In
1970, Mattel, Plymouth, Coca Cola and Wynns teamed up to sponsor Don (Snake)
Prudhomme and Tom (Mongoose) McEwen in two almost-identically prepared
funny cars. Since the Snake and the Mongoose had a natural rivalry going
back to the 60s when they both ran rails (dragsters), it made sense to
have them team up to compete on the match race circuit. And what a team
it was! They tore up and ruled the funny car circuit taking over the dominance
held in 1969 by the Mickey Thompson Ford Mustang driven by Danny Ongais.
Believe me, if you were a boy in the early 70s, you either built these model kits, played with the Hot Wheels, or both! Here is Revell-Monogram's 1997 "combo" kit.
Take me to the Snake's web site
To the left: I really dug funny cars as a kid too. I remember the title of my 1970 Hot Rod Pictorial: "6-second, 200 mph Funny Cars!"
Singer, songwriter Helen Reddy won a Grammy Award for the hit record "I Am Woman," the first explicitly feminist song to become a gold record and unofficial anthem of the feminist movement. It was estimated that seven out of 10 record buyers were women. The other three must have been gay men.
Shambala....Three Dog Night
73
facts about the GTO
I was raised in West Allis, Wisconsin--a working-class
community right outside of Milwaukee. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled
upon this GTO fact:
As noted earlier, Pontiac produced their own GTO song in 1965. "GeeTO Tiger" was priced at 50 cents a copy and sold 250,000 singles. On the back of the record, there was a contest announcement: "Win a Tiger!" All one had to do was send in a piece of paper counting the number of times the word "tiger" was mentioned in the song, then write a 25-word (or less) essay on "Why I'd like to win the original GeeTO Tiger."
First prize was a 1965 GTO. The car was won by Alex Lampone of West Allis, Wisconsin.