When we heard of Dick Kraft’s passing we scrapped out other plans for this space for the week and decided to honor his memory with a look back at his rude, crude, evil, and nasty Bug which is, with scant few exceptions, recognized as the first ever “dragster.”
It’s ironic that we’re swinging back from the wacky tech of the ‘80s Group B rally machines (last week) to this, probably the most crude vehicle we’ll ever feature, and we say crude with love as this car, more than any other, takes drag racing right down to the foundation. It was created with singular purpose, to defeat a singular enemy, a dominating Harley-Davidson owned by Chet Herbert, ridden by Al Keys, called The Beast. More on that later.
Dick Kraft was the son of German immigrants who employed themselves as orange growers. Due to the fact that mechanized equipment was a normal part of the farming culture by the early ‘30s it was no big surprise that Kraft began to tinker and repair the machinery at a relatively young age. By 14, in the late ‘30s, he was already wrenching on some of the era’s earliest hot rods and in 1938 when he was old enough to have a driver’s license he became a regular runner on the dry lakes, making many runs down the rutted and cracked earth of Muroc and in fact setting several records until the time he entered the service to fight in WWII.
His hot rodding jones unabated, he returned from the war and renewed his obsession with cars and speed. His T-roadster was recognized as one of the hottest anywhere around and Kraft became interested in not just the dry lakes, but also the drags at the newly opened Santa Ana dragstrip. That strip was the first “real” commercial dragstrip. CJ Hart ran it and became the first promoter to make steady money operating a strip. Its popularity was exploding and Sundays were jam packed with cars and people.
Kraft began showing up at the track with his standard looking roadster and as good as it was on the lakes, it was even better on the asphalt. He regularly cut down the entire field of cars and found himself rolling to the line to run off for Top Eliminator against the motorcycle winner, who always seemed to be Keys on The Beast. The bike predictably, kicked Kraft’s behind every time they raced. The motorcycle was obviously lighter and the motor was bolstered by a load of nitro. It simply was not a contest, but Kraft was not the quitting type.
Each week, Kraft’s car would arrive at the strip with less bodywork and each week the margin of victory for the motorcycle would shrink. Kraft was getting there, piece by piece. Finally when all that we left of the actual car was a piece of the cowl, simply left in place to support the steering gear, and the framerails, Pappy Hart said enough was enough and he wouldn’t the car run if it degenerated any further. The good news for Kraft was that it didn’t have to. Pulling nearly 110 mph in the quarter mile now, he finally had the suds to conquer the dreaded Harley of Keys and claim the Top Eliminator crown.
The car was as scary as it looks in the photo. No roll bar, rear bakes only, and the seat was simply two pieces of worm eaten wood. The fuel tank was an old pesticide sprayer that Kraft would pump up to pressurize it and ensure that the carbs were fed the mixture of alky and (supposedly) nitro under acceleration. The contraption weighed less than 1,200 pounds, and the nickname was brought on because of the light weight and the fact that the pesticide jug was being used as the fuel tank. Ironically, Kraft put a seatbelt in the car.
The power from the machine came from a triple-Stromberg-carb’d, Evans-headed, Winfield-cam’d, 24-stud, 59A block’d, ported and relieved, 268-cube flathead Ford V8.
Kraft started running the car with a 296ci mill but the car would just smoke the tires due to the torque the larger motor was making. The smaller engine got the car moving without the wheelspin and trophies were the result.
Kraft sold this car for an unheard of $5,000 at the end of the 1950 season. He probably had less than 1/10 of that invested in it.
Kraft had enough parts and pieces to build two recreations of the car. One sits in the Don Garlits Museum in Florida, while the other we believe was in Dick’s personal collection. Kraft built several noted hot rods after his days with The Bug, probably in an effort to show the world that he was more than a stripped down jalopy builder.
Drag race machinery has always been single minded in its purpose and function. Dick Kraft’s car was simply the lead domino that started the chain moving that led to elapsed times in the 4-second zone and speeds that at one point were rapidly approaching 350 mph. All that from a little, stripped down Model T.
Dick Kraft lived to be over 80 years old, a wonder when you consider how many times he ran this car down the strip and how fast he was going with such minimal equipment to protect him in the event of a problem. We’re pretty sure he’s up Harley hunting and arguing with CJ Hart about the legality of the car in the tech line at the big strip in the sky.
