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What made Super Stock Drag Racing So Super?

Part 2

Once again that need for speed stretched the Drag Racing rulebook completely out of shape. So there was nothing to do but start another class – Factory Experimental or FX. This one would change the entire sport of Drag Racing.

With General Motors on the sidelines, it was up to Mopar and Ford to provide the excitement to the Stock Classes. Not to worry, they were ready and more then up to it. So now the racers decided to push the envelope of these factory experimental class. Mopar race driver Jim Thornton “In our ’64 Dodge FX car we moved the front wheels forward 4 inches and rear wheels forward 4 inches. For ’65 we decided we go up just a little more radical, so we move the front wheels up 10 inches and the rear wheels forward 15 inches. There were certain teams around the country that we’re going to have altered wheelbase cars, Ford and Mercury were doing it too.” And, of course, the elephant in the room, the Hemi engine was back this year, making Mopar the dominant door slammers. Ford immediately countered with the real ringer and a humdinger of a single overhead cam engine, aka the Sox Motor, or just the “Cammer”. It was never going to be an assembly line power plant, but it worked pretty well on drag strips.

Ford and Mercury would build several “Cammer” Falcons, Comets, and Mustangs for the 1965 season, but not for Sox and Martin. Martin “When we read the contract we had agreed verbally that it was going to be two personal cars, one for Ronnie and one for myself. Well, the contract read one personal car. And of course I told him there might be times when Ronnie and I might want to go somewhere different. Ronnie and I talked about it and thought there needs to be two cars or we just can’t do this.” Ford responded they couldn’t sponsor two cars, they could only do one. When Mercury refused to pony up another $2,500 courtesy car for Sox, Ford said goodbye to the most popular team in drag racing. And without knowing it, created a legend. Martin “I picked the phone up and called Dale Reca, a Chrysler guy, and told him we would be interested in running Mopar and he said give me two hours and I’ll call you back and give you an answer. And he called back in two hours, and said get on a plane and come to Detroit! That’s how it started with Mopar.” When this deal went down those famous red white and blue colors switched to Plymouth racers and Sox and Martin became drag racings’ A-Team.

All throughout the radical ’65 and ’66 season, the FX cars continued to blow peoples’ minds from Englishtown, New Jersey to Pomona, California.

There’s more to come.  Like what you see and want more? Click here for my posts What Made Super Stock Drag Racing So Super?  —  Part 1 & Part 3. Enjoy!

– HKK Productions

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Image of The Sox & Martin 1970 Superbird
Copyrighted 2015 by HKK Productions Inc

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Image of The Ramchargers 1963 Dodge 330 Candymatic
Copyrighted 2015 by HKK Productions Inc

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My image of a 1963 Super Stock 330 Dodge “Candymatic” at National Trail Raceway, Columbus, Ohio.

What Made Super Stock Drag Racing So Super?

Part 1

If ever there was a racing class made for muscle cars it’s this one, Super Stock Drag Racing. Super Stock racing is exactly what the name implies – stock cars taken to the super level. Super Stock hit drag racing just as the sport was making the transition from a hobby for guys in greasy T-shirts to a major professional motor sport. The popularity of super stock and the drivers gave the entire sport of motor racing a huge shot of momentum.

Super Stock grew out of the slower, less flashy Stock class. For a couple of reasons; one, stock cars were getting hotter and two, let’s just call it a need for speed! Super driver and all-time great, Herb McCandless “Once you go to the drag strip and get that feel for speed, and then if you get a win one time, that’s it, you know from then on, your hooked.” And what wasn’t there to like about super stock racing? It gave the race fans their favorite cars in nearly show room condition, and it let them race them against each other. Super Stocks gave Detroit their hottest wheels the best showcase they could have ever dreamed up. Plus, it gave a generation of drivers a chance to do something they loved to, and get paid for it.

Super Stock racing beat the Muscle Car Era to the line by several years. Almost a decade before the Road Runners, GTOs, Chargers, and Camaros hit the show room floor, Detroit was building some barnburner streetcars that could cut a quick quarter-mile. When those Oldsmobile 88s, Dodge V501s, and Chevy Impalas started crowding onto the staging lanes, fans demanded that they get equal track time as the hot rods in the radical jobs. Soon there was almost as many so called “fenderfloppers” as there were dragsters. The frenzy generated by the stockers was a wake-up call for the Detroit decision-makers at Chrysler, Ford and GM. Stock Class drag racing was a fan favorite and one that sold cars, specifically Ford’s Hi-Po 352, Pontiac’s Super Duty 421, and Chevy’s legendary 409. And the soon-to-be heroes who drove them were packing friends into the tracks and towns.

Down south two “good ol’ boys” were making a very big reputation for themselves. Buddy Martin of Sox and Martin, “If you were involved with drag racing in North or South Carolina, you knew who Sox and Martin were.” By 1962 there were drag strips all over America, some were quite lavish by early 60’s standards, and some were quite a bit down scale. According to Herb McCandless, “To save money, some track owners didn’t focus too much what was beyond the finish line. Before the race started, they would go down to the finish line and take the fence down to the cow pasture, so if you couldn’t stop, you could keep going on to the cow pasture to turn around and come back onto the track, because there wasn’t enough stopping room on the track itself.” The big National meets that happened half a dozen times a year were held at the more upscale tracks, and got all the press coverage from the various media. It wasn’t long before the drivers who viewed the sport as a business and their personal livelihood, saw opportunities at all these local tracks, and so did the smarter track owners. This was the birth of Southern-style Match Racing. Match Racing was like gunslingers facing off in the street. Track owners would book two rivals to face-off against each other on the same night, usually in a best two out of three contest. For added fun, sometimes a local favorite driver got into the act too. On a good Saturday night or Sunday afternoon the grandstands would be overflowing with excited fans.

Buddy Martin traded his Corvette in for one of the new Chevrolet 409s. But he kept meeting up with a game guy named Ronnie Sox and getting beaten every time. “I ordered a 1962 409 Chevrolet, then I found out Ronnie Sox had ordered one too, that’s when I could see how unbelievably good he really was. At the end of 1962, I approached him and asked him if he’d be interested in driving a new car in 1963, the Chevy Z11, that is if we could even get one of those very limited production cars. And that’s how the two of us got together and started.” By the end of 1962 Chrysler, Ford and GM were ready with cars that were designed for quarter mile racing. Chevy’s “Bubble Back” Bel Air and Impala now included a juiced up 425 horse 409, Pontiac’s super duty 421 found a new home between the aluminum front fenders of the new Catalina. The Dodge Dart was already lighter than everyone else. And a Max Wedge 413 made it a super fast high 13 second track car. Ford was behind the curve in both horsepower and weight. But they did the usual Ford thing, they jumped in with both feet. Famous Ford driver and head of the Ford Drag Team, Dick Brannan, “Ford decided to make some light weight cars so they made only 11 of those ’62 Galaxys whose weight was about 3400 pounds, real light for Ford at that time”. This factory “go fast” equipment was about all the help the racers were going to get. Stock Class rulebook didn’t allow for much wiggle room when it came to modifying these Muscle Cars. Buddy Martin “Stock was stock back then, they didn’t let you make any deviations at all. They didn’t have those funny cam shafts and stuff like they have now for Stock Eliminator.”

As 1963 rolled around, Drag Racing was ready for an explosion in the hot Super Stock wars. In 1963 the quickest “fenderflopper” now had new letters on the windows: SS for Super Stock. This year the big three Detroit automakers didn’t even try to hide their secret tricks. Not that they could have anyway. The aluminum nose Chevy Z11 Impalas were now punched out to 427 cubic inches. Pontiac went so far as to bore several dozen holes in its frame to lighten them even more, that earned them the nickname the Swiss cheese car! Ford was still the fat kid on the block, they used a combination of aluminum and fiberglass body parts to reduce weight. By this time Sox and Martin had become crowd favorites all over the south. They now left their day jobs to race full-time. They were soon offered a contract. Buddy; “A guy by the name of Jim Sortwell made us our first offer for $500 for a Friday night and Sunday races, and they would take care of the reservations for the motel, food and everything. And man we thought we had really made it then!”

While all that factory muscle thundered down drag strips all over America, Detroit was moving ahead with even more radical rides for the next year. Like a little new invention from Ford Motor Company called the Thunderbolt. In February 1963 Chevy bailed out of racing, leaving racing teams stranded without factory support and no tricked out parts to play with. One of those teams was Sox and Martin. Buddy Martin, “I heard that Mercury was going to build some new Comets.” So now in ’64, it is Ronnie Sox who’s behind the wheel of a Mercury Comet. (See the Comet ad, shown below.) But instead of SS on the glass they had a brand new class designation: A/FX, aka Factory Experimental. (The A stands for engine size. There were also B/FX & C/FX.)

Of course, things would never be the same again – and there would be a lot less of these FX models to go around.

There’s more to come.  Like what you see and want more? Click here for my posts What Made Super Stock Drag Racing So Super?  —  Part 2 & Part 3. Enjoy!

– HKK Productions

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Here is an assortment of images I took which include Bill Maverick, a great super stock racer, driving his Little Red Wagon – a 1964 Dodge Original Wheel Stander wagon, a 1970 Sox and Martin Plymouth Superbird, the amazing grill face of a 1959 & the tail end of a 1957 Dodge Coronet, the tail lights of a 1962 Chrysler Imperial “Rockets On!” and the 1964 Plymouth Fury Hood Ornament with custom paint. Enjoy!

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Images of The Dodge Models
Lindberg Models Copyright by Craft House Corporation, Toledo, Ohio

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Image of Mercury Comet Print Ad
Copyrighted by the Lincoln-Mercury Division of the Ford Motor Company

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Image of The Ramchargers 1963 Dodge 330 Candymatic
Copyrighted 2015 by HKK Productions Inc

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