Bob & Shirley Sullivan
Bob and Shirley Sullivan were husband and wife but beyond that, they were a team in everything they did. In the early days of drag racing, while most race teams are a group of guys who got together and pooled their resources, Bob and Shirley made up their famous Pandemonium race team. Bob was the chief mechanic, technical expert and driver and Shirley was the pit crew and business manager.
Both of them fell in love with high performance cars and speed in their teens so it was no surprise that after they got married, they began doing a bit of street racing. Their first car was a 1941 Plymouth with a mildly modified engine. This was followed by a series of Plymouths and Oldsmobile’s, but they soon realized it was much better to take their racing off the street and into an organized event.
In 1951 they built their first competition roadster, a 1931 Ford roadster body on a channel 1932 frame with a carbureted Oldsmobile for power and began competing at the local drag strip. In 1953 they helped form “The Dragsters”, the first sanctioned car club in Kansas City, KS. In 1954 the Dragsters joined with another local car club to form the Kansas City Timing Association to help provide a safe, organized racing entity and to generate a greater interest in the sport locally.
Bob and Shirley moved up to the “fuel dragster” world in 1954 with a Rod Stuckey set of rails powered by a carbureted Oldsmobile engine and acquired their first major class win at the NHRA Midwest Regionals in Scribner, NE where they also set top time at 123.49 mph. Another major change for them at this time was they switched from the Oldsmobile engine for power to a Chrysler Hemi with great success.
In 1955 Rod Stuckey built their first all-aluminum full-bodied A/Fuel dragster with a carbureted Chrysler Hemi engine for power, the first in a series of beautiful and extremely competitive cars. This was the car that in 1958 Bob drove to new 1/4-mile World Record speed and ET records of 185.56 mph and an 8.39 ET.
In 1959, Bob and Shirley made the decision to become full time professional drag racers and competed in the entire Drag News Invitation Tour. In 1960 they posted their first National Event win, the AHRA Summer Nationals in Kansas City, MO. This is also the first car to be fielded under the Pandemonium name which came about according to Shirley because of the commotion generated by their original gas dragster. The car that provided this win was another Rod Stuckey chassis with a carbureted Chrysler Hemi for power and that moved them up to AA/Fuel Dragster class. At the 1961 AHRA Summer Nationals in Green Valley, TX they set new AHRA records in both ET and top speed with an 8.21 ET and a top speed of 184.04 mph.
They fielded AA/Fuel Dragsters under the Pandemonium name through the end of the 1964 season and became pioneers in the Funny Car arena in 1965 when they fielded a 1965 steel bodied Barracuda with a Supercharged Chrysler Hemi on nitro for power.
1967 saw a change in bodies from the Plymouths to a Camaro Roadster with their proven Supercharged Chrysler Hemi on nitro for power and it also saw them notch the first ever 190 mph speed for a Funny Car with a speed of 193.12 mph.
Bob and Shirley campaigned a total of five Funny Cars from 1965 until they retired from the sport in 1974. Along the way they managed to set National & World speed and ET records for both the ¼ mile and 1/8th mile, win the AHRA 1/8th mile Championship twice, the AHRA Winter Nationals twice, in 1963 and 1964 and the NHRA Spring Nationals in 1968. It should also be noted that four young men, Glenn Leasure, Rod Stuckey, Jimmy Nix and Ron Goodsell, were able to gain driving experience when Bob took a break from driving at various times and put them in one of their cars.