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Awesome Video: 1960s Street Racing In Detroit! Jumping Starters, Plenty Of Cool Iron And A Visit By The Law!


Awesome Video: 1960s Street Racing In Detroit! Jumping Starters, Plenty Of Cool Iron And A Visit By The Law!

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When we hear guys talk about “the way it was” it is nice and all but their stories only go so far. When you see video evidence of exactly “how it was” we’re enthralled and don’t blink for minutes at a time as to not miss anything. This amazing home movie was made on an 8mm camera back in the early/mid-1960s in Detroit. It features a street race gathering with a whole bunch of cars from pretty mundane four doors to gasser-type cars getting after one another on a side street in the motor city. How dangerous was this? Well as much as the old timers like to say, “We didn’t do anything like the kids do today!” with regard to safety, we’re calling bullshit. The reason is because in this video you’ll see two cars nearly touching door handles accelerating at full throttle while other traffic tries to sneak by in a narrow lane heading in the other direction. Then as now, this was dangerous stuff.

There’s the cool cars, the cool people, the jumping starter, and a visit from the police. It doesn’t seem to have slowed the racers down much, though. In one moment we see the police cars sitting in the street and there’s kid talking to them. After that the cars are gone and racing has clearly begun again. Because this is 8mm footage, there is no sound which kind of stinks but the video itself makes up that in its vivid and unflinching depiction of this 1960s scene. If you can sit through this video and not crack a smile or pause and back it up to see stuff once or twice, you don’t have a soul!

This is truly an automotive fantasy caught on film. It happened then and was dangerous. It happens now and it is dangerous. We’d argue that their cars were neater, though.

PRESS PLAY TO SEE AN AMAZING 1960S STREET RACING VIDEO FROM DETROIT!


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8 thoughts on “Awesome Video: 1960s Street Racing In Detroit! Jumping Starters, Plenty Of Cool Iron And A Visit By The Law!

  1. Larry Waddell

    As usual Brian, you come up with neat stuff!!!!! Do you ever sleep?Thanks for sharing and takin me back to my teens!!

  2. Jim Ullman

    The people and cars were just way more cool then. Luckily I got to grow up during the era. And…I miss those days terribly.

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