There are a ton of slingshots, dragsters, gassers, and racers that you might think hold top honors in the drag racing world. None of which are more important to the NHRA and AHRA than the Cook and Bedwell Dragster. Back in the late '50s when the Isky U-Fab Dragster was running asphalt ribbons, cars were running many different fuels and speed equipment. If you talk to racers who were around back then, they would tell you that no one could compare with nitromethane cars, especially the Cook and Bedwell rail. On February 3rd, 1957 Emery Cook got in his dragster filled with nitro to make his run down the quarter mile at Lyons Drag Strip. He punched the throttle and made 2 back-to-back runs over 160 mph. It was the fastest anyone had gone up to that point. Within 24 hours of the run, C.J. Hart announced that only straight gasoline fuel could be used at Santa Ana due to safety concerns. Parachutes hadn't come into play by this point and the cages weren’t nearly as safe as they are now. Mickey Thompson and Wally Parks followed suit and the use of nitro was banned across all NHRA events going forward. This all happened in about 24 hours - and in hindsight they lost a lot of spectators for the sport and also to AHRA, who would continue allowing the cars naming them "Outlaws." Even beyond this sport-wide upset, this dragster did more. It got Isky thinking of new products and launched the U-Fab intakes company into production. At the time, people where just switching to overhead valve motors and the market didn’t have the speed parts that young drag racers needed to get the fuel to the cylinders. Much more could be said about the details, but that's the shorthand version of why the Cook and Bedwell Dragster is so important to our gearhead history. Jump forward to 2013 when the cloning of this car got underway. Ray Lake, at 79 years of age, who had crewed for the Cook and Bedwell team as a youngster, even driving the push truck from time to time, dropped in to talk with Dode Martin about recreating the chassis and engineering the car's recreation. Ray had already received a blessing from Cliff Bedwell to pursue the project and clone the car to it's original configuration, as the original chassis was stolen and lost in Kansas long ago. (A later version of the original car, which has been restored by Emery Cook, resides at the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida.) After speaking with Ray, Dode Martin began sketching out the chassis plans using photos of the original. Dode explains that given the correct height and measurements you can reverse engineer the original plans. For instance, Dode knew the rear wheel was 15", so he began there to create a formula for the rest of the car, working out the size and spacing for everything else. Dode Martin has books written about his creations, and at 86 years old he still gets out to his hobby shop every day to do some work. He's cloned most of the more notable cars he ran in his youth at drag strips during the '50s and '60s, most of which sit in the NHRA museum today. Two very accomplished fabricators work alongside Dode on his various projects, Kyle Phillips and Aaron Holland work seamlessly with Dode and the trio are no strangers to hard work. Once all the parts were gathered for the Cook and Bedwell Dragster clone, the car itself was built in just a few short months -using a set of saw horses that Dode had bought at a garage sale at the original Chassis Research in the '60s, which could actually be the original set the car was built on. After the car was finished, it was delivered to Ray Lake at the California Hot Rod Reunion at Bakersfield's Famoso Raceway, where a single parade pass was made in the car for spectators in attendance. Now sometimes appearing at various nostalgia drag racing events... the Cook and Bedwell Dragster clone is something to be on the lookout for.
