GMP 1:18 Dragster Tommy Ivo Twin Engine Dragster- Ltd Ed of 2500

“T.V. Tommy” Ivo built some of the most beautiful and successful dragsters of his era and his twin-engined dragster was arguably the most beautiful and successful of all of his cars.

Tommy Ivo was born in Denver, Colorado in 1936, but his family re-located to the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles where, starting at 8 years old, Tommy pursued a career as a child actor in films and television. His credits include “Hopalong Cassidy”, “Rin Tin Tin”, “The Donna Reed Show”, “Leave It to Beaver”, “The Lone Ranger”, “The Gene Autry Show”, “Petticoat Junction” and “Margie”. With all this work, he had the resources to indulge in his hobby, fast cars. He knew Norm Grabowski, another car-loving actor who had gained fame building “Kookie’s T” for Ed Byrnes on “77 Sunset Strip”. Tommy took a lot of the design elements from Norm’s car and built his own “T-Bucket” with a “nailhead” Buick V-8 for power. Max Balchowsky of “Ol’ Yeller” fame taught him how to make the nailhead run and pretty soon his T was taking “Top Eliminator” at the local dragstrips.

The bug had bitten him and soon he and chassis-builder Kent Fuller built a single-engined dragster with a nailhead and Hilborn injection. But Tommy wanted to go faster and went to Fuller with a proposal to build a twin-engine car. Fuller thought Tommy could get the power he wanted by putting a GMC 6-71 blower on the Buick. So to prove a point, Tommy installed a blower but underdrove it and retarded the mag so the car would barely run. After the car’s poor performance, Fuller agreed to build a twin engine car for him. The project was started in the summer of 1959 at Fuller’s shop in Sherman Oaks.

There were two approaches normally used to put twin engines in a car: tandem or side-by-side. Ivo and Fuller decided to put the engines side-by-side, tilt them away from each other, and mesh the double-wide-ring-gear flywheels. This loaded more of the weight onto the rear wheels for improved traction. To make this work, the right engine had to run opposite to its normal rotation. This was accomplished by having Ed Iskenderian grind a special backwards cam for the right engine and reworking the right Vertex mag to handle the counter rotation.

There was one Schiefer clutch mounted on the left engine and the drive was directed through an offset Halibrand quickchange rear end. Moon provided the fuel tank and gas pedal, Weiand the valve covers, C&T Automotive the crankshafts, the front spokes were Borrani and the rear wheels were American Torque Thrusts mounting M&H Racemaster slicks. A Deist ‘chute and automotive drum brakes were charged with the stopping. Tony Nancy, the greatest automotive upholsterer of the time, worked his magic on the bucket seat. The aluminum body was painted a bright red-orange and the twin Buick blocks were painted to match. The tube chassis was painted a high-gloss black and everything else went to the chrome shop. On its second time out on December 20, 1959 at Riverside, it turned a 9.02 e.t. @ 162 mph matching Jack Chrisman’s “Sidewinder” e.t. record. On February 7, 1960, Ivo and his twin engine rail became the first gas dragster into the 8’s with 8.95 e.t. at Pomona. For 1960, he and his young pal Don Prudhomme took the car on a national tour setting records at every dragstrip he ran. On July 4th, 1960, he won Top Eliminator at the first NASCAR Nationals at the Montgomery (AL) Dragstrip winning himself a 1960 Chevy El Camino in the process. The dragster was eventually modified to use Tony Nancy’s blown nailhead as the left engine and the chassis was lengthened to 122 inches. In 1962, the car turned an all-time best of 8.23 e.t. @ 193.87 mph.

I can’t say too much about what an unbelievably beautiful job Tom Long and the folks at GMP have done in bringing us this car. One of the things I remember about seeing the real car in person was how “sanitary” it was…… beautifully engineered, with seemingly no expense spared in making it “just right”. The GMP model brings us exactly that. It’s perfect! Everything is just as it was on the real car. I’ve spent a great deal of time looking at pictures of the car being built, and this car nails each detail. Stuff that normally gets missed…… the right color brown on the Vertex caps with the eight little white dots, the 20 lightening holes on the butterfly steering wheel and the little finger indentations in the wood grips…… the plumbing and the linkage on the Hilborn injectors are exactly as they were: a combination of stainless steel wrapped hose and chromed steel tubing. You can even see that the Moon fuel tank is held in place by tiny steel springs around its circumference and has a tag that you have to read with a microscope stating its capacity and declaring it a “Moon Fuel Tank”. The aluminum body is a complex piece with lots of curves that aren’t apparent when you first look at the car. This piece has been rendered in formed aluminum, exactly as it was on the real car when Tommy and Kent built it. GMP has come a long way in the past few years and I think they’re going to have a real tough time bettering this one…….. but I’m sure they will! This is truly a must-have! But that's not all. The model also includes a DVD full of history from Ivo’s adventures in racing and his tv career.

New News  ·  List & Reviews  ·  Legacy Motors  ·  Auctions  ·  Forums  ·  Polls  ·  Features  ·  Register  ·  FAQs  ·  Clubs

Copyright © 2007 Priva and Diecast Zone