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Strange Brew History (as we know it)
The Strange Brew front engine dragster was first built in 1959 just outside of Charleston Illinois by a man named Harry Hurst.   Harry built the car to resemble a Chassis Research K-88 car. He found the front axle in a junk yard and bought his tubing from a driveshaft shop in Terra Haute Indiana.
   He cut a Olds rear end down to size and fitted it with 4.33 gears from a 1937 Pontiac, he found the center section would drop right in, and the 6 cylinder models came from the factory with the lower gears.
   To this Harry added a Nailhead Buick V-8 topped with 6 Stromberg two barrels. He later added a GMC blower to this mix and the little Buick pushed it's power through a home built two speed trans to speeds of 145 MPH in the 1/4.
   Harry was very successful with the little dragster. The Indiana track even posted a bounty on his head late in the 1962 season. The track offered $100 to anyone that could beat Harry and his Buick. This winning streak went on for about 5 weeks. Word of the "Big Bucks" bounty got out and some heavy hitters from Indy and Chicago came to town to claim the prize. Harry and the little Buick powered rail held off all the hot dogs, and the $100 was never claimed.
   Harry sold the car and it passed through a few owners being fitted with a small block Chevy by one of the later teams. It was then to set for several years next to a barn just down the road about 2 miles from where Harry had first brought it to life (Oddly enough the track Strange Brew calls home now, Coles County Dragway USA, is right between these two homes. It wasn't built until a few years after Harry had sold the car.)
   Enter Dan Roberts aka: Beatnik. This fellow while on his lunch break happened by the resting place of Harry's old rail, he stopped in and offered to buy the remains. The Fellow told him his son would take $50 for the car. Money was a little tight at the time so he browered a few from a friend and packed the car home in his truck. Beatnik never got around to building the car back up. Having at one time come close to putting a flathead Ford in it only to find the block was cracked.
   The dragster was moved from house to house as Beat went about rasing his family.
   I met Beatnik sometime in the late 1980's and it was around that time he started to bug me with the idea of bringing this relic back to life. I told him several times that I wanted nothing to do with a dragster that old and anyway, I was a street rodder and was fond of having doors and fenders on my car as it went down the track. Well he kept after me until I told him to bring the *&%# thing down to the house and I'd make a flower pot out of it. That was May 1995. I really did intend to put an old block in it and place 8 flower pots in it. Beatnik had included a unusable pair of old hard rubber Firestones and the front still had the 1948 Firestone ribbed sprint car tires on the Anglia wheels.
   It was only a day or two latter that my good friend Tony Pruemer came by to see the pile of pipe in front of my garage. He gave it a good lookig over and decided that we should put a stock 151 Iron Duke in it and go racing. My brother Dan offered an old powerglide and we were on our way. The little Pontiac banger pushed the car to 9.20 in the 1/8 @ 75 MPH. We later found the"Poor Mans Offy" that was powering a mini-rod pulling tractor. After a rebuild and a hard lesson or two on the care and feeding of Weber Carbs we found ourselves running 8.54 @ 83 MPH. We have yet to return it to the quarter but that is something we plan to take care of this spring after we get it ready to race again. I think we will change oil and put a fresh battery on it. It is that easy to take care of.