The Bronco Buster Funny Car

Yes you read that right, there is (or was not sure of the cars fate) a Ford Bronco Funny Car! Back in the mid 60’s Funny Cars where… well they were funny. They started out as modified extended wheel base muscle cars and factory hot rods and eventually evolved into crazy experimental flip top hot rods! One of these crazy experimental funny cars was the Bronco Buster a Ford Bronco based Funny Car built by Doug Nash. Doug Nash’s Funny Car project was loosely associated with Ford themselves (he only had a little help from Ford). The Bronco featured a shaped body based off of Fords new 1966 Ford Bronco SUV, which was on top of a thin aluminum tubed chassis. The whole car with the driver weighed just an incredibly light 1700 Pounds! When Doug first debuted the car in 1966, Bronco Buster was powered by a Ford 289 Hipo motor with Mechanical fuel injection. At the time the car was described by other racing, the hot rod media and perhaps Doug himself as being “very erratic.” Which probably could be due to the combination of a short wheel base, weighing only 1700 pounds and having the power of a funny car. Despite being “very erratic” the Bronco Buster did have a lot of good 8 second runs (the average time for a Funny Car back then). With just fuel injection Bronco Buster ran its best time of 8.68 in the quarter mile. A few months later Doug Nash added a supercharger to the funny car (which probably made Bronco Buster even more erratic) and it managed to run a best time of 8.33 at 141.45 MPH. Sadly Bronco Buster and SUV/Truck based Funny Cars where short lived. In 1967 the NHRA outlawed SUV/Truck based Funny Cars. The NHRA sent a notice to Doug informing that his Bronco will no longer be able to compete in NHRA events. As for Doug, he ended up creating performance 5 Speed transmissions known as Doug Nash Transmissions.