It isn’t often when an old drag car hits the interwebs and leaves more questions than answers, but such is the case with the Krispy Kritter jet 1967 Mustang. The car has lived its entire life in the Pennsylvania area and outside of a few stories of the thing being fired up and blasted down city streets in the 1970s, there isn’t a whole lot of info. Some stories have it crashing into a pole at a drag strip and judging by the fact this thing looks like it has been stored since it was built we’re thinking those are wrong. Also, the seller claims in the ad that the car went 308 mph in the quarter mile and to be very frank, there is no way in hell that this thing went 308 anywhere. Let alone down a drag strip.
Walt Arfons built what are considered the first jet funny cars in 1967, thing is, they weren’t really funny cars…well one was. Arfons was given a couple of stock factory Mopars to be converted to jet power and he converted a steel bodied Barracuda and Dart to basically the identical treatment that this Mustang was given. Arfons’ also built a Mercury Comet bodied jet car at the same time and it also looked like this Mustang with a stock body and a massive turbine running straight through the center of the car. The Arfons cars ran 200-205 on their best runs.
While at first glance it seems that the driver has an impossibly small area to sit in and that the guy would roast next to the turbine, this car is laid out exactly the same way as the Walt Arfons creations were and those were campaigned famously all over the country. We’re not saying that we’d want to sit in there and drive it, but the guys with huge balls that raced these monsters in the 1960s did!
The one thing we will agree with as far as the ad goes, the Westinghouse J-34 engine makes the equivalent of 9-10,000 horsepower!
We’ve send emails out to all the heavy duty old school drag racing guys we know for info on this Mustang, but so far we’re coming up empty. Do you know anything? Email me – [email protected]
Thanks to Dom for the tip!
Scroll down to see the photos and the CL link!
CL LINK: THE KRISPY KRITTER JET MUSTANG
It gives new meaning to the Cobra JET option.
my friend discovered this car covered in dust in a garage here in Pittsburgh back in July, being sold in an estate sale… guess they dragged it out and cleaned it up… you’ve gotta be completely nuts to drive something like that, no shield or protection or anything… crazy! no thanks! hah
Man what a way to go out! It’s sure beats being chucked in the dirt & pushing up daisy’s
I saw that car two years ago at an all Ford show here in Pittsburgh. It’s a time capsule car for sure.
….and since the after-burner will burn off the pull-cords on those pesky parachutes, they won’t slow me down cruising to Eternity…(see above comment)
I remember seeing this car sitting at a body shop along East Ohio St. near the Heinz plant back in the 70’s. I never remember seeing the car run at PID and I asked one of the fellows who worked at PID about it, and he said the first time he saw it was in 1997 at a PID reunion race.
I’m not sure I’d want to sit 1″ away from the compressor spinning at 10K. Of course if anything happened, it’d be over quick. I’ll keep my 306, thanks.
They have a 60s kellison drag car in the garage too.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XdXtEB295jA/UK4YnoUO8sI/AAAAAAAADYE/QbRKYPms2ig/s640/PICT0018.JPG
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-i3em5QtX8-4/UK4Y2YVmrgI/AAAAAAAADYM/-Ic6_NE_bA0/s640/PICT0021.JPG
308Mph in the 1/4? I’m going to have to say my B.S. detector is going off on that one…..
I helped clean this car up and build a display for the 2001 World of Wheels in Pittsburgh. I still have the plaque we won for best in class. I recall we had a ton of documentation for the history of the car; bill of sale for the body in white, bill of sale for the engine, maintanence records for the engine, etc. that we used in the display. Today I stopped by the auto parts store where the Krispy Kritter lives and got some of the records inluding a hand written list of directions for starting the engine with some highlighted NO-NO’s. The car did make several quarter mile passes in it’s lifetime. The claim of 308 was made by the second or third owner when he advertised it for sale in Hemmings in 1991. Unfortunately the guy who I worked with displaying the car in 2001 had the most knowledge of the car (other than the builder) and he died about a year ago.
Someone brought that to our shop in Akron about 20-25 years ago and my Dad and I got it running on our tie down chain. Walt’s cars had J-46’s which have considerable more power than the J-34 in that Mustang. I doubt that it would have even run 200 in the quarter.