Seven decades after a photographer surprised this dapper dude, perhaps no one still alive remembers the stylish car and driver competing at Fontana Airport, site of some of southern California’s earliest organized, weekly recurring drag races. (Help, mature readers?) Not even esteemed American Hot Rod Foundation archivist James Miller, an invaluable source for generations of automotive journalists, had the answers. Jim did find a lot to like in a tiny image of a classic postwar hot rod that likely rolled right off the street this day into either the Modified or Altered class. As if the dump (note tall rear tires), chop, and nose cleaning did not sufficiently reduce wind resistance, our young aero freak streamlined his barely legal windshield with tape. Miller cites the relatively-few side louvers as evidence that four cylinders once banged away, whereas a proper flathead V8 almost certainly lurked therein by 1950. Additional snapshots indicate that track prep and helmets were not yet priorities of pioneer promoters. (Ironically, another primitive Fontana strip would be the last in the vast LA area to host full-quarter-mile racing: Auto Club Dragway, which occupied a parking lot for the adjacent oval track, failed to reopen following 2020’s COVID shutdown.) Carspotting: 1950s Style In Man And Machine Photographer: Jack Trebas Date: circa 1950 Location: Fontana (California) Airport Source: Wallace Family Archive