Stephens & Venables Dragster Restoration by Rip & Natalie Wiley

Below are the pictures of how the car once appeared 30+ years ago.
Hopefully in the near future I will have better details of each picture
as the information becomes available.
Photos contributed by Dick Venables, Steve Stephens & Rahn Tobler.

Above is a sheet of paper that Dick Venables kept up with after each event
from the 1971 & 1972 season. Pretty impressive for 21 events and 14 wins.
After the Houma event and you can barely read it here, but the events are of
Houston, Baton Rouge & Oklahoma City and it shows that each of those events
were wins also. All of these events are of the car that is featured on this page.

The last recorded article of an event win of this car was in April 1972 at Oklahoma City.
Not for sure exactly what type event this was as the article doesn't say. From published
articles and many hours of research this was last front engine car to win a IHRA event on
October 31, 1971. Steve Carbone won the last AHRA event in January of 1972 and the
last NHRA winner was Van Iderstine, Young & Marshall on August 6, 1972.

Racers defeated by Stephens & Venables
Harold Wilson
Brian Budd
Larry Dixon
Childs & Albert
Ronnie Martin
Doug Mead
Chip Woodall
Rod Williams
Kenny Bernstein
Preston Davis
Pete Mattel
Buddy Cortines
Raymund Beadle
Harry Urbach
Monty Mize
Buddy Jentzen
Bob Gibson
Boyd Breaux
Marvin Graham
Roy Pearman

Published in "The Top Fuel Handbook" by Chris Martin.

This is the 1st paint scheme applied to the Lester Guillory chassis it was painted
by Brian Hildebrand, it was pearl white with red & blue candy with the lettering
done in gold leaf. If you notice the cowl in front of the driver is not painted, due
to a clutch explosion.