Drag Racing History:
eBay Find: An Original 1962 Kent Fuller-Built AA/FD ‘Cackle Car’
By
Andrew Wolf July 18, 2018
While a period-correct nostalgia AA/FD blazing the hides down the racetrack would be uber-cool, there are still few things more gnarly than an old-school car cackling away on a potent dose of nitromethane, flames belching under the stars. But what’s even better is a real-deal car from the days when these things roamed the earth. And the car you see here really is the real-deal.Built in 1962 by iconic chassis builder Kent Fuller, Clyde and Susie Dedrick are the current owners of this original Top Fueler known today at Chubasco. Steve Swaga designed the body, Jimmy Summers hand-crafted it, and another legend, Tony Nancy, completed the interior. Fifteen years ago, Dave Sammons and Rick Waldrip at S&W Restoration re-did the car nose to tail to transform it into a cackling work of art, just as it would have been fresh out of the chassis mill in ’62.
The car debuted at the 2004 California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield, and the hard work poured into its restoration paid off with a class win at the 55th annual Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona that same year. The car was shown and cackled numerous times, but has sat since last being displayed at the Nitro Night Ring Of Fire at Escondido, California in 2008. Now, the Dedrick’s are
putting it on the market, at a price of $70-grand, complete with the enclosed trailer to haul it. “My wife and I had a lot of fun with this car showing it off, but now it’s time to find a new home for it,” Clyde notes.Per the Dedrick’s, this is believed to be the first car that Fuller built and was raced around California in the ‘60s. As a period-correct car, it sports power from a nitro-guzzling 392 Chrysler Hemi built by Rick MacDonald, who has been and remains an important consultant on the car.
Many of these cars are unoriginal recreations that, while painstakingly accurate, just don’t have the same aura as the once-running machines, and that this is a true survivor gives it plenty of distinction. the question we’d like to see answered through is…what does it run?