While a freelance writer myself in 1978-79, I travelled to Santa Pod to cover the races for AutoLoisirs magazine.  I was approached by the organizers of the Le Mans drag festival to find cars and drivers to bring to France for the race and to also write part of the program as I was one of the very few French journalists to have attended drag races both in the US and UK at the time.
I struck many friendships in the UK notably with Alan Newton and Jim Read and The Stones.
I raced in the first LeMans festival with a 1978 Suzuki RM400 motocrosser converted to drag use with a road tire and homemade wheelies bars.  I had to put the bike back to MX configuration that night for my friend Jacques to use it the following day in an MX race.
In 1981 as a now full time staffer for AutoLoisirs magazine I convinced the bosses to sponsor an Alcohol Funny Car to race at LeMans.  My first choice was Steinar Stolen's California Charger Pontiac Firebird which was so gorgeous.  Steinar had prior engagements so he recommended I talk to Anders Lantz who was campaining his Roach t-shirts-sponsored Chevy Monza Pro Comp funny.  We struck a deal.
Anders raced the Monza at LeMans in September 1981.
We brought Anders back to France for the Paris racing car show in February 1982 and had made him a offer to buy the car outright from him but he would drive it.
Jean Lou Nory and myself had convinced Citroen to finance the making of a new body in the shape of their popular Citroen VISA Chrono which was their race horse of the time in Rallye and Touring class road racing.
We wanted to debut the new car at the late May Paul Ricard drag festival, a new date on the French calendar .  This was going to be extremely short.
We enlisted, after much convincing, the immense talents of a one Mister Yves Charles who had made the bodies for the Renault turbo F1 cars of the time and the Yves Courage LeMans prototype bodies.
Yves had never seen a dragcar before.  The construction was epic and documented in its entirety in Auto Loisirs magazine.  We reused all the interior sheet metal from the Monza body to save time.  Citroen was adamant that the car not be so distorted it could not be recognized by the general public.  Yet Charles, who was a real aerodynamicist, also wanted to incorporate his personal touches which made total sense but went against the current body style of Funny Cars. He thought we were idiots but did a wonderful job.
So the entire front fascia, grille and headlights from a rental Citroen Visa was duplicated very closely to be incorporated into the body .  We also used real Visa taillights.
The car was then painted by Dominique Dorigo who was also a crew member on the car with Francis Lopez as crew chief.  There were only 3 of us with extremely limited knowledge of a funny car.
The side lettering was done in Marseilles on the day before the event and totally botched.  It would be redone by Dominique Dorigo upon returning to Paris.
Anders came down from Sweden with his crew but one night he fell out of his Mercedes truck and suffered a severe concussion and stayed in the hospital in Marseille for a good 2 weeks I believe.
Kent Persson had come down with his Top Fuel dragster so we convinced him to drive the funny car for us.  He won the event.
With Anders Lantz out of commission for good, but slowly returning to health, Kent Persson drove the Citroen funny car for us again at the September 1982 LeMans drag festival.  It was there that I decided I would drive the car in 1983.  Following the LeMans festival, I took "driving" lessons from Kent at the LeMans airport, adjacent to the circuit, on the very next day.
I debuted at the wheel in April at a local demo, then it was LeMans already, thankfully with a practice day in late August which was marred by rain.
Instructed by the ever patient and kind Jim Read, I then nearly put the car into the guard rail upon shifting the car into second because the Lenco manual levers were too far forward to me to reach and I turned the wheel a bit while changing gears . . . epic.  Ron Picardo has a VHS video of the this and I'd love to get a copy on DVD.
At the September festival I only made solo runs as the other PC drivers were concerned by lack of experience, rightfully so . . .  I made it with no incident.
I was then invited  to run at Santa Pod by Mr Phelps.  With a small tool box sufficient to repair a bicycle, a jack and 2 jackstands we showed up at the Pod.
I made solo runs so the other drivers could judge my skill level then I finally got to make a side by side run against the SLDO fuel altered which was a thrill.
During the weekend I nearly ended up in the field at track's end when I had a very late parachute opening and we also had to rebuild second gear in the Lenco overnight.
My best pass was only a 8.01 at 181mph.  I was disapointed as I really wanted to get into the sevens at over 186mph or 300km/'h.
In early 1984 I got the call from McMullen publishing in California to come and manage Street Rodding Illustrated magazine and moved to the US.  Meanwhile the Citroen went on a promotional tour of dealerships all over France with no trained supervision and was damaged and left out in the rain.  The exhaust filled with water as well as the supercharger and cylinders. The body handle was stolen so the body was forcefully lifted up and the securing rod gouged the dry sump oil tank. The roof escape hatch was lost.  It was in sad shape when I saw it again for the first time at a Citroen dealer's in Paris in May 1985.
Citroen was so happy when I offered to take it off their hands for a pitance.  I had the car shipped to the US and got in California in late '85.
I remember the container being unloaded about 2 miles from my shop and deciding not to hire a flatbed truck but rather to tow it on city streets to my shop, much to the disbelief of fellow motorists.  Good thing there were no cops in sight.
I tore the engine apart and it was shot, full of rust.  The repairs would be expensive.  I wanted to turn it into a nostalgia fuel altered to run in the newly created NDRA championship as the car was now too old to run in NHRA TA/FC.  I talked to Boyd Coddington about helping me attach a fiberglass 1934 Ford coupe body onto the Ken Cox chassis but then I was hired by Hot Rod Magazine in September 1986 and had to move to Hollywood  where I would have no shop space anymore.

The poor funny car ended in various storage units and even a public parking structure under a tarp.  This lasted 2 years.
In 1989 I was getting married.  The funny car was sitting alongside my house, in my parking stall, in the back alley under a tarp.  I needed money for a computer and a $1200 fax machine and took the funny car to the Long Beach swap meet where Jeff Gainer made me a fairly reasonable offer.  He was also the only one to make me one and I was under the gun.  So there it went.
I was told the Donovan aluminum 500ci engine with 6-71 blower and Enderle injector was resold to a Nostalgia drag racer and the chassis and body ended up racing on the sand drags circuit.  I was also told it ran in the CIFCA (California Injected Funny Car Association) circuit.  I saw the body for sale at the same Long Beach swap meet in 1993 I believe and did not even have the $400 to buy it back.  The seller would not budge, or take payments and could not care less, my name was on the body . . . I wept all the way home.
I never saw it again. I placed ads on Racing Junk.com last year to try and gather information on the car but nothing came of it.  I just hope it didn't get cut up and thown away.
The body molds are still in France in the backyard of the owner of the body shop where we made the body but the man is asking a ridiculous amount of money for it, for back storage dues . . . like 30 years . . . imagine that.

Philippe Danh

Click here to return to Pro Comp page 5