Story by Terry Denomme
Photos by Kevin Roberts

When Bob Dixon sold his B/Gas ’57 Ford in 1971 it was with a great deal of reluctance. “I had actually blown the engine a few years before but rented space, a women’s garage, and it sat there for two years because I struggled with selling it,” says Dixon of Cottam, ON. He gave up drag racing at the end of the 1960s just as most of his friends did. He doesn’t really remember why but it brought to an end an almost decade long devotion to quarter-mile competition. Selling the Ford might not have been so traumatic if he had known he would end up with it again decades later. Most people aren’t so lucky. Old race cars often end up so chopped, hacked, bashed and abused that the best thing for them is a trip to the smelter. Luckily, Dixon’s car survived and we get to tell the story of how it made its way back into his garage.

Like many guys his age back in the late 1950s and early 1960s Bob Dixon wanted to go drag racing. A lot of his buddies already were and watching from the grandstand wasn’t going to cut it. So, Dixon started looking for a car and in 1961 he found the perfect candidate on a used car lot in Windsor, ON. It was a pedestrian Willow Green/Colonial White 1957 Ford Custom 300 2-door sedan with a 6 cylinder and 3-speed standard transmission with a 3-on-the- tree shifter. Dixon paid $700 and became the car’s second owner. “I really liked that style of car,” says Dixon. “I was already driving a 1955 Ford and just liked the ’57 Fords. I wasn’t thinking about any specific class or anything.” Over the next year he started turning it into a purpose built drag car, radiusing the quarters for slicks and purchasing a 352ci FE block, which he promptly bored and stroked to 397ci.

“At the time the 352 was the most practical engine to get because you could bore them out and they weren’t a really heavy block,” says Dixon. As a machinist working in a tool and mould shop he did all the engine work himself and by 1963 he was racing at all the nearby drag strips. Dixon and five of his racing buddies formed a club called the Street Kleaners, which 50 years later is still going strong with original members. Back in ’63 this group was passionate about their quarter-mile pursuits and sometimes raced at two or three strips a weekend. “We raced as much as we could, sometimes we would go to St. Thomas, then Grand Bend and maybe over the border to Michigan and Milan Dragway in one weekend,” says Dixon.