We love us some vintage drag racing footage. So, when we caught this home video of some awesome drag racing action at New York National Drag Strip taken in May of 1969, we immediately fell in love. Posted on YouTube by Tim Lopata of The Forge Invitational Musclecar Classic, the reel footage shows quite a bit of racing action, including an appearance by the Dodge Ramchagers and their blown 426 Gen II HEMI digger.
In fact, there even is a showdown between the Ramcharger rail and Jungle Jim’s Nova, while, unfortunately, Jungle Pam was nowhere to be seen.
Besides all the action between the floppers, rails, diggers, and A/FX’ers, there’s a handful of VW-powered buggies, and a few minutes four-lane-wide racing. There’s plenty of racing from the street machine classes as you might expect, figuring that the movie is 16 minutes long.
We did notice something odd as the reel came to an end, as the camera closes in on a plume of black smoke spiraling upwards out of the not-too-far-off treeline. As to our knowledge, New York National didn’t burn down, but it did close a few years later. If there’s a story to this fire, we’d be interested in hearing the tale.
