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It’s no secret that in racing, a more aerodynamic body leads to a race car that’s not only quicker and faster, but is easier to handle thanks to downforce and less turbulence in general. It’s for that reason why drag racing machines become more “slick” each and every year — to further eliminate aerodynamic drag from the performance equation. But aerodynamics and performance aren’t a be-all-end-all factor for many racers out there, who value form every bit as much as function, if not more so. For midwest-area Top Sportsman racers Dave Granger and John Wiley, that’s precisely the case.
Granger and Wiley, good friends and partners in the straight-line world, campaign this unique 1951 Henry J in the NHRA Top Sportsman ranks, which is anything but aerodynamic. In fact, one might compare it to pushing a yard barn down the track at 190 miles per hour. But the pair from just outside Chicago wouldn’t have it any other way.
Gebhardt Pro Cars built the Henry J back in the early 2000’s, utilizing the original steel quarters, roof, and doors from a car built by the long-since defunct Kaiser-Frazer Corporation. The car features a 108-inch wheelbase on its 25.1 spec chassis, and sports a 570 cubic inch Profiler 12-degree powerplant with a pair of Holley Dominator carburetors on top. The big block mill gets its extra ‘oomph’ from an Edelbrock fogger nitrous setup, with about 400 horsepower sprayed in competition. A Coan Racing Turbo 400 transmission and TSI torque converter transfers the power to a custom nine-inch rear end housing with a Mark Williams center section and Strange Engineering axles and brakes.
The car rides on Strange struts up front and Penske shocks in the rear, with Billet Specialties wheels wrapped in Hoosier rubber resting under the fenders. Despite the considerable use of the steel production body, the car weighs just 2,740 lbs. ready to race. ScottRods, a renowned maker of composite nostalgia bodies, built a fiberglass nose for Granger and Wiley, that’s stretched eight inches from stock behind the wheel openings to fit the wheelbase.
“We can weigh 2,450 in Top Sportsman, so we’re 300 pounds heavy and aerodynamic as a brick, but we’ve gone 7.17 at 192 miles per hour,” says Wiley. “When we built it, we planned on it being a 9.90 Super Gas car, so we’ve done well with what we have.”
According to Wiley, the car for which the body was sourced was discovered ten years ago by his father in Apache Junction, Arizona with just 26,000 original miles on it. Thanks to the low mileage and the historically dry location, he says the body was absolutely flawless in spite of it sitting in the desert for more than thirty years.
But of all bodies, why a Henry J, you might be asking?
We can weigh 2,450 in Top Sportsman, so we’re 300 pounds heavy and aerodynamic as a brick, but we’ve gone 7.17 at 192 miles per hour. – John Wiley
Granger does the driving, while Wiley helps turn the wrenches and the other outside-the-car duties as the duo compete at NHRA Division 3 Top Sportsman events, the Midwest Top Sportsman series, and occasional forays into the NHRA’s Division 5 races.
Says Wiley, “We have a lot of fun with the car. Route 66 Raceway in Joliet is our home track and we run up there with the Midwest Top Sportsman racers. We’d like to do more nostalgia events, but with the electronics on it, they just don’t like it, and paint is a little too modern.”
Granger had an unfortunate excursion into the guardrail at over 150 miles per hour back in 2012 that damaged the entire front half of the car, but a local shop, JT Race Cars, completed the repairs and a new fiberglass nose was constructed for it.
Come springtime, Granger and Wiley will be back at it at any and all venues in the midwest that have Top Sportsman racing, and as Granger was adamant to share with us, the pair have every intention of getting the car into the six-second zone.
