Unca Frank's Interesting Automotive/Racing Link

(click on a picture for a larger, clearer image)

	31k	There are times, quite a few these days, when the clear commercial direction of the Web depresses me to no end. Watching what is arguably the most democratic, unrestricted communications medium ever created slowly but surely turn into a fuzzy, crippled clone of television is tedious at best, and brutally painful at worst. I suppose we're getting what a vast majority of us both want and deserve, but if petco.com and Amazon are the answers, I must not have been paying attention when they asked the questions. Every so often, however, one comes across an effort that offers something of value with no strings attached - or even visible. Jim Sorenson's "The Funny Car Years," for example. Like Jim's "Awful, Awful Fuel Altereds" (featured here several months ago), "Funny Car" concentrates on the formative years of the Class, when cars still had names, and could pass the "12/50 Rule."* The evolution of the Funny Car from "illegal" A/FX cars (hard to do, but not impossible, as you'll see here) to today's narrowed, morphing aeroblobs has a lot more twists and turns in it than even dragsters - a lot more. "The Funny Car Years" allows you to trace not only the varied efforts used to push a brick with a roof through the air, but also chronicle the characters and showmanship that started a love affair with fans that continues to this day. Imagine earning a living at drag racing by making between 200 and 300 racing appearances a year, exclusive of major meets, much less imagining and era when you actually could do such a thing. As a little bonus, take a look at the shot at the lower left and ask yourself these questions: a) who, in today's antiseptic market, would be nuts enough to do it, even for a glue commercial, and b) how much would you have paid to watch it? On many levels, with its huge collection of photos, "The Funny Car Years" is as "interactive" as a site can get. How so? Sometimes, gentle reader, "interactive" doesn't mean banners, blinking, morphing, making noises, or even recognizing you by your first name. Sometimes it means simply seeing something that causes your mind to mumble "What the..." or "**** me!" or to invoke the deity of your choice for guidance. No java script or plug-ins - it's viscerally interactive. Which, of course, is what makes it all that much better. Take a look and see what you think.

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* My friend Mike Higgins once explained to me his "12/50 Rule" for approving bodywork for SCCA Trans Am cars: "If a 12-year-old girl can tell what kind of car it is from 50 feet away, I like it." These days, the NHRA evidently thinks logo decals will do the trick on Funny Cars.