Like the advent of eBay, Dale Smith has inadvertently tapped into a growing nostalgic vein by helping races and fans relive the glory days of the Funny Car. You remember--back in the ‘70s when they were personalized with their own names and actually resembled the stock cars they were based upon? Whole websites are now devoted to these cool rides. And by single-handedly resurrecting the 1972 Plymouth Satellite flopper body, this Florida resident now has buyers from as far away as Great Britain beating a path to his door.

“I didn’t think there was any marketability,” Smith said. “I had this idea about making a match race funny car and I wanted an older body, but there weren’t any. If you do find one they’re either beat up or too heavy. (But this) goes far beyond just my own immediate need for a body. I’m just this kid that still has his original collection of Hot Wheels. Ultimately this was an extension of (that) collection.

Thanks to Dale Smith, 70s Funny Cars live again

Like the advent of eBay, Dale Smith has inadvertently tapped into a growing nostalgic vein by helping races and fans relive the glory days of the Funny Car. You remember--back in the ‘70s when they were personalized with their own names and actually resembled the stock cars they were based upon? Whole websites are now devoted to these cool rides. And by single-handedly resurrecting the 1972 Plymouth Satellite flopper body, this Florida resident now has buyers from as far away as Great Britain beating a path to his door.

“I didn’t think there was any marketability,” Smith said. “I had this idea about making a match race funny car and I wanted an older body, but there weren’t any. If you do find one they’re either beat up or too heavy. (But this) goes far beyond just my own immediate need for a body. I’m just this kid that still has his original collection of Hot Wheels. Ultimately this was an extension of (that) collection.

“There were a couple of notable cars back in the day that ran this body style,” said Smith of his choice. “It’s got a unique look to it--you either love it or hate it. After he shelved his rear engine funny car project, Jim Dunn’s first front-motored funny car was Satellite-bodied. I think that was the first one I saw that really had a ‘wow’ factor for me. There was just something about that car; that body was just bitchin’.”

His father was a regular bracket racer at Orange County Raceway and Lions Dragway, and Smith grew up in the shadow of the California Funny Car scene. “I was in a stroller when I first went to Lions,” he said. “I lived right down the street from Frank Rupert.” Intrigued by their mean looks and plastic bodies, Smith developed a lifelong fascination with Funny Cars. By high school he was crewing for the infamous “Atomic” Al Hoffman. After a stint in the Air Force, Smith entered the aviation industry, ending up in Florida, where he decided to field his own ride, an alcohol Funny Car. 

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“I bought a roller from a friend of mine and started to piece it together,” Smith said. “But during the course of building it, the technology went vertical and I realized that the cost was just getting ridiculous.” Smith eventually abandoned the effort, but he was unable to bring himself to sell his dream, so after much soul-searching he decided on the retro route. He would build a simple nitro motor like those in the original Funny Cars, topped with a period-correct body.

“There were two I was looking for, a ’70 Cuda or the Plymouth Satellite,” Smith said. “But where are you going to find something like that today? Good luck! Fortunately, a guy advertised in National Dragster that he had a ‘72 Satellite Funny Car body and wanted to know the history behind it. I called him, thinking it might be something Dale Armstrong ran, but it turned out the guy was more interested in selling it. So sight unseen, I bought it.”

What turned out to be the last of Tim Beebe’s Fighting Irish Funny Cars also turned out to be a basket case. Having previously spent some time in the auto body industry, Smith knew there would be a lot of man-hours involved in its restoration, but in his experience he had never tackled anything on this scale before.

“I exceeded my skill sets by a large margin,” said Smith with a laugh. “I have a number of friends who used to race Funny Cars, and they looked at me like I had grown three heads. I was too stupid to not know that I couldn’t do it. Thank God for the Internet, because I did a lot of research on composite construction and mold making. So I just pressed on, wondering what’s the worst that could happen? I’ll screw it up and know how not to make it. It was all old school, retracing the forefathers of Funny Cars. A little trial and error, but it worked out good.” Ron Pelegrini, who made Grand Am bodies for Mickey Thompson back in the 70s, also provided valuable technical advice.

“The way I’m making them is based on the material technology available today,” Smith said. “I didn’t use carbon fiber because when I started researching the properties of carbon and how it’s used, it became apparent to me that you’ll get something that’s a bit lighter than fiberglass, a bit stronger, but given the application for these bodies I didn’t see that there was any justifiable return on the investment.”

Ultimately a copy of Ed Wills’ Mr. Ed, the very first ‘72 Satellite Funny Car, was created. Smith not only restored the body’s original shape, but he stretched its length five inches, from a wheelbase of 118 to 123, to fit his own chassis.

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“It didn’t drastically alter its look,” he said. “I got a bunch of pictures of other Satellite Funny Cars, and off of those I re-sculpted the body, spending about 500 hours on it to get it where it needed to be, then used it as a plug. The first body came out fine. We did that one with a few of my friends. We laid it up outside on the driveway, in the middle of summer down here in Florida. It was brutal, we’re talking 100 degrees, 100 percent humidity - it was miserable.” But before Smith and his volunteer team had even gotten it out of the mold, there was someone wanting to buy it. “I guess a little word got out on the Internet,” Smith said. “How many people were dumb enough to do something like this?”

Seven bodies and a new shop later, the latest is being shipped to England, possibly the first ‘72 Satellite F/C body to ever go to the U.K. The first body Smith sold was christened The Predator by Mark Roy, a nostalgia Funny Car racer who now runs it on the Goodguys VRA circuit. “He showed up at the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield, and the car went 230 MPH,” said Smith. “Not bad for something that was laid out on a driveway!”

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And what if he had chosen the more popular Cuda body? “Well, I may have sold a few more initially but nobody wants to run the same thing that everybody else is running,” said Smith. “I didn’t sell a lot of Satellite bodies initially, but once it became apparent that everybody would be running Cudas and Mustangs…the next thing you know, my phone’s ringing.”

Ironically, Smith hasn’t even had a chance to introduce his own car yet. “I’ve got all the parts and pieces to put it together, but I just need to stop taking a orders here and there so I can get my car assembled. The combination that’s going in my car is basically one that Dale Pulde gave me. This bitch ain’t starting up with anything less than 94 percent in the tank.”

Smith hopes to get the car assembled, fired, and through its first burnout by the first quarter of 2007, then take it out west to race with the growing number of nostalgia funny cars on the VRA circuit. In tribute to the livery of friend Jim Murphy, Smith’s Satellite will resurrect the old Holy Smokes name and paint scheme.

“I’ve waited too long,” Smith said. “It’s been a long road. I even had a period of time where I shelved the whole idea of my own car about seven years ago. At the time I was being courted by some guys who were putting together a current Top Fuel car. That went so far as to me being fitted for the car and going out to Frank Hawley’s school and getting my alcohol dragster license.

“(But) I’m getting tired of seeing everybody else getting their own cars done,” Smith said. “I’m probably going to have to make a business decision and tell people that it’s going to be at least three months before I can get another body done. You don’t get rich doing this, but it helps offset running the car. So I’m going to load it up, go to the track, and run the bitch until I’m out of fuel or out of pistons.