Drag Racing Legends: Profiles Of The Greats
Drag Racing Legends: Profiles Of The Greats – In 1988 the wheels turned on “The Grove”. With a 538-inch big block for power, the venerable ’57 was running low 8-second times. Ray Lemmerman
1957 Chevy. This Memorial Day weekend, candy-apple-red Shoebox racers are set to compete at the Great Lakes Dragway in Union Grove, Wisconsin. Running a 6.8-second quarter mile at 200 mph with Pro Stock driver Kevin Lawrence at the wheel, it will again challenge the quarter mile.
Drag Racing Legends: Profiles Of The Greats
The finned Chevy has been a drag strip staple since the fall of 1956, when it left the Ferrell Hicks Chevrolet dealership on Chicago’s South Side. Over six decades, it has been owned, raced, set aside, lost and reclaimed. And
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Dick Messino, now approaching his 82nd birthday, is no ordinary drag racer. Born into a notorious Chicago crime family, the young Messino witnessed the gambling empire run by his father Biagio Messino and the mob enforcement business of his uncle Wee Willie Messino.
Dick’s ambition was to stay one step ahead of trouble while taking as much of the good life as possible without fear or regret. He did not choose the family business. It was an obscenely dangerous high-stakes lifestyle he was offered, and drag racing was an escape from it.
In the fall of 1956, Dick was a junior at Chicago’s Morgan Park High School, an institution that served several blue-collar neighborhoods as well as the white-collar Beverly Hills and Morgan Park enclaves. Dick was from Mount Greenwood, a modest middle-class neighborhood on the western edge of the school district. His friend Paul Klein was the son of a wealthy Beverly resident who lived in a large house on the hill on Longwood Drive. Like many kids with money, he was given a new car as a high school graduation gift: a white ’57 Chevy with three-wheel drive and a 283-cubic-inch V-8.
Although CB and Dick came from very different families, they were both dedicated car people. “We talked about nothing but cars and learned from each other,” Dick said. “I picked up some mechanical knowledge of automobiles along the way. CB, too. Together, we were almost enough wrenches.”
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Chevy was the fastest at the drive-in. Before long the two wanted to see how fast it could go, so they visited a new local drag strip across the Indiana state line near Gary. US 30 Dragway was financed by a group of civic-minded businessmen hoping to solve the street racing problem plaguing Chicago.
Dick and CB quickly found that while the ’57 seemed fast on the road, it wasn’t so fast on the strip, so they set it up to be even faster. The fact that it was a brand new car did not enter into the equation. They stripped the bumper and grille from the shiny Chevy, fitted a fuel-injected short block under the hood and topped it off with dual quad carbs. The mods allow the car to make 13-second runs on new race tracks.
“When Chevy was a year old, it looked like it was ten years old,” Dick said. “Then CB joined the army, and I bought the car.”
Dick realized that there was good money to be made on the streets of the South Side if you knew where to go, so he flat-towed the car to Chicago’s street racing hotbed—where Western Avenue ran into the Dan Ryan Woods and 130th Street on the Calumet Expressway, which was then dark. It was mainly rural.
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Dick usually wins. And when he didn’t, he’d do whatever it took to get back to the top, including making more money (necessary by any means), buying more go-faster parts, and putting in longer hours under the car.
According to Dick, race cars shouldn’t be white, so he had local spray-gun guru George Little paint it red. Dick took on a variety of partners who shared the workload and the good times on the road and strip. His team ran the indoor drag at Chicago’s International Amphitheater in ’62 and ’64 where the car distinguished itself on the 440-foot drag. Dick and the other local shoes blast full-throttle past the indoor bleachers and slow down through the open doors to the shutdown lane in the parking lot.
Indoor drag racing was a hoot at Chicago’s longtime International Amphitheater, and Dick Messino and Shake, Rattle and Run were second fastest in January 1962. Messino Family Archives
For the most part until ’63, he finally realized he could win more consistently with a hotshot driver hitting the gears, so he teamed up with racer Eric Schmidt. Schmidt ran
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Dick also tried to speed up the car. With some work and a heavily-modified 327-cubic-inch small block under the hood, his ’57 C/Gas became a top contender in the class.
On the way back to Oswego Dragstrip in 1963. Competing in C/Gas and now equipped with a .060-over 327 cu.in. The small block, shoebox Chevy was running high 12s with Dick on the wheels. Messino Family Archives
Like many people who grew up on the South Side, Dick saw two clear career opportunities growing up. He may be a cop or a crook. And he learned through family connections that one role could complement the other. Dick chose both. For several years, he worked as a Chicago cop and created his own version of the Messino family business.
“I’ve never skimped when it comes to spending on race cars.” Dick talks about his ’57 Chevy. I made sure we had the parts we needed. If there was something better, something that would make us faster, I got it.”
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Mouse motors responded with old Chevy 10.40-second quarter-mile passes (against the 10.70 record), making Messino and Schmid nearly unbeatable in the Street Eliminator class at Great Lakes Dragway and Martin Dragway in Michigan.
Eric Schmidt took the hot seat at Sheik in late ’63. Here, he visited the U.S. in 1968. Picked up the wheel at 30. With big block power, the car was running in 10.40 seconds in the Street Eliminator. Messino Family Archives
In 1968 the Chevy in the Grove came close to being nothing more than a drag racing footnote. After passing,
Rolled to a stop on the track. The latter pair were driven off the track before the Schmitt was clear, and the Chevy was rear-ended. difficult Both quarter panels and rear deck lid were destroyed. The doors, cowl with its VIN tag, and fiberglass front end were saved, so the car was rebuilt. when
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Dick, in the spirit of the day, decided he should have a fiberglass flopper of his own, so he built a fuel-injected Chevy II. “Eric didn’t want to run it,” Messino said. “And I couldn’t find anyone else who could handle it.” So, after a few fits and starts, the funny car project was abandoned, and
Messino sent the ’57 to R&B Automotive Engineering in Kenosha Wisconsin for a makeover. There, it gets a new roll cage, four-link rear suspension, and tubbed rear wheel wells to accommodate larger tires. “Competition Phil,” a Chicago race car painter of legend—who often worked maskless with a fifth of whiskey by his side—gave the Chevy a gorgeous candy apple red paint job. Other unpainted components were chrome plated.
Next, Dick paired up with driver Mario Manzella. Together, they were able to push the old Chevy to 8.93, running on a stock Chevy frame with a Gasser-style straight axle up front.
A Pro Stock effort was also in the cards, so Mario and Dick built a Monza race car that was occasionally campaigned on the UDRA Pro Stock circuit. Manja recorded some high seven-second efforts before crashing in Detroit. That brought the last Pro Stock effort.
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It’s 1976 and the shake-up is consistently running at 9-second elapsed times. Dick added the vinyl top in ’65 while he was doing some work at Roseland Auto Trim. It has been a rocking fixture ever since. Messino Family Archives
In the bicentennial year of 1976, Uncle Sam landed on stilts in a magazine photo shoot on the shores of Lake Michigan. Photo by Paul Stenquist
Dick’s love of life remained, so he had a Glidden-style Pro Stock chassis built that would go under the old Chevy body. He planted the 538-cube motor from the Monza racer under the hood, and the ’57 was once again spitting fire, blowing away the pretenders and running low eights.
In 1988, Ted Borowski, an Illinois engine builder of considerable repute, told Dick he could build a 632-cube motor that would
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In the seven second range. Borowski built the first super-sized bowtie motor, and he did it with stock blocks.
One of the most memorable match races of the late 1980s was the “Shoebox Circuit”. A three-car traveling drag racing show is featured
. Both, of course, were powered by stout motors and well equipped for quarter-mile combat. Ford vs. Chevy vs. Mopar – The fans loved it. Driving alcohol in 632, old
With the Chicago skyline in the background, Dick Messino is living the fast life at age 35 in 1976. Photo by Paul Stenquist
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