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Home > Articles > Historicar Society > Life's a Beach by Jim Davis
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Imagine Drag Racing with "Art Chrisman" in the Sand. Sound far-fetched? Well... That's Just What Happened on the Beach at Daytona Years Ago.
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| Life's a Beach |
By Jim Davis |
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 Back in the mid-fifties there was a speed shop in Washington D.C. called Custom Automotive and it was owned and run by Ray Giavannoni. Ray later moved to Daytona Beach and became involved in the camshaft wars of the early sixties. Giovannoni was famous for his decal of a girl straddling a camshaft, a design that was made from a sketch of mine based on Ray’s description of what he wanted.
Ray had a highboy chopped ’32 3-window coupe that he had built as a drag race car and he had asked me to drive it. I was a regular at the speed shop and had my own full fendered ’32 3-window that I successfully raced but jumped at the chance to drive for Ray. Ray’s car was a fuel coupe and had a 296 cid flathead in it with Hillborn injection and ran on about 98% nitro. It had a ’39 Ford 3-speed trans and a Halibrand V8 quickchange. The V8 quickchange was the small one but we never did break it or the transmission.
 We ran the car at a number of local east coast drag strips and were always quite successful with it. This was before any drag strips had et clocks and I really can’t remember what kind of speeds it turned. I think it ran about 120 in the quarter...certainly no big deal by today’s standards but pretty fast for its day.
Ray wanted to take the car to the Daytona Beach SpeedWeeks. This would have been around 1956 and this was when the race was still run on the beach and a portion of A1A highway.
We hooked the coupe up to Ray’s 1950 Ford pickup. We flat towed the car with the slicks stowed in the bed of the pickup and some tow tires on the coupe. He and I took off for Daytona but somewhere in Georgia, while I was driving, the right rear tire of the coupe dropped off the highway and caused the whole rig to start swerving. Bottom line was I ended up flipping the coupe onto its top and the truck flopped over on its side. We had a bunch of spare parts in the back of the truck that ended up all over the highway. We managed to get both vehicles back on their wheels and the parts loaded back in the truck. One of the wheels on the truck was messed up so we put the spare on. Most of the glass was busted out of the truck and since it was February, it was plenty cold in the truck.
 We drove this ragged mess back to D.C. The closer we got to home the more determined we were to get to Daytona. Back at the shop Ray cut the top off the coupe and we had a local top shop make us a tonneau cover for it. He had emergency repairs made on the truck so we at least had glass in the windows and within just a few days we were on our way to Daytona again.
There were organized drag races that were to take place on the beach. In Daytona, as the tide goes out, it leaves the sand hard packed enough that you can drive on it. Traction is non existent however so we were running snow tires.
ATAA, (Automobile Timing Association of America) the same group who staged the World Series of Drag Racing back in that era, organized the drag races on the beach. We had run the coupe at their 1955 event in Lawrenceville, Indiana. At Daytona, they had a card table set up on the beach and were collecting entry fees. As we sat there with our “roadster” ready to go, it was obvious that the tide was not going to be out long enough for all the cars that were signing up to be able to run. There was this great long line of people handing over their money.
I told Ray that I didn’t see how there was any chance that this deal could be pulled off. I think they only had permission from the city to just have drag races this one afternoon and into the evening.
 Eventually the organizers realized they wouldn’t have enough time to run all the cars before the tide came in. In fact it had started to come in already. So they decided to pick the four most likely cars that could win top eliminator and run them off first. That was us, Art Chrisman with his famous #25 drag car based on an old Miller circle track car, a Crosley with an Olds engine in it that was located sideways and was called The Sidewinder, and a fourth car that I can’t really remember. I don’t remember the name of the Crosley owner but I do remember he was from Mattoon, IL. Anyway the first round sent Art Chrisman off against us and as expected the much lighter dragster made mince meat out of us. Then the Crosley defeated the fourth car. Then after a very, very short wait they ran off the Crosley and Chrisman with the Crosley taking the win.
And that was the end of the drags. The organizers packed up their card table and were quickly gone. Whether anybody got his money back, I have no clue. Amazingly enough, a few months later some halfway decent merchandise prizes showed up at Ray’s shop that was awarded to the car as a finalist. Which is kind of odd... considering we didn’t actually beat anybody. |
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| About the Author: Jim Davis was the founder and publisher of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated and Stock Car Racing magazines. He was formerly President of B&M Racing & Performance for 18 years and is now Chief Operating Officer and Partner of Professional Products. Jim is an ardent street rodder with two Brizio built cars; a red '32 full fendered roadster and a fendered 3-window '33 coupe. |
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