How Did a Hidden Barn Car Become One of the Most Feared Gassers in Drag Racing?
How Did a Hidden Barn Car Become One of the Most Feared Gassers in Drag Racing?
Racing Relics
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Deep in a barn outside Rome, Georgia, a forgotten 1940 Willys coupe sat hidden under goat feed sacks for nearly thirty years. Inside that rusted shell was a machine that once terrified drag strips across the American South the legendary Hemi Hurricane. This is the story of Quincy Lamar “Bunky” Bobo, a moonshine runner turned Navy veteran turned drag racer who built one of the most feared gasoline powered gassers of the 1960s. Starting with a junkyard Willys and a race ready 426 Hemi engine purchased from the legendary Grand Spalding Dodge dealership,
Bobo created a car capable of running low nine second quarter miles at over 140 miles per hour on gasoline. In an era when teams like George Montgomery and Big John Mazmanian dominated the drag racing world, Bunky Bobo and his Hemi Hurricane carved out their own legacy in the rough grassroots drag strips of the American South. From moonshine roads in Georgia to the NASCAR drag racing Winter Nationals in Florida, from winning A/Gas championships to battling rivals like Hubert Platt and Gene Cromer, the Hemi Hurricane became one of the most feared gassers in
Southern drag racing history. Then the car disappeared. For decades it remained hidden in a Georgia barn until the Bobo family pulled it back into the daylight and restored it to its former glory. Today the Hemi Hurricane stands as a surviving symbol of the wild, outlaw spirit of 1960s drag racing. This is the forgotten legend of Bunky Bobo and the Georgia Gassers.