As you are reading this, there’s a chance that right now at the NHRA Winternationals a Junior Comp dragster is screaming down the quarter mile in Pomona. The Junior Comp class is an interesting middle step from junior dragster to full-blown car as is it is a rear engine rail powered by a motorcycle engine. These cars run the eighth mile at elapsed times down to 6.90 seconds which is roughly equivalent to a 10.80 pass all the way through the uprights. Drivers aged 16-20 compete in this class. Well, back in the early 1970s a California chassis builder named Dave Brackett built what you could call the granddaddy of all Junior Comp cars and its chassis has come up for grabs on eBay.
Brackett’s idea was fun and simple. Build the lightest, smallest car that was possible, shove the most powerful motorcycle engine in the back and see what it would do. With a fighting weight of right around 500lbs with the driver in it, the diminutive digger achieved a best elapsed time down in the 10.20s and it would run about 120mph. That’s pretty fast for a car that Brackett hauled around in the back of an El Camino! He raced it around SoCal and down in Arizona for years before selling his business and the dragster with it.
The chassis you see below is the one that Dave Brackett built back then. We think it would be cool as hell for someone to recreate the car as it was and then go out and hammer on it again, right? It is the only proper way to truly honor the memory of this interesting and forward thinking machine. Drag racing doesn’t usually embrace the “small is beautiful” platform of thinking but when it does, cool things happen.
Because the ad is engine soon, here’s the text:
Historic rear engine dragster, originally built by innovative chassis builder Dave Brackett in the early Seventies.
Ran at the legendary “Lions Drag Strip” in 1972. Turned 10.28 ET, 128 mph in the quarter mile. First of its kind, predecessor by forty years of the current day NHRA “Junior Comp” dragsters. 126 inch wheelbase, weighs approx. 500 lbs. with driver. Original Honda Seven-Fifty engine, has been upgraded with Honda “600 R” engine.
Original builder Dave Brackett wrote a nice article detailing the development and history of the little dragster.
Posted at Hot Rod Hotline / Dave Brackett Dragster Website.
Offered for sale as painted roller, with engine, chassis, axles, tires and wheels, comes with some of the original aluminum pieces. Needs body panels and parts for final assembly.
Maybe you know someone racing this weekend at the Winternationals in Pomona with a trailer or way to deliver this little dragster.
The car is located about an hour south of the NHRA Museum at the Pomona Fairgrounds.
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE PHOTOS AND THEN HIT THE EBAY LINK FOR MORE PHOTOS AND INFO –
Awesome with a full on turbo Hyabusa engine!
Though it might outclass the rest of Junior Comp….
That was my thought exactly as I clicked on the link:
“This thing needs a blown ‘Busa engine.”
modern version with modern power would probably run 8s (super/comp.)?, would it be legal, could be crazy fun!!
Cars like this are a really fun way to go racing.
My brother & I developed an updated version of this in the early ’90’s using the KZ1000 or GS1100 engine. With a turbo 1250cc KZ it ran 8.75 @ 150 all day long at Bakersfield. 5 runs within 2 tenths of a second with a 5 speed.
NHRA didn’t care because the car only weighed 750 lbs with a driver. Super Comp had a 1250 lb min weight at the time. To make the car weigh that much we would have had to nearly double the 250 hp we were making that would destroy the motorcycle transmission. At that point, after building 8 or 10 customer cars, we quit building them & went Bonneville racing. Same engine combination got him in both the Bonneville & El Mirage 200 mph clubs.
Dan,
I remember talking with your brother, Dave, about those very cars years ago while he was here on Maui. A good friend of Mine, Paul Allen, had one of CCE rear engine cars built by Dave.
Marshal Farr (wife Vicki was the first professionally licensed woman pro stock bike racer) in Tulsa built one back in the ’80’s, so did George Bryce at Star Racing.