– Talented driver, respected tuner, successful car owner and mentor to new drivers
– A fixture in the sport of drag racing for over 70 years
– Recipient of NHRA’s Lifetime Achievement Award 2024
“I started when I was 16. During high school, the only place we could race was on the streets, mostly on Ball Road (in Anaheim, CA). Heck, it was before NHRA even existed. My first true taste of drag racing came when Santa Ana (Dragstrip in Southern California) opened in the 1950s.”
Jim Dunn on getting hooked on drag racing
Born in 1934, Jim Dunn was a car nut as a teen, who built his first engine at age 15. “My dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday that year, and I told him ‘a cam and three carburetors.’ The stipulation was that I had to put them in. That’s how I started working on cars. I was always pretty mechanically inclined.” When he was 19, he started hanging out with Art Chrisman and other racing pioneers, and they took young Jim Dunn under their wing. “I fell in love with drag racing and have loved every day at the track and shop since,” Dunn said.
Dunn’s first NHRA wins came at the 1963 and ’64 Winternationals running on gas, the Dunn-Merritt-Velasco supercharged small-block Chevy-powered Fiat. With just a 90-inch wheelbase, it was the hardest car he ever drove. It also won twice at Bakersfield (AA/FA) on fuel. After the ’64 season, he convinced his partners to drop the engine into a dragster, but soon switched to the more powerful HEMI® engine. “I could leave on the HEMIs because my car was lighter,” he recalled. “But I could only run on about 20-percent nitro, and those HEMIs would come around me every time.”
This was one of the first HEMI engine-powered Top Fuel dragsters that Dunn ran with friend Joe Reath. It was known as the “Rainbow Car” as it had a colorful candy pearl paint job that changed colors depending on the angle. In 1969, it won the Bakersfield March Meet (of which there were over 100 T/F entries) plus the NHRA Division 7 Top Fuel title. “When you ran Top Fuel at ‘the beach’ (Lions Drag Strip) you’d better be within a tenth of the record or you didn’t qualify,” said Dunn. “That’s when I decided to build a Funny Car.”
BARRACUDA: FIRST FUNNY CAR
“My first Funny Car was a lightweight Barracuda. The red paint was mixed into the fiberglass, and we painted on the white stripe only to cover the mold lines.” Woody Gilmore built the chassis. “I told him I wanted it light, high gear only, with quick-change (rear end) in it. Fiberglass body by ‘Mr. Ed.'”
Built of a simple, straightforward design with no expensive frills or gimmicks, feather light with direct drive. It didn’t do mile-an-hour like others (because of the short rear end gears required with direct-drive) but it was quick, because of the light weight. It was the first Funny Car at Irwindale Raceway in the 6s due to its lightweight chassis, which only weighed approximately 600 pounds.
A 1958 Chrysler HEMI engine was used, a 392-cid model that was given a .030-inch overbore and 1/4-inch stroke added. An Engle 169 race cam was fitted, Venolia pistons and Howard’s rods. The cylinder heads were ported by Joe Mondello, GMC blower by Neil Leffler, three-port Enderle injector, Doug Thorley “zoomie” headers. 11-inch Schiefer flywheel and clutch, 4.57:1 rear gears.
It was a sensible, economical dragster approach to a Funny Car. 6.80s in the quarter-mile. Dunn claimed the total cost was just $3,500.00!
On a summer tour to the Midwest, here’s Dunn getting ready to stage the car at Union Grove, Wisconsin, with young Mike Dunn at the starting line. “[Son] Mike worked on all of my cars probably from the time he was five years old. He got his license in my car, running on alcohol. He was like me, pretty mechanically inclined right from the get-go. He got pretty good and started asking to get paid for working on the car. I told him, ‘I don’t pay anyone,’ and turned him over to Roland [Leong]. I said, ‘Hey Roland, do you want a crew guy who’s 17 but has 20 years’ experience?’ He said, ‘Send him over.’
“First time out in the car it set low e.t. at the Manufacturers Meet. It was easy for me to get used to driving a Funny Car; it was like driving something between the altered and a dragster.”
“It was one of the first cars to have the headers run over the framerails, people couldn’t believe it when we went to change heads between rounds, and it was so easy.”
REAR-ENGINED FUNNY CAR
“It was his idea,” said Jim when asked about how the idea of doing a rear-engined Funny Car came up. He was referring to chassis builder Woody Gilmore and no doubt the concept was conceived by the rapid success of the new rear-engine Top Fuel dragsters. Power was similar to the earlier (traditional chassis) car, and initially the car had a roof-mounted air scoop; however, it was not deemed legal by the NHRA.
When he won the NHRA Supernationals at Ontario Motor Speedway in November 1972, the car’s best e.t. was a 6.44. He worked his way through the field (including beating Don Prudhomme in the first round on a hole shot), and in the finals was up against Pat Foster in the quicker and faster Barry Setzer car, Dunn won as Foster left too soon and red-lighted. “Winning [the 1972 Supernationals] felt good because it was a unique design and something I believed in.”
Before the initial pass at Lions Drag Strip, Dunn asked the chassis builder Woody Gilmore, “How much weight should I put on the front end?” Woody replied: “I engineered the SOB; you don’t have to put any weight on it.” On that first run at the launch, the front end came up about four feet off the ground. After returning to the pits, Dunn approached Woody and said, “Do you think I should add 10 pounds on the nose?” He replied, “Put 100.” An early shakedown pass netted a 6.91-second time slip. “The hatch in the windshield was my emergency escape,” Dunn shared. “It was soldered in so I could pop it off if I needed to get out in a hurry.” There was a solid aluminum wall mounted directly behind him for safety.
Dunn was honored with the “Best Engineered” award at the NHRA season-opening Winternationals event and shown here getting the trophy by the Executive VP of NHRA Jack Hart on the Pomona starting line. He qualified and won his first round of competition.
This shot was taken at the end of the OCIR drag strip in early 1972. The Don Kirby body tilted up from the rear to service the engine, and could also be tilted up from the front to let the driver in and out. Chassis had a 125-inch wheelbase, torsion bar front suspension. The Halibrand rear end used 4.52:1 gearing. The overall weight is said to be 1,810 pounds. Dazzling Candy Apple Red enamel paint with yellow, gold leaf lettered by Kenny Youngblood.
The challenge was getting air to the powerplant, at first it seemed only natural to fit a scoop directly over the HEMI engine, except the NHRA didn’t go for that idea!
In order to get air to the engine, there were two large plastic tubes installed, at first extending outside of the windshield, later trim fitted flush. The car definitely required that Dunn use all the driving skills he had learned during his earlier years with the short wheelbase altered car. “The car would go straight as an arrow four runs in a row, and on the fifth run it would turn left. Another four runs and it would turn right. It was scary. It did things for no reason without a warning.”
Jim Dunn had a group of suppliers that he faithfully used, including Venolia Pistons, Doug Thorley Headers, Engle Cams, Scott Clutches and Autolite Spark Plugs. Race Car Engineering was the name of the Woody Gilmore chassis shop.
When the car performed a burnout, the smoke poured out in a massive manner!
Jim was a staple of the West Coast racing scene for years (while moonlighting from his fireman day job). He match raced the car heavily on local tracks, Irwindale and Orange County International Raceway especially. He was runner-up at the Hang Ten 500 event in 1972 (despite losing the roof in qualifying) and saw victory at the prestigious Grand Premiere in ’73.
BLUE CAR
The blue version won the AHRA Grand American World Championship race in Fremont, California, on October 14, 1973, with a 6.61-second time at 215.85 mph.
STAR OF FUNNY CAR SUMMER MOVIE
Conceived in the spirit of the Bruce Brown films Endless Summer and On Any Sunday, the 1974 movie Funny Car Summer was a documentary directed by Ron Phillips which chronicled a summer in the life of drag racer Jim Dunn and his family (who was an LA County, California, fireman nine months out of the year). The movie was actually the idea of the director’s 12-year-old son Alex Phillips, who also thought up the title of the film. He was such a fan of drag racing (and most especially Funny Cars) that he was also a technical advisor for the movie.
Knowing his father wanted to make a feature film, Alex suggested drag racing, and considered several Funny Car drivers, and it was Alex that decided on offering it to Jim Dunn. Soon after, it was Memorial Day 1972, when the production company traveled to East Irvine, California, to the Orange County International Raceway track to get test shots of Dunn’s new, experimental rear-engined Funny Car. It was when the new car was blasting down the drag strip at full throttle and promptly proceeded to blow the roof section off the car, the decision was made to immediately commit to full-time shooting. They liked the action! It ran 1 hour and 28 minutes in length and is still a car enthusiast “cult classic” today.
SATELLITE FUNNY CAR
Gracing the cover of the February 1975 edition of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated was the Dunn & Reath Plymouth Satellite Funny Car. “It was one of the slickest and smallest cars of its time,” he told National Dragster in 2000. In the body-up shot, it shows the switch to the late-model 426 HEMI engine had taken place (fitted with a Reath 1/2-inch stroker crankshaft, 484 cubic inches, 2-speed transmission). By 1977, the Satellite was now the “Dunn & Velasco” entry, as Jim teamed up with long-time friend Henry Velasco to run the car, seen here at OCIR.
REAR-ENGINED CAR FOUND AND RESTORED
In more recent times, the Dunn & Reath rear-engined Barracuda Funny Car had been found and restored, now owned by Al Welch (Calgary, Alberta, Canada).
DUNN & REATH DIECAST
As part of the collection of “The Floppers” Diecast Series from 1320, Inc., this highly detailed 1:24 scale replica of the 1971 Barracuda Funny Car (#1203) was produced in a limited run of 5,000 units and can still be found on places like eBay.
NEXT UP: Jim Dunn Racing continues on as a driver through 1990; then starting in 1992, becoming successful team owner!
Author: James Maxwell
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