WAM presents the exhibition What a Drag! celebrating and featuring the Tom Hoover 1966 Top Fuel Dragster. Named “the most beautiful dragster ever built” by HOT ROD magazine in 2015, this super-charged vehicle, along with a suit needed to drive it, ancillary components, and related ephemera, will be on view in the Target Gallery.
Renowned Minneapolis-based master printer Steven M. Andersen lent the car to WAM. A significant contributor to the American print renaissance that began in the 1970s, Andersen worked with a wide array of important American artists and amassed a substantial collection of print works by those artists, especially those made through his two Twin Cities fine print shops, Vermillion (1977-1992) and Akasha (1993- 2015).
Head to WAM to find this super-charged vehicle, the mechanical and design details of the dragster, the history of drag racing in the United States, and the unique, close to home story of Tom Hoover’s dragster.
Image: Tom Hoover, Tom Hoover Top Fuel Dragster, 1966.
Tom Hoover
Tom Hoover was an American gasser drag racer. Driving a DeSoto-powered 1957 Plymouth, he won NHRA's first ever C/Gas Altered national title at Detroit Dragway in 1960. His winning pass was 14.33 seconds at 100.67 mph. He won no other NHRA gasser titles. Hoover died on October 21, 2022, at the age of 81.
