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Roland Leong with his “The Hawaiian” dragsters and funny cars has been one of the truly enduring legends in the sport of drag racing. He came from a well-to-do Hawaiian family and started drag racing a Dragmaster-chassis’ed blown Chevy in the early sixties at his home track “Hawaii Raceway Park” on Oahu. Looking for bigger mahi-mahi to fry, he took his Dragmaster and headed for the mainland, eventually building a Greer-Black-Prudhomme “clone” around a chassis by Kent Fuller with Don Prudhomme driving and Keith Black building the Chrysler engine.
When Prudhomme left to form his own team as the “B&M Torkmaster Special”, Roland replaced him with Mike Snively who continued “The Hawaiian” team’s winning record. The Fuller car was replaced by a Don Long stretched chassis and a “new-generation” Chrysler Marine hemi, again by Keith Black. During his tenure with “The Hawaiian”, Snively won top eliminator at the 1966 Indy Nationals and the 1967 Bakersfield Fuel and Gas Championships (March Smoker’s Meet).
Thirteen-Twenty, Inc. has built a beautiful model of the Don Long car in their on-going series of long-wheelbase front-engined or slingshot “Fuelers”. The 426” Chrysler hemi engine is highly-detailed with Schiefer mag and wiring, Enderle fuel injector with all the valving and fuel delivery lines and even the butterflies are stained red to represent the anodized aluminum butterflies on the real car. 1320 has constructed the model with a removable cowl to make more of the details of the driver’s “office” visible. The body is painted white with red “squizzles” and has gold and blue panels with gold leaf lettering. All of the tampo work is very well-done and accurate. In the rear, the car rides on polished Halibrand mags with semi-pneumatic Goodyear tires that are soft and very realistic. This is a beautiful model and does a great job of representing the simplicity and single-mindedness of this wonderful car. Thanks go to the folks at Thirteen-Twenty for putting together this beautiful model!
(09/15/2004)
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