Kirk Jones, Editor of the Goodguys Gazette, posted the news on the Jalopy Journal message board yesterday that the one and only Rich Guasco had been inducted into the NHRA Hall Of Fame.
For the uninitiated, Rich Guasco built (and still owns) one of the most famous – and our absolute favorite – Fuel Altered class dragster of all time. What we didn’t realize till yesterday, was that Rich hadn’t been a member of the sanctioning body of drag racing’s hall of fame till now. We’ve got our own issues with the NHRA and this just adds one more to the pile: the NHRA became what it is because of guys like Rich Guasco and better late than never, we guess.
In January of 1963, Rich was running a front engine dragster (FED) at Northern California’s Fremont dragstrip when the rearend came apart. In those days, an FED was either a “legs under” or “legs over” car –– meaning that the driver either sat with his ass on top of the rearend housing or the housing sat in his lap –– neither of which are smart places to be if something in that rearend breaks loose. When exactly that happened to Rich, the once-stationary aluminum rearend housing started spinning as fast as the wheels were turning. And they were turning pretty fast in mid-pass down the track. The accident just about vaporized Rich’s hips and made quick work of some fairly vital organs.
But, that accident didn’t seem to do much more than give Rich some time on his back to think about his next dragster. The next year, he called on young fabricator, Pete Ogden, to build a chassis for a Bantam-bodied racer to campaign in the newly-minted AA/FA (double A, Fuel Altered) class. The thing ran like a raped ape well into the 8-seconds with not much tinkering. “Ogden tells me that he said, ‘Guass, that car is pure hell – you oughta name it that.’ But y’know, I used to say that damn near everything was ‘pure hell’ back then,” Rich remembers about the naming of his new car.
“Pure Hell” was born and Rich was gonna drive it. Because of his injuries, he had to be helped in and out of the car, but he was determined and he was a drag racer. That was all there was to it. The claustrophobic cockpit of a Fuel Altered soon took its toll on his body, though, and Dale Emory was tapped to pilot Pure Hell for the rest of its glorious career.
The wild and wooly Fuel Altered class was finally replaced by the Funny Car era in the early Seventies and Rich followed suit. But the little Bantam digger survived and both of them still show up for the drags on any given season weekend. He keeps the car down the road from his place in Pleasanton, CA where he’s lived his whole life and is still heavily involved in drag racing and hotrodding.
God Bless, Rich Guasco and congratulations –– you deserve every accolade draped upon you and we’re looking forward to coming over and hanging out in your garage again soon.
Oh yeah, we also tipped in a shot below of “Pure Hell” as it sits in its secret garage these days. You might notice it behind the girl…
How he hadn’t been inducted several years ago, I will never know. Well deserved. Without a doubt one of the baddest hot rods of all time.