Limited-Edition of 350 (13"x19")
Signed and Numbered by the Artist.
"In what has to be one of the "Most Famous" wheelstands in Drag Racing history, is Dick Harrell's bumper-standing, rear-wheel pirouetting 67 Camaro.
When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, you could hardly find a Hot Rodding magazine that didn't feature the image of Dick's Camaro on it's rear wheel.
This wheel standing incident was noticeable enough at the time, that "American Rodding" magazine did a feature story on it( where Dick explains the whole deal). The story was written by George Engel (the article is included with the print), and it was one of his images, that I chose to paint to commemorate this bit of Drag Racing history.
This is an image of the car just before the rear wheels came off the ground. The car then came down on it's left rear wheel, and was about to tip over on it's side completely, when Dick stabbed the throttle. This allowed the car to come back down on it's left two wheels, then crash back down on all fours. This instantly collapsed the front-end, which caused the fuel tank to rupture causing a small fire. You can see the hood buckling from the air pressure under the car, which probably released enough of that pressure to keep the car from quickly blowing over backwards.
I love the part of the story where Dick explains how much it cost to build a new front end, repair the fiberglass body, repaint and re letter the car. That was a whopping $1,200 dollars. An accident like this nowadays could easily cost you $20,000 to fix.
I'm glad I was able to bring this bit of history back into the light. After all, this was wheel stand that became history, it truly was, Harrell's "Grand Stand !"
