Coolest Guys Ever, Part 1: Tommy Ivo

[ed. warning: joke-free post, just gearhead/movie trivia geektalk]

Charles Bernth writes:

David; Last night on Modern Marvels, the History Channel upped the testosterone level with DRAG RACING. Being of a certain age, I remembered Don Garlitz and his rail car, but the most interesting driver they interviewed was Tommy Ivo. his multiple-engine cars were...intriguing. Can you expound on this subject?

Just try to shut me up! "TV" Tommy Ivo, for for the uninitiated, was one of the true pioneers of drag racing and car culture. Oddly enough, he began his career as a child/teen character actor, playing a succession of bowtie oh-garsh-shucks adolescent nebbish roles like Herbie Bailey on The Donna Reed Show. Sort of a 1950s version of Urkel or Screech.

It might have been humiliating, but it provided Ivo with a snappy nickname, a large amount of money and free time to indulge his real obsession - building and driving extremely fast cars. Ivo was one of the first hotrodders to see the racing potential in the then-new Buick "Nailhead" V8, which he used to power his beautiful (street driven) T-bucket to +120 mph quarter mile speeds in the late '50s. Later, with chassis builder Kent Fuller, he help define the long wheelbase "rail" design with his "Barnstormer" dragster in the early '60s.

At the time the NHRA banned nitromethane fuel for sanctioned races, but was lax on engine configurations. Drag racers like Art Arfons began experimenting with WWII surplus V12 Allison aircraft engines (the muscle behind the P-38 Lightning) with some success. Ivo figured if one engine is good, the two must be better. He put together the very successful "Twin Mill," that featured two Hillborn injected 401 nailheads. What was unique here was that instead of running the Buicks in-line, Ivo placed them side-by-side How'd he do that? He meshed the flywheels and ran one engine backwards by reversing the firing order! One word: genius.

Two engines were good, so Ivo figures: four must be great. So in 1961 he reveals this:

Un-fah-rea-king nuts. Two meshed mills for the front axle, two for the rear; this sucker flirted with 200 mph quarters, but unfortunately proved to be unsuccessful. Driver safety became an issue - when Ivo wasn't being blinded from front tire smoke, he was getting a blowtorch facial from those center row exhaust ports. It was eventually relegated to exhibition duty, and clad with some '66 Buick Riviera sheetmetal raced as "The Showboat".

With the NHRA nitro ban lifted Ivo returned to conventional single engine Chrysler dragsters. He was one of the first to experiment with aerodynamics and with rear engines; and he was the first driver to break the 8 second barrier, and later the 6 second barrier. In contrast to his "teen weenie" screen image, Ivo was an innovative engineer and fearless driver. He retired at the top of his game in 1981, after several close ones; e.g.,

"All of a sudden the car took a sharp turn.. we were at the lights anyway, so I backed out of it and turned the wheels to recover... she kept right on coming around. I figured 'I'm gonna go over.' I've got a deathly fear of rolling a race car, especially at those speeds. When she got to about a 45-degree angle, I figured that was it, I had bought the farm, the big casino. I didn't wanna see it happen, so I closed my eyes flat out of stark, dead fear. And missed the whole show... there was this terrible crack like someone hit me in the back with a 2x4, ya know what I mean? At one time, down around 120, I thought I was upside-down, so I opened my eyes and could see that starting-line tower going away from 'em 'cause I was going backwards, and sure enough, I was upside down so I closed my eyes again. I then rode it out 'till I was almost stopped.... The crash crew was amazed that I did not go into shock."

He walked away. And then he walked away.

Some Tommy Ivo recommendations:

Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959) - Playing himself, in his famous T bucket.
Bikini Beach (1964) - Frankie and Annette go to the drags, and Tommy's there with the Showboat.
American Nitro (1979). Great drag racing documentary.
Heart Like a Wheel (1983) - Ivo stunt drives for Bonnie Bedelia as Shirley Muldowney.

ADDENDUM: Ivo palled around with another semi-famous teen actor / car freak, Norm Grabowski. If you've ever seen one of those 50s/60s Disney Midvale College teen flix ("Monkey's Uncle," "Son of Flubber") or the old Dobie Gillis TV series, you will recognize Grabowski as the cheery big galoot football player with the crew cut. Grabowski is highly revered among hotrod fanatics as the builder of one of the all-time iconic rods - the "Kookie T" from the 77 Sunset Strip series. He also invented the skull shift knob. Here are some shots of Norm, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, Connie Stevens and the car from the August 1959 issue of Rods Illustrated.

Comments

[blankchaz]

...or, as Lileks would say; "I want this car"...

[Gary]

Jeebus! Did this ever bring back a pimple-encrusted, testosterone-laden adolescence. I saw that car race and figured it had to be a slug because THIS FREAKIN'GUY was on a really dumb TV show. A slug it was, too. Swamp Rats rule!