John Bradley
The man known as “Mr. Flathead” is responsible for keeping Ford’s flathead V-8 viable as a Top Fuel powerplant through the end of the 1950s. John Bradley began racing a ’31 Ford roadster on Southern California streets and dirt tracks in 1946. In 1952, he built his first dragster out of Model T frame rails. By 1953, Bradley was burning nitromethane and hitting unbelievable speeds of 147+ mph. Next came the nitro-burning, tube chassisied “Gene’s Brake Shop Special” that shocked the nation by reaching the final round of the 1957 World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova Illinois (where a broken shifter linkage gave Setto Postoian an easy victory). The famous fueler took more than 50 Top Eliminator titles and set countless track records in 1957 in 1958, becoming perhaps the most successful flathead dragster in history. His final challenge to the overheads was a dual-engined fueler that Bradley campaigned from 1958 to 1962. In 1994 at the age of 68 John Bradley continued to drive a nine-second flathead dragster on the Californian nostalgia circuit. It featured an eight-spark plug, billet-aluminum cylinder head of Bradley’s own design.