The Vintage Hydroplanes

NFBRA is proud to celebrate our 80th year in existence Click here to read more.

I’m not sure if I posted this before (and my apologies to whoever sent me this article from 2010 Super Chevy magazine), but did you know famed hydro builder Charlie Lloyd built a fiberglass Funny Car body?
This was before Ford pressured NHRA into making the fiberglass car body into a one-piece tilt-up style we are all accustomed to seeing. Below is the magazine article and some pics of the 1966 Chevelle he built out of fiberglass. It looks like a slightly altered steel body, but it’s not. The whole thing is fiberglass. The Pennsylvania Chevy Dealer parts department ordered all the body parts of the 1966 Chevelle, including the turret top. Charlie & Mike Lloyd’s body shop made the fiberglass molds of the steel parts, and from those molds made replicas of the original pieces, but in fiberglass.

Wonderful listening to Ted Jones talk about the SloMoShun back in the day.

The 2020 monthly calendars are posted (well, the first four months are posted).
Since 2005 I have been making monthly calendars. I print off each one and hang it in my office (and usually I am scribbling stuff all over them).
As usual, once the APBA V&H group gives me the 2020 Schedule of Events, I will add them to these calendars.

Rudy Nielson sent in a few more photos of the neat Wickens he raced back in the early 1960s to his webpage. Included with those pics is also a news article on the race in Tonawanda on July 1967, some hydro race tidbits, and more pics of his other hydro he campaigned after the Wickens

Rudy’s family posted their home movies and you can watch the Wickens and other hydros running back in the 60s.

Bob Schroeder and his F-188 hydro winning the Southland Sweepstakes 266 class.
(Thanks to Brent McLean for sharing!)

8 Ton Sledge: Gar Wood’s 7,000hp Miss America X Boat Owned The World In ’32 and ’33 (Video)