THE LATEST ART NEWS

It has been a fun summer, and I want to thank all of the people whom have purchased prints of my artwork, which greatly helps support my effort here in creating this artistic history of this sport of Drag Racing…

One of the more satisfying elements of this endeavor has been, to shine some light on the great cars that have been little seen, or basically forgotten about...One such car would be the “McCoy Mercury” Comet A/Fxer.

I ran across an old B&W pic of the little Comet, and I fell in love with it. Thanks to the help of Don Ewald from the “WeDiditForLove.Com” website, I was able to acquire the color info on the car, which allowed me to create the painting…My longtime buddy ex Drag Racer Jim White (not the Jim White that drove for Roland Leong), thought he recognized the car as Hayden Proffett’s 65 A/FX Comet. We both agreed that it probably was Hayden’s old car. I did an Internet search to see if I could locate McCoy Mercury or any of the people associated with it, but that was a dead end…I did the painting and posted the first Artist Proof on ebay with a note asking for anyone how might now something about the car to contact me…About a month passed when I received an email from Randy Riley, the son of Ron Riley, who was the driver and crewchief on the car. Soon after that I received a phone call from Drew McCoy, the son of Lowell McCoy who owned the McCoy Mercury dealership...I had a nice conversation with Ron Riley, and he told me the story behind the little Comet…It seems that Hayden Proffett lost his Mercury sponsorship, and the factory basically took the car away from him. The car was then sold to McCoy Mercury in Rising Sun MD. Ron tells me that when they took delivery of the car it was stripped down to a shell, basically all that was left was the body and chassis…Well they rebuilt the car from the ground up. They painted it that bitchen Lavender Purple, and put in the blue tinted windows. With the addition of the Gold Leaf signs, they created one beautiful little match racer. Ron tells me that when they ran the car on Nitro, he could barely keep the front wheels on the ground during a pass… The car ran times of 9.40s at 165mph…the car now has been restored as Hayden’s car, and has been featured on the TV show “Muscle Cars.” In my opinion, I think as the McCoy Mercury, the car never looked better!

Also, I had the pleasure to speak with Valerie Harrell (daughter of the late Dick Harrell), and we are planning future projects to highlight more of her Dad’s Famous Funny Cars…I would like to recommend visiting their website at; (www.dickharrell.com), which will also link you to (So Cal Funny Car Favorite) Dale Pulde’s War Eagle site. I recently did a piece on Dale’s Awesome looking Buick Somerset, which was arguably one of the best-looking Funny Cars of the 80’s.

Other projects this summer have been; Bobby Wood’s Chevelle from 1967, when it was stretched to the max. As far as I know, there never has been any color shots of the car in 67, and I think this is a great example of how radically modified the F/X cars had become.

I also did a piece on one of my childhood favorites, the ‘Tickle me Pink” 66 Charger of Al Graeber. I have always loved the 66 Chargers, and Al’s car was certainly a clean example of one.

Also, I just had to do a painting of my buddy the “Goose,” at Riverside winning the prestigious Hot Rod Magazine meet. This is the famous Yeakel car from 65, but now the car has been recowled and is sponsored by Brand Motors…people ask me why the fascination with Riverside? But of coarse, it’s my home track, and the site of my first Drag Racing experiences…

Last, but not certainly not least, is my latest painting, “The Original King’s of Pro Stock”, featuring Ronnie Sox racing Dick Landy in 1971…

Well it’s time for me to get back to the drawing board. So until the next, let’s keep this Great History alive!

Thanks Again for all your support with this ongoing project…DCP