~ Byron's Gasser Madness! ~

~ Photos by Norm Grudem ~

~ "The OLD Days!" ~


 
 

The stuff in this section is all a bit before my time, but I think it's all pretty cool.  These are our roots, boys and girls!  Many thanks to Mr. Norm Grudem for taking and saving these shots and to Mr. Bud Holmes for taking the time to scan them and share them with us.

By the way, pay attention to the names.  I suspect they won't all sound familiar to you, but a pretty good number of them should...especially if you were around dragracing in the 60's.

Also, these pages will probably take a minute or so each to load.  They're small thumbnail pics, but there are a LOT of them!  Another note:  The captions are as I received them, except for any comments I might have made...they're in blue.

I received an email from David Sorenson that I'd like to share.  The first part is here, the rest of it will be spread throughout the Coupes & Sedans page in red and are the comments that Dave made about specific cars/owners, etc.  Thank you very much for filling in some blanks, Dave.

 
 

Byron,

You've run some great photos on Gasser Madness, but the photos from Norm Grudem are the cream of the crop.  As you noted, this is the real grass roots of drag racing.  Norm was a caddy on the golf course at the end of Pomona Drag Strip, and took these photos (and others now on Don Ewald's site of dragsters) in the mid-50s.  Most of these cars are unknown, and will probably remain that way, but they are all classics.  Thanks so much for running them!!  If it weren't for guys like Norm who saved his pictures, this history would be lost forever, because most of these cars were just average cars that never made the hot rod magazines.  That is what, to me, made them great..........

David Sorenson

 
 
'27 chopped coupe Coupes & Sedans
 
 
'27 T sedan with a droptank nose Roadsters

Updated with comments from Norm Grudem on 1/30/02.  Norm's comments are in green.