By the end of the ’60s, Parnelli Jones had earned an enviable driving record across multiple forms of motorsports. From Indianapolis to Pikes Peak and midgets to Trans Am, he had won races, set records and earned championships. About the only place his take-no-prisoners driving style didn’t result in trophies was in the desert.
Just three years after its humble beginnings at Dodger Stadium, the SEMA Show in 1970 was making the most of its home in the spacious Anaheim Convention Center. According to a post-Show report in the March 1970 issue of Hot Rod Industry News, more than 7,100 people attended the Show, not including 1,500 VIP guests. The count of exhibitor booths had risen to 481, making the Show the “greatest of all time” in the magazine’s eyes.
If you are a fan of the historic photos that appear in the SEMA Heritage department of SEMA News, you have Bob D’Olivo to thank—in more ways than one. D’Olivo, who passed away in July at age 94, shot many of those photos during his 40-plus-year career at Petersen Publishing Company.
A lot was at stake when drag racers from around the country converged at the brand-new Indianapolis Raceway Park (IRP) for the NHRA’s seventh annual National Championship Drags in 1961. More than 900 competitors from some 40 states turned out to win races, set records, cement championships and build reputations during that humid Labor Day weekend.
In late 1958, the multi-talented illustrator and cartoonist Pete Millar created just the thing for racers who wanted to record their victories like a fighter pilot. These “easy-to-apply” Drag Decals, advertised in the “What’s New” department of the June 1959 issue of Hot Rod, were available in a choice of 15 different domestic cars “plus a new one for karts.” (A close look at the photo reveals a karting magazine in the back pocket of Millar’s trousers.)
Whenever the words “Unser” and “Pikes Peak” are spoken, the word “dynasty” is never far behind. A member of the Unser family has been the overall winner in a quarter of the nearly 100 times that the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb has run. Bobby Unser, who passed away in early May at age 87, earned 10 of those overall wins, eight of which set course records. His first was in 1956, in only his second start up the mountain. He won six times in a row between 1958 and 1963, then won again in 1966. (His brother, Al, won in 1964 and 1965.) Unser finished his two-decade streak with a win in 1968, setting a course record that wouldn’t be broken for 11 years. He returned to the Peak in 1986 to earn his final win and course record, a run that made him the winningest Unser on the Peak.
In November 1964, Bob (left) and Bill Summers brought a scale model of their new land-speed-racing streamliner to the Caltech wind tunnel in Pasadena to experiment with the aerodynamics of different tailfin shapes. While sponsors were lettered on the model’s sides, once it was rendered in 1:1 scale, the ‘liner would wear the name Goldenrod.
As this issue was going to press, we learned that Bruce Meyers, inventor of the Meyers Manx that spawned the dune buggy craze and countless imitators, passed away at the age of 94. This article was originally written in late 2020, after Meyers and his wife Winnie announced the sale of his iconic dune buggy manufacturing company, Meyers Manx Inc., to an investment firm that would “maintain the old and introduce the new,” as Meyers described it. The CEO and chief creative officer of the new Meyers Manx LLC is Freeman Thomas, an automotive designer whose previous work on concept and production cars included the Volkswagen New Beetle and Audi TT, plus several Daimler Chrysler concept vehicles.
The Mint 400 has earned a longstanding reputation as being one of the roughest off-road races in the country, as this photo from 1969 attests. John Thawley, reporting on the race for the June 1969 issue of Hot Rod, said 206 entries started the two-day event, but just 21 finished the required eight laps of the course—“46 miles of dust, rock, and talcum powder along Nevada desert roads laced with holes, ditches, hills, and a wide and ugly assortment of equipment-breaking surprises.”
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