Time Travel to a ’60s Dragstrip on Your Lunch Break

BY KYLE SMITH/ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCTOBER 29, 2024 / HAGERTY

Motorsport and racing is on a never-ending rollercoaster of evolution that all but ensures things will never be the same for long. Well, at least for any of the ones that focus more on the podium than the experience for racers and fans alike. Southeast Gassers and their traveling horsepower show, on the other hand, is as much about capturing a cherished moment in time as it is seeing who crosses the line first.

Dylan Horton is there to capture the time-warp experience of the Southeast Gassers, and he does so in shimmering images that get wedged in my brain hard enough that even one of his 10-second reels will have me dreaming of bang-shifting a top loader for at least a week.

His latest YouTube upload shares the emotions of dreamers like us who occasionally long for a time we never genuinely experienced. He grew up immersed in the culture, hearing first-hand accounts and stories from family. Then came attending events and making new memories, turning today into one of the good old days. A passion for cars led him into videography, and anyone with an eye for video and heart for horsepower dreams of the vivid colors, emotion, and straight-axle lifts on pie-crust slicks that fill his videos of the Southeast Gassers. The visual he creates makes us yearn for those moments even more.

And a little bit for good reason, as Horton points out in the video. It was a simpler time and the cars had tons of individual personality—to say nothing of adding the drivers into the mix. And those seeking proof that it was a simpler time needn’t look any further than the rulebook. Give a gander at the 1965 NHRA rule book for the Gas — Coupe/sedan class. It’s in plain English, straightforward, and can be read beginning-to-end in a couple minutes. It allows anyone with an interest in racing to get in and have fun.

Now, we get to create an even better version of the past. The wonderful choice to add in modern safety and tuning which helps dial back—but certainly does not eliminate—the risk. These cars are running fast as ever and I would be willing to wager have fewer significant safety incidents. It’s really fun to play with these old cars—we more or less know what works and what doesn’t since someone’s been developing many of these designs for the better part of 60 years. That’s not to minimize the effort—quite the opposite. It still takes dedication to build an authentic car, and that is an admirable task.

More than anything though, it keeps the history alive. It would be one thing to read about gassers in books and see pictures, but to go out and experience the sights and sounds brings history to life. Or even just watching clips on YouTube over your lunch break—I could watch that red wheel-standing Ford Falcon all day. Horton and everyone in the Southeast Gassers are doing yeoman’s work preserving and sharing this gem of an era in drag racing

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