The Ellijay, Ga.-based "Strip Teaser" Ford racing team
of owner Bob Thomas, driver Howard Neal
and mechanic Larry Davis came together by accident,
literally. The partnership proved to be a good
one, as the "Strip Teaser," taking on some of the
biggest names in racing, became known across
the Southeast as a tough customer in super stock and F/X racing.
   From 1964 through 1967, the four incarnations of
the "Strip Teaser" mirrored the transformation
of super stock racing from factory-produced specials
to homebrewed F/Xers to the fiberglass-bodied,
tube-framed racers that spawned the funny cars of today.
  Howard Neal began working for Bob Thomas in
the early 1960s as an accountant for Thomas'
business, Thomas Esso Oil Company in Ellijay. Both men got involved in racing about this time;
Neal was driving a Plymouth, while Thomas was racing a '62 Chevy Impala 409, dubbed the
"Esso Special."  Larry Davis of Ellijay was a mechanic and racer, running a 6-cylinder-powered Henry J in G/Gas.
Davis had worked on Thomas' family cars, and offered to tune the 409 if Thomas would put his name on the car. 
    In 1964, Thomas acquired one of 100 Ford Thunderbolt race cars, from Gilmer Motor Co. in Ellijay. Its history
is detailed on Craig Sutton's great Thunderbolt Web site, www.thunderbolt.cc. Early in its racing life, the
Thunderbolt, with Thomas at the wheel and Davis in the passenger seat, veered left just off the starting line
at Paradise Drag Strip in Calhoun, Ga., and crashed. The accident didn't damage the car too severely, but it did
persuade Thomas to put Neal in the driver's seat. Newspaper reports from the time have Neal driving by April 1964.
   The Strip Teaser team ran all over the Southeast, from NHRA events to super
stock meets to match races. It was not unusual to hit three tracks in a weekend.
Promoters knew the car's reputation and popularity, and didn't hesitate to pick up
the phone and give Bob a call: "We had match races whenever we wanted them," he says. 
  The car also appeared  occasionally on the streets of Ellijay, as Davis would take
the Thunderbolt out in front of his shop to test some new adjustment. The 427 hi-riser
was a reliable piece and never broke, Davis said. A lot of work was keeping the valves
in proper adjustment; a lifter problem was solved by a switch to Crane lifters. He said
they never made "that one more run others would have" that would have ruined the engine. 
   Getting the power to the pavement was the real challenge.
   "The clutch linkage was notoriously bad on those cars," Davis said. "We didn't have ours
developed to the point that Nicholson and some of those guys did. They had fewer problems
with the clutch than we did. . . . Tires weren't what they are today -- it was hard to get traction. It seemed like the Dodge
boys beat us on that. We had a good top end, but getting off the line was a rough situation."
   When traction was good, the front wheels would come up a little bit, Davis said, "but if it ran out of rear shock, with the
traction bars it would yank the rear wheels off the ground, too. You had to be careful to ease back into the throttle.
The engine was trying to run away, and when it landed back, it would try to veer, depending on which wheel hit the
ground first. We tried to keep it from getting that severe."
  A day of getting the Thunderbolt down the track  often left Neal with red and swollen hands, Davis said. 
   Looking to 1965, the team, in Davis' words, "followed what the big boys were doing" and switched to a sleeker car, going
with a Falcon hardtop, again from Gilmer Motor Co., fitted with the Thunderbolt's 427 hi-riser. As the season progressed,
the Strip Teaser II evolved with its competition, switching to injectors and methanol, and running on an altered the wheelbase.
   "It was a super car ... good handling," Davis remembers.
  The successor to the Strip Teaser II was also a Falcon, but it had none of the success
of its predecessors. Thomas bought a new 1966 Falcon and had full fiberglass body made
from it. Meanwhile, Davis closed his shop for a week, and he and Neal built a chassis
for the car in one of the shop bays, using square tubing and a straight axle on the front.
   "We ran it a few times, and then sold it. . . . It didn't handle worth a flip. . . . It was
top-heavy . . . didn't steer right," Davis says.  The image at left, from a classified ad in
Drag News when the car was put up for sale, along with the No. 2 Falcon, is the only
one I have (a big 'thank you' to Dennis Kolodziej).
   The last Strip Teaser, No. 4, was pretty much state of the art for funny cars in 1967
-- a fiberglass, flip-top Comet riding on a factory Logghe chassis and powered by a
fuel-injected, nitro-burning SOHC Ford engine. Thomas told Dennis Kolodziej that
Jacque Passino, who was the Ford Special Vehicles manager, called him up and
gave him the car. He said he and Neal went up to Logghe Stamping in Michigan and
picked it up. Holman-Moody provided two injected SOHC engines.
 It was a mix of power and beauty. In top form, it ran the quarter in about 8 seconds
at 180 mph. A magazine writer described the Strip Teaser IV as being  "without a doubt one of the cleanest pieces of
competitive drag machinery I have ever seen at any drag strip."
  The Comet was sold to Jerry Caminito, who raced it as the "Holeshot." You can see a
picture of the it in the photo gallery on Caminito's Web site, www.bluthunder.com.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the car was owned by Larry Short.
   In 1968, Thomas bought a Plymouth Barracuda that had been prepped by Sox & Martin.
The plan was to get a 426 Hemi from famed California engine builder Ed Pink, but the
engine was never completed and the car was never raced. It was sold in 1969.
  A couple of years later, Thomas bought a new Chevy Vega and had it built for Pro Stock
racing by Don Hardy Race Cars of Texas. Thomas and Neal raced the car in 1972,
and then sold it in 1973. That was the end of their racing association.
   Bob Thomas continues to operate his namesake oil company in Ellijay.
"Tuned By" Larry Davis bowed out in 1967 to concentrate on his expanding auto repair
shop and a motorcycle dealership he had bought into. He is retired, and still lives in Ellijay.
   Around the time Davis left the team, Howard Neal opened an auto tuneup shop in Blue Ridge, next door  to Kaye's Auto Parts,
and worked there until he retired. Neal stopped racing after the Pro Stock Vega was sold, but continued to work with dirt track
racers in the area. He died March 19, 2006, at the age of 67. Below is an obituary that was posted at www.georgiadragracing.com.
  Pictures of the Strip Teaser Thunderbolt and Falcon are also on the News, Photos and Other Photos pages.

  

Photo information: Left, blasting off
at Phenix City, Ala.; under the lights
at the Double H in Blue Ridge; another
view of damage after the Calhoun wreck.
   The next pictures are from Dennis
Kolodziej, who owns the restored Strip
Teaser: shots at an area race track 
and at Thomas Oil Co.; photos from
1986 when Dennis visited Ellijay and met
the Strip Teaser team; the car's
"warranty" folder (in fact, purchasers had
to sign a statement that said they
understood the car had no warranty);
and the restored Strip Teaser today.

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Photo information:
None about shot at
left (magazine?).
The next two are
definitely magazine
(SS&DI?). In the pic
with Hubert Platt, the
cars still appear to
be using carburetors.
Larry Davis says they
were among the first
to put injectors on a
hi-riser 427, and that
Platt immediately
followed when he encountered the injected Strip Teaser at Calhoun. Next, the
injected Falcon at Thomas Esso in Ellijay, followed by news of an upcoming
race and the Drag News ad when the car was sold.
 

 

  Like its predecessor,
the Strip Teaser II
managed to survive the
ravages of time and racing,
and is now owned by Greg
Sullivan, who has an excellent
Web site, www.stripteaserracing.net ,
that is devoted to the car and the
Strip Teaser team.
After a lengthy restoration, Sullivan
brought the car back to Ellijay in 2006
for official authentication by Bob Thomas
and Larry Davis. The car had undergone
several changes after it had been sold,
the most notable being a straight front axle.
 Davis admitted to some uncertainty about the car, but that was dispelled when Harold Simmons, a long-time employee at
the oil company, retrieved from a filing cabinet the bill of sale with the Falcon's VIN number. Thatnumber matched the
number inside the Falcon's engine compartment -- as good as DNA.   

 

 

 

Photo infomation: Strip Teaser IV against the Corrupters' Pup Dart of C.J. South;
in the pits; and Bob Thomas tends to the injected cammer.
Last two are from Dennis Kolodziej, of the IV's body.