The Ford Cammer engine was dubbed the “90-day wonder” when it first was revealed to the world after a crash program during Ford’s Total Performance era. Originally intended for competition on the high banks of NASCAR super speedways, Bill France pulled out the poison pen and killed it in the rules before it ever saw the light of competition in stock car racing. With massive power potential and the robust bottom end of an FE engine, drag racers got hold of these high RPM screamers and ran them in cars on gasoline, blown on alcohol, and blown on nitromethane. Don Prudhomme, Connie Kalitta, Pete Robinson, and a host of others ran them in dragsters, they were installed in early Mustang “funny cars” and they are prized and coveted pieces today. This one happens to be injected on alcohol and running in a cool front engine dragster that runs in New Zealand! The car is run by Alex Hogg and it is pretty awesome.
Kiwi Mike Waugh sent us this cool clip of the car making a pass at one of the strips in NZ and it is really cool. The track is clearly part of an airport runway as you can see the markings on the track as Hogg does his burnout and then streaks down the course. It looks like the strip has a couple hundred feet of concrete on the launching end of things which is neat. The left lane has a barrier wall that protects the spectators (and there’s a bunch!) while the right lane has about 16 miles of runoff heading toward a mountain range. We still wouldn’t want to try it but that’s just us.
We love seeing Cammers being used as the Ford engineers intended, which is on a race track. Lots of them are in glass cases and museums these days so to see one being hammered on in the southern hemisphere is pretty awesome. Alex, your dragster is great!
It really honks on at the far end. Awesome.
In my youth, I saw many drag cars running with this engine. They were quite impressive. I read interviews with Connie Kalitta and Ed Pink. Both had a lot of experience with cammers. They both claimed the biggest problem was the block. You couldn’t do many runs with heavy loads of nitro and a blower before the block would crack like an egg. While the originals are relatively rare, if you have the money and the desire, you can build an entire engine with 100% aftermarket parts that would be better and much stronger than the original.
top end is telling great game of catch up