Just for some perspective I can retell a situation where prior to 1950 the cars on the street were nowhere near as quick as today and in fact in the next village just over the hill from my boyhood home there was a guy who would sucker-bait some rodder into betting that he could beat his car in a one block race ON FOOT! His usual bet was $50 which was a lot of money in those days and I believe he collected three times before the word got around that he was fast. I also saw him run a kickoff back for a touchdown against our team so he was pretty quick. Of course a human dash runner is not that fast, but can reach top speed in only a few feet while while a car is just getting up to speed in a one block length. I never had access to really fast cars in the '50s. I had a few fast rides in my cousin's '50 Merc which seemed awesome and I rode to work at age 15 with a crazy driver whose job was to pick up waitresses and busboys like me from all over and take them to/from from a Howard Johnson restaurant. He wanted to drag that GMC van against everything so over lunch hour one day he stopped into a machine shop and had the head milled 0.080" and put back together in a little over an hour. It wasn't fast but he ran it ragged after he delivered most of the folks and the van was empty except for him and me. Believe me it was a real shock when I first encountered a new '55 Chevy 265 V8 alongside my '47 Ford with just a 0.030" overbore and it was clear that the OHV engine revolution had begun!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder