John Taylor-LOCO MOTION

DEARLY DEPARTED DRAG RACER JOHN ‘THE CRAZYMAN’ TAYLOR NEVER LET A LACK OF FUNDS CRUEL HIS FUN

- DAVE COOK

TO MANY, those who strap themselves into a high-speed race car for the fun of it should be dismissed as crazy, a categorisation that those in the cars would strongly reject. But in the 60-year history of drag racing in Australia, one made it a badge of honour by having it emblazoned down the side of his car.

John ‘The Crazyman’ Taylor passed away in September, aged 73, but the tales of his exploits in trying to go as fast as possible as cheaply as possible live on.

Taylor was, by any measure, a budget racer. His career was spotted with cars that were pushed to the far limits of their structural capabilities, but were kept going on the promise of a major refurb if he could just win that next race.

Beneath the rough and ready surface, Taylor was a very determined racer doing the best with what he had. He rose rapidly to become one of the lions of the fuel altered wars in the early 70s, evolving with most of that breed into the early nitro Funny Car crowd as the decade rolled on.

Taylor started his racing days hanging out with Sydney-based altered racer Ron Gardner, and once recalled crewing on Gardner’s Y-block Ford-powered Fiat Topolino at the 1967 Nationals at Surfers Paradise Raceway. That early experience welded him to the notion of altered as the most fun you could have on the quarter-mile, but someone in the pits had a dragster chassis for sale. It was pretty crude, but at just $300 was too cheap to pass up. So Taylor became a dragster racer.

That chassis turned out to be a venerable part of Australian drag racing history. Built in 1959 by Victorian Greg Goddard, it was just the second purpose-built dragster constructed in Australia. It had been passed on to Melbourne speed shop owner Eddie Thomas and became the first car in the country to break the 140, 150 and 160mph barriers, and the first to run 10s, and later, nines.