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Watch Amazing Footage of 1940s SoCal Hot Rodders Dirt Track Racing – A Young Jim Rathmann Among Them


Watch Amazing Footage of 1940s SoCal Hot Rodders Dirt Track Racing – A Young Jim Rathmann Among Them

We were tipped off to this incredible seven minute film by a BangShift reader. It looks like B-roll footage from a production company or movie studio that was working on one of the myriad of hot rod exploitation films that exploded in the late 1940s and early 1950s. What you will see is an awesome group of honest to God hot rods from the period racing around an unnamed California dirt track. We have no idea what track it is, but the place appears to be in the middle of nowhere, which virtually everything in California was 60 years ago. There is footage of guys wrenching on these things, racing them, and hamming it up for the cameras a little.

Jim Rathmann, the eventual 1960 Indy 500 winner and American racing star is in this and you will see him sitting in a truly bitchin’ little track roadster about 2:30 into the film. It appears as though most of the people they were involved in this thing were actual real deal hot rodders and not actors. A couple of the guys stick out as being far too cleaned up to be ‘rodders and we suspect those are the actors in the film. Those guys are only shown sitting in stationary cars.

You will see lots of ’32 Ford roadsters with the fenders and light stripped off and some other “jalopy” style ‘rods. We think most of these guys were running flathead V8 engines because we can see two exhaust pipes on most of the cars. If they had ‘bangers in them, a single pipe would be running down the side of the body. One of the cars is offloaded from a trailer with no hood and there are a couple of carbs and one a V8 can clearly be seen. Hell, you can clearly read on the cowl of one racer, “Thucksun Special”!

This is amazing footage and despite the fact that it has no sound, we were 100% mesmerized by it!


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3 thoughts on “Watch Amazing Footage of 1940s SoCal Hot Rodders Dirt Track Racing – A Young Jim Rathmann Among Them

  1. Bill Harris

    Since the city stole our drag strip and NHRA did nothing to help help us.my 64 GTO has been a,drag car since the 80s. I AM SERIOUS CONSIDERING GOINGSCCA with it it still h a s stock brakes and 90/10 in front Grabril type Es in back where do I start?Do you have serious shocksk for SccaRacing?and how much are they also my Mororso trick springs will have to go. What do y o u think?

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