Imagine being a 20-something year old engineer working for Chrysler and it’s your job to develop an altered-wheelbase Dodge for the company’s drag racing program! That’s what happened to Jim Thorton, Tom Hoover, Dick Maxwell, Mike Buckel, Dan Mancini, and Roger Lindamood. It’s not known if they got overtime pay for their evening and weekend work, but if they didn’t, they probably didn’t care.

It was the Chrysler team that started the whole alter-wheelbase trend. Racing slicks weren’t very wide, between 7” and 8” and weren’t all that sticky. The trick here was to move the front and rear wheels farther ahead and affect the weight distribution and weight transfer upon acceleration. It sounded heady, but it worked. When the altered-wheelbase Chryslers first arrived, the cars looked, “funny” and were quickly dubbed, “funny cars” even though they were officially classed “A/FX”

It wasn’t long before the Hemi engines sprouted injector stacks and later superchargers, and later burning nitromethane. Imagine 1,300 hp and no wheelie bars!

The players changed but the Ramchargers team lived on to race a variety of Top Fuelers, Funny Cars, and Super Stockers well into the ‘70s.