Wild Bill Shrewsberry

Who is Wild Bill Shrewsberry?

"Wild" Bill Shrewsberry is an American exhibition drag racing driver primarily active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Originally from Mansfield, Ohio, Shrewsberry moved to Southern California in October 1962. Shrewsberry is best known as the driver of the drag racing replica of the Barris-built Batmobile from the 1966 television series and of the "L.A. Dart," a series of wheelstanding funny cars each with a rear-mounted, supercharged Chrysler Hemi engine and each sponsored by the Dodge and Plymouth dealers of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The result of the rearward weight transfer caused by the engine's mounting position was a "wheelie" for the entire quarter-mile at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. Steering was accomplished by a combination of the service brake pedal activating the brake on the left wheel while a brake lever from a racing go-kart activated the right brake. So proficient was Shrewsberry at this sort of driving that he would often spin his car to face the opposite direction at the end of the track and race back to the starting line, all the while maintaining the wheelstand.

He rose to fame in the early 1960s as the driver of one of only six factory-built 1963 Pontiac Tempest Super Duty LeMans-badged coupes and which was campaigned by Mickey Thompson. These six coupes and six station wagon variants, with their 421 in³ Pontiac Catalina engines, transmissions and rear ends replacing the Tempest's 326 in³ engine, rear-mounted Corvair-based transaxle and the small diameter drive shaft often referred to as a "rope" were described as "beyond fast". Shrewsberry's Pontiac dominated the A/FX factory experimental class in the 1963 NHRA "Winternationals" with a best time of 12.03 seconds in the quarter mile, an average of .5 seconds faster than the competition. He would later race the car in a modified configuration utilizing Pontiac's "Powershift" transaxle, developed specifically for the Super Duty. It was, in essence, a pair of two-speed Powerglide automatic transmissions joined together in a single four-speed unit. His car retains that setup today.