The Worlds first Funny Car

One of those cocky statement that lights a firework of skeptics, raises a murmur of protests and provide fuel for brains with better judgment. -Fine. Krantz is pleased to contribute to raising the topic and reach public clarity. This is the worlds first Funny Car – correct me if I am wrong. by Lars Krantz

The world’s first Funny Car – May 1965WORLDKUSTOM’S editor in chief Lars Krantz hereby declare that  Ron Pellegrini’s Super Mustang is the world’s first Funny Car!

Enlarge the pictures with a click. (Applies generally in Worldkustom)  

Defining Funny Car
Plastic Body – tubular frame – centered cockpit – full body and looking like an existing car.

First I want to define the word Funny Car. A Funny car must have a fiberglass body. Metal body cars go away immediately. A funny car must also have a purpose built chassis that holds up the plastic body. Original frames go away immediately. A Funny Car must also have the cockpit in the middle. You do not ride shotgun in a Funny or sit on the  “driver’s side”. You sit  in the middle of the car, and finally, a Funny car is similar to an existing brands body and look. Not a jet engine sausage, not a dragster cigar, not a half roadster with naked front wheels. Therefore, this is the world’s first Funny Car, and it came in the month of April 1965.

The TV celebrity Tommy Ivo, Don Prudhomme, Don Garlits and many others created the most amazing builds for the dragstrip in the early sixties.

New, larger engine blocks were produced by the auto industry and on the race track the power exploded in the hands of excellent motor builders  and race teams.

Everything was power and speed and everything grew annually when the major manufacturers tried to outdo each other in concept cars and motor combinations.

In the Chicago area there was a young man  living only for racing. The kid saw the annual trend and rode its waves. Bigger, stronger, faster. His name was Ron Pellegrini . (left)

 

Ron was one of those who kept the pedal to the metal for  anyone who paid and who needed a driven, totally fearless pilot.

The Showboat.
Ron Pellegrini drove series in a multi-engine dragster with Tommy Ivo 1962-1963. A four wheel drive show monster with four engines did burnouts with all four wheels and was named Showboat.

The Thunderbolt. In 1964 Ron had found work at Hawkinsson Ford back home in the  Chicago area close to his hometown of Cicero as responsible for various special projects. The team had four Ford Thunderbolts, in itself a product that would take several pages to illustrate, but we leave that. Ron liked the 427 and its crazy power in the Thunderbolt.

The Ford Mustang. Then the Ford Mustang was presented to the world the 17th  of April 1964. Ron could not think street driving or sports car use. He only saw the strip in front of him in the small lightweight car.

Tore apart a brand new car.
When Hawkinsson Ford in Chicago managed to get the first couples as they started to roll out of the factory already in the 9th of  March 1964,  Ron persuaded the dealer to take a brand new car and tear it out completely. They bumped out the engine compartment and put in a motor from one of the Thunderbolts. A 427  with a high rise manifold -Bang 0-130 miles in 10.91 seconds. Pellegrini went after that to the Ford management directly and got to show it on their own test track.  Ron was asked:
– What in heaven’s name have you done to  it !!?

The Quarter Horse. He told them but also explained what he wanted to do with 1965 coming up. He said Chrysler’s Hemi machines would probably sweep the track with everything next year and that he wanted to build a Mustang like this, but even better, with a plastic body and tube chassie to meet the competition.

He hoped that Ford would, just as with the  Thunderbolts, build a hundred pieces and he also had the name ready: Quarter Horse. (America’s most common breed type western horse, agile and muscular). Ford’s racing manager Jacque Passino took the concept and went.

Ron was overjoyed. He sauntered home and waited in the winter. Christmas  came, the New Year came, it became spring and Ron knew that he had to start booking the  racing season. He went out with him showing the new concept car in May 1965.

In April 1965 Ford announced that they did not like the fiberglass concept. Ford also had waited so long with the announcement that Ron’s racing season and the commitment was shattered. He stood without a car with three weeks to the first planned drag race in Gary, Indiana. He had also promised to show up on the Memorial Day 1965 which took place on 31st May

Now he founded, together with his friend Chuck Vesely, an utopian, crazy project. He tore loose a car from Ford. Consider that this was when the Mustangs were hot hottest and newest new. The factories could not produce Mustangs with the demand.

Ron shrugged off a Stang, smeared it with car wax and poured fiberglass over the whole caboodle. They took a brand new car and made a plug out of it!  From the plug  a mold was made and in that a fiberglass body weighing 200 pounds  was baked. (Picture from the body’s renovation)

In the middle of that war  Ron Pellegrini bought  a Street Altered built by Dennison, Arlasky & Knox.

He threw the body and took the tubular frame and power train from it.

It saved a lot of time. It was just that the frame’s wheelbase was a full 11 inches shorter than the Mustang

The body was sawed off in the middle of the door, straight across the roof and cut short 16 inch. The rear end was moved forward 7 inch on the frame and the front was extended 12 inch. (Picture from the body’s renovation)

The thin, flapping shell now fitted over the wheels. Between them sat a 392 Hemi with a 6:71 blower and a Hillborn Injection. From nothing to a complete car with opening doors in  three weeks.It had become the month of May 1965. A sleepless Ron Pellegrini felt the push car encounter him in the butt. Starter motor and cooling system make pounds so that was deleted. Decals and names had not been done at this point.

The gear box consisted of a LaSalle manual cleaned out  so that  just the  fourth gear remained.

He released the clutch and the engine awoke by taking the rpm:s to a raging 9.200  before it rattled down.

The gas tank held three gallons of petrol with 30% nitro. He now had less than four minutes to warm the tires, go into stadge, wait for the Christmas tree and do what he’s always done. Floor it.

The driver who was next in line and sat behind saw the Mustang bounce straight up when Pellegrini released the clutch. It appeared to land two feet to the right on its rear wheels with the front wheels in the air where Ron reflexively had pulled them to the left.

When the front end hit the asphalt the car sverved left, then right. The entire track was used but he never released the throttle, they tell who was there including the starter who came forward long time later because of the picture above. Pellegrini took his foot off  the clutch with full throttle on fourth gear and let the rear wheels burn against the surface all the way. The visitors saw the new model Mustang from Ford, which barely existed at the dealerships, do 9,93 sec, 165 m/h with wheels spinning all the way. The people were in ecstasy. The announcer roared, the cameras flashed. All saw that it was a Mustang, but weird.
-Yeah, It really was a Funny Car said the speaker.

… and there we have it in writing for the first time in November 1965.

Before the season was over, Don Pellegrini had put the name on the car, the Super Mustang, but more interesting, he had cut a full second! He ran 8: 82sek, 172 m/h, which of course made it the world’s fastest Mustang of 1965

Cars on the edge of madness had a short life as new ideas constantly appeared. The front bounced up and down often with the front wheels hanging in the air over long distances. At the end of the strip, when the speed  was approaching 180, the  Super Stang could hit a bump and lift off with all four wheels in the air.

Ron Pellegrini had fulfilled his promises and commitments, but when the season was over, he returned to his Buick roots and later built a tube chassie  Buick 67 with plastic body which was named Super Bird.

The Mustang bounced on for a while but no one dared to run as Pellegrini.  In 1970 it ended  in Florida and was  later abandoned in a junk yard of Tampa. Note the door’s text. The funniest car.

Father and son Bob and Scott Schramm mashed up in the junkyard 20 years later in the summer of 1985. The young Scott saw the car first.
-Check out Dad, what’s that?

Father Bob had no idea but it looked fishy. The junk yard owner was not interested in selling. Well, Bob left his phone number. Two years passed and so it rang.
– Are you still interested?

Bob now took his friend and Mustang knower David Beyer with him. Bob and David knew about the fiberglass bodywork with a extended front from the late sixties but they were all fastbacks. When they arrived the disappointment was big. The engine, the Halibrand wheels in the rear and the classic wheels in the front were all gone. The shortened Olds -57 rear axle likewise
-Shoot

It was just a rusty frame lying there, plus the old gearbox and a body in decay. Bob hesitated.

David said: Yes, I have no idea what this is but I will not go home with an empty trailer. If you don’t buy it, I will. Bob paid $ 600 and went home with his head full of questions.

Years passed. Bob showed pictures of the project for  Don “Big Daddy” Garlits who now lives in Florida but he had never seen the car. After a few days he called. Big Daddy had asked around and behold a guy named Ron Pellegrini that had some info. Bob called and yes … the rest you know.

With the new knowledge  the trio set to work in 2003. The frame was taken to Bill Holtz in Fort Myers, an old dragster blacksmith.

He ruled out the frame directly. It had given up of all  impacts and of age.

He re-created the same in chrome moly tubing and dressed it with aluminum. Bob tracked  down an Oldsmobile rear axle according to the original that was shortened and strengthened. The right wheels were purchased and of course a 392 Hemi by Pellegrini’s memorys and notes (with some practical updates).

The son Scott put down months on the body. He cleaned up all the damage, restored, repaired, and at the  sanding he found stickers which was photographed and later re-created.

The car was sprayed with one-layer paint as in May 1965, and the letters were ordered by the old photos. In 2005 the body could be  lifted on the frame and the world’s first Funny Car was resurrected.

The 392 Hemi is fired up at car shows and events. The engine is built by Ron Pelligrinis notes except for some practical changes.

The specially machined valve covers with Ford name has deceived many through the years.

Thanks to Mustang expert David Beyer, Scott Schramm who saw the car first, and father Bob Schramm, who unfortunately is not with us anymore, an outstanding piece of American drag racing history is preserved for the future.

 A website has been out there for 16 years with a question if someone, somewhere can remember  an earlier funny as defined at the  top. For 16 years, no response has been received. Bob, Scott and Davis has toured with the car in a covered trailer containing exhibition booth with photos and history for over a decade.

Just imagine.  Ron was sitting here in 180 with wheels crazy spinning in the spring of  1965!
– We did not know that the letters were yellow, we had only seen the black-and-white photos, says Scott to  Worldkustom.

Lots of people have shared their experiences of the car, including the one who was sitting behind the Super Mustang when it facilitated the launch pad

Others have seen the different advertisings and  the names of the car and said, “I worked there.” Many remember the Mustang’s wild rampage. No one recall, however, a similar car before the Ron Pellegrini construction.

The three guys themselves have not wanted to write “the world’s first Funny Car” on either the trailer or display material and has gratefully received help trying to find information about any earlier, but without results.

But now it is being said. This in the Swedish, worldwide motor magazine Worldkustom.
This is the worlds first funny car.