Vintage photos....Awesome!

derock85z said:

Holy cow talk about obscure drag cars! That's Four Engine Tommy Ivo, those are all buick big blocks. He had a few other multi engine drag cars but this was the fastest IIRC. This thing ran low 9's in 1961!

I had a large poster of this on my wall when I was a kid.... Brings back the sights, sounds, and smells of the strip.... Man I gotta get back into drag racing.

Any more on Ivo's cars?

Also Awesome thread!:thumbup:


opcorn:

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drag racing said:

In the world of sports, records are made to be broken, and they regularly are. "Firsts," however, happen only once, and there are many in auto racing. Who "owns" those firsts determines their significance in history. In drag racing, Tom Ivo is a very significant—even the most significant—individual in the sport’s history.

Tom Ivo came to drag racing via an unusual path. He was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1936, and his mother’s chronic arthritis caused the Ivo family to move to Southern California before Tom’s seventh birthday. His father quickly found work in Burbank. "As young as three years old, I could carry a tune and dance. I performed in Denver, so Los Angeles was the land of plenty for my Mom," Ivo recalls. "Mom took me to every talent show she could find." Mrs. Ivo discovered that Republic Studios was casting the film "Earl Carroll Vanities"—a musical that needed a child who could sing and dance opposite its star, Dennis O’Keefe. "I was always small for my age and could look younger, and I had just lost my front teeth. I was exactly what Republic was looking for. I got the part without going through the talent-agent rigmarole. That was the start of a 19-year show-business career."



Ivo finished this ’25 Ford T-Bucket in 1957, and it inspired car builders during the decades that followed.
From 1945 through 1961, Ivo was cast in over 100 movie roles, and the 1950s brought–television—a medium in which Ivo thrived. As a teenager, he landed at least 200 TV roles and that, combined with movies, earned him a very good living. "

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In 1961, just before Ivo completed his four-engine dragster, he was cast in the role of "Haywood Botts" on a new television series—"Margie"—starring Cynthia Pepper. "Hot Rod wanted to shoot the car for a cover. Since much of my time was taken up with filming the show and the studio was close to my home, the editor suggested that we shoot the car on the set. I got the OK. Well, that day, the script called for a gambling-boat setting. I was dressed in a striped suit and a straw hat. That’s where the name ‘Showboat’ came from. The car was loaded onto a trailer and brought to the set. When I fired it up, we heard studio heads a mile away opening and then slamming their doors. They knew I raced a little but thought it was with my street car. When they saw this four-engine monster, they put the whammy on me driving right then and there," says Ivo. Yet another first: the first driver to be banned by a studio from drag racing.

The studio ban led to yet another first, and it was a big one. Having been barred by the studio from racing, he needed someone to make his scheduled appearances with the car. Buddy Don Prudhomme stepped in—his first job as a paid driver. He earned a whopping $25 a run. "Boy, that was the opening of a Pandora’s Box I could never get closed," Ivo says with a grin. As we know, Don is now known as Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, and he’s perhaps the most famous and successful driver in drag racing history.

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