The Champion Speed Shop in association with Miramar Events is proud to announce a return to the Pebble Beach of Drag Racing. The Pacific Coast Dream Machines show will host the 50th Reunion of the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip on April 26th, 2009. Bob McLennan along with Andy “Rodfather” Brizio, son Roy Brizio, and the entire Champion Speed Shop team would like to extend a welcome to anyone who ever worked, raced, or simply enjoyed the spectacle of drag racing by-the-sea. The latest Champion Speed Shop top fuel streamliner will be on display, along with a replica of the Kent Fuller built dragster that belonged to Champion Speed Shop founder Jim McLennan. There will also be plenty of memorabilia and memories at the very place where a bread van loaded with speakers, timing equipment, fences, and a generator made its way down from Champion Speed Shop South San Francisco headquarters and transformed the Half Moon Bay Airport into a drag strip where records were broken. photo from the Sammy Hale collection

More: Dream Machines Hosts 50th Half Moon Bay Reunion

The Pacific Coast Dream Machines Show is a celebration of velocity and innovation featuring everything from the Nebulous Theorem land speed record cars to the World’s Largest Airship Zeppelin. Read more for the full press release on the Pacific Coast Dream Machines and the Half Moon Bay Reunion. For show information go to Pacific Coast Dream Machines

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Delivering a race car from a concept to 240 plus miles per hour of genuine velocity involves a herculean team effort. In the case of the Champion Speed Shop Streamliner, the concept evolved from an initial design suggestion to the latest incarnation of the small block Chevy on nitromethane dragster. The four plus year development timeline began with a common vision of retro liners like the Glass Slipper. Bob McLennan called on Jeff Teaford, who took the vision into a series of drawings and models that eventually led the development and construction of the finished race car. Read on for more about Jeff and some original drawings. (more…)

Half Moon Bay, The Pebble Beach of Drag Racing, welcomes you to the greatest drag racing spectacle ever held in Northern California. – Jim McLennan and Don Smith. Half Moon Bay Program March 1962

A great deal of San Francisco bay area drag racing action played out by-the-sea at the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip. Shown here is Swinging Sammy Hale in the Champion Speed Shop special getting out against against Lee Pendleton’s Allison V-12 powered monster machine at Half Moon Bay. The inverted wings on Pendleton’s car were an early Jocko Johnson effort at rear wheel downforce, and a reminder of how aeronautics and aerospace knowledge played into drag racing and motorsports innovation throughout the sixties.

The Champion Speed Shop has been a name synonymous with velocity and innovation for over 50 years. Founder Jim McLennan built his first dragster in 1953. By 1957 the Champion Speed Shop legend was born. It has been a little over two years since the “Smiling Irishman” motored onto the great dragstrip. The Champion Speed Shop lives on in celebration of his pioneering spirit. This video was produced in honor of Jim’s induction into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. For more information on the IDRHF head on over to the Big Daddy Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing. 

The Champion Speed Shop Special is set to run the March Meet at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California. The 51st running of the premiere nostalgia drag racing event will mark the official end of a six year hiatus of the legendary nitromethane powered Chevrolet dragster from the nostalgia AA/FD drag racing ranks.

The latest incarnation of the Champion Speed Shop Special continues the tradition of lightweight small block Chevrolet powered dragsters set in motion by Jim McLennan in 1953, and carried on by son Bobby McLennan into the modern era. The Champion Speed Shop Special will be driven by Adam Sorokin, whose own father Mike Sorokin drove The Surfers front engine top fuel dragster in the sixties.

While the small block Chevy is itself an anachronism in the hemi fueled AA/FD field, the Champion Speed Shop Special furthers the innovative evolution of the front engine top fuel dragster with a streamlined carbon fiber canopy that envelops the cockpit.

“The genesis of the car started long ago with cars like the Glass Slipper and other streamliners. If the engine had stayed out front, this is where the class may have gone”, said Bobby McLennan.