Hemi and Lenco transmission. Apparently this one also kicked up a rukus at the time because it was “not a street car” due to the transmission, high strung power plant and chassis setup that made cornering at any sort of speed a death defying proposition.
Lastly, Rick Dobbertin’s completely whacked Pontiac J2000 is an all-timer with its wild induction setup, valve spring suspensions system, cartoonishly narrow rear end, flip up body sections, and everything else that could be imagined. This car is perhaps more a cartoon than the others shown above but it was another one that got the world up on the chip about what a street car wasn’t.
As soon as I saw the headline I immediately thought of Steve Lisk’s Challenger, I remember seeing it in Hot Rod magazine and thinking it was the loosest definition of a street car I’d ever seen. If I recall correctly I think he was even running it on Methanol at the time. Street car? Barely. But those cars built to be single purpose machines are the reason many of us own fast cars today.
The Ala Kart.
The chassis from Roland Leong’s crashed “Hawaiian” was put on the street later on, there’s a reference to it (and a scanned article from Car Craft) here:
https://www.hotrodders.com/threads/street-legal-dragster.206755/page-2
Somebody ran a street-legal Modified (oval track car) around Central NY a bit later.
My opinion is that the Opel GT funny car built by Steve Group was one of the most “border line” street car built. It was driven on the street and had room for two, I drove behind it on the way to Porky’s drive in one night, the fumes from the alky burning Hemi made it difficult to see where I was going.
https://www.dragzine.com/news/own-your-own-street-driven-funny-car/
Around my place early 80’s was Dennis Elias’ 78 Pinto. Blown 351C, on Alcohol, Lenco, built it in his garage, cover of Car Craft, (google it) and cruised with us many times. Coolest car I ever saw in person back then. He still has it. And it’s still outrageous.
I think what got everyone upset about the J2000 was the fact everyone assumed it wasn’t actually intended to drive at all!
Full boogie race cars being driven on the street aren’t new, for many years Le Mans race cars had to be driven on the public streets to the track, not to mention Porsche driving works 962s along the Calder freeway in Melbourne to get to the race track:http://d3lp4xedbqa8a5.cloudfront.net/s3/digital-cougar-assets/momo-media/19265431/rothmans-wec-team-on-prinny-group.jpg
The J2000 on the other hand was built to be a show car, nothing more. Could you drive it down the street without it having a fit? Well, yeah it could, and did. It survived cruising up and down Northbourne avenue in Canberra for the 1988 SummerNats. It may be hazy memory but iirc it had less issues doing so than alot of other street cars have had over the years.