The funny car, drag racing’s wild child, didn’t originate with any single car or driver. But one of the key racers to bring the movement to life was Jack Chrisman with his ’64/’65 Mercury Comet.

Long before the term “funny car” was invented, Jack Chrisman (1928-1989) was already a drag racing pioneer. The youngest of 13 children, he moved with his family to Southern California as a child as they escaped the Oklahoma dust bowl. Immersing himself in the Los Angeles hot rod scene, he made his name at area drag strips with a quick and immaculate Ford Model A Tudor powered by a Chrysler hemi. (His older brother Everett was the father of racers Art and Lloyd Chrisman, which made Jack their uncle.) From there he quickly moved up to become a driver-for-hire, wheeling supercharged dragsters for Chuck Jones, Howard Cams, Mickey Thompson, and others. He drove the first dragster to run in the 8-second zone in 1961, and at the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis in 1962, Chrisman won Top Eliminator driving Thompson’s Pontiac hemi-powered AA/Dragster.

For the 1964 season, Mercury racing boss Fran Hernandez arranged for Chrisman to obtain one of the 22 Comet lightweight hardtops built by Dearborn Steel Tubing with 427 V8 power to run in the NHRA’s A/Factory Experimental class. But after years of driving 180 mph blown dragsters, Chrisman found the 120-mph Comet a bit too tame for his liking. Meanwhile, Fernandez wanted Mercury to offer a rival to the Dragmaster Dodge Chargers, which then campaigned a team of supercharged Dodge sedans. Leaning heavily on his rail experience, Chrisman swapped a complete fuel dragster drivetrain into the Comet body shell and a legend was born.

Crammed under the Comet’s hood was a 427 cubic-inch Ford (excuse us, Mercury) High-Riser V8 with a GMC 6-71 blower and a Hilborn fuel injection system. A cam-driven fuel pump and three-gallon Moon fuel tank took up the space where the radiator once lived. According to contemporary magazine reports, the camshaft and valvetrain components were all factory High-Riser pieces. Bill Stroppe and Associates, a factory-backed race shop in Long Beach, California, assisted in the body and chassis modifications. There was no transmission as the driveline ran direct to the Ford 9-inch rear axle, high gear only—the typical dragster setup in those days.

Much of the Comet’s spectator appeal was in its almost-stock appearance. The interior, for example, was mainly Mercury production components, including the dash, steering column, and door panels The few modifications included a single fiberglass racing seat, a Moon hydraulic throttle pedal, and a ring pull for the trunk-mounted Carter parachute. (The single-hoop roll bar is not in view.) Since there was no transmission, the Hurst shifter handle actually operated the brakes, another dragster practice.

As a mashup of a supercharged nitro dragster and a Detroit factory hardtop, the Comet was a poor fit for any of the established categories in sanctioned drag racing. At NHRA national meets it was classified in the B/Fuel Dragster category, but the car more commonly ran in run-what-you-brung match races and exhibition shows

Running on fuel blends of up to 98 percent nitromethane, the Comet wasn’t stupendously fast, usually running in the mid-10 second bracket in the 145 mph range, but it was tremendously exciting to watch. With rare exceptions—the Mooneyham & Sharp 554 fuel coupe and the Dodge Chargers exhibition team come to mind, among others—the fans in the stands had never seen anything quite like it. Though it wasn’t entirely clear at the time, a new category in drag racing was stirring into life, and in another year or two the breed would become known as funny cars.

Chrisman’s Comet, as the headline-grabbing racer soon became known, underwent a major transformation for 1965. The makeover was so complete that many fans didn’t know it at the time, but the ’64 and ’65 Comets were in fact the same car. Exterior body panels were updated to ’65 styling, while the refrigerator-white paint scheme was upgraded to a brilliant Candy Apple Red. The 427 High-Riser was swapped for a new SOHC 427 Ford V8 (See our feature on the Ford Cammer here) shifted to the rear of the chassis so that the front of the engine was now directly under the windshield. To reduce front end weight further and improve handling, the Comet factory front suspension was ditched in favor of a lightweight tubular beam axle setup.

In its 1965 configuration the Comet was even more spectacular, recording times in the mid-8 second bracket at better than 160 mph and smoking the rear tires most of the way down the drag strip, just like a AA/Fuel Dragster (below). The ’64/’65 Comet is still around today and sometimes makes the nostalgia drag racing scene, while Chrisman himself owned and piloted several more memorable drag cars before hanging up his helmet in 1972. Chrisman passed away in 1989 at age 61. In 2001, the National Hot Rod Association named Chrisman number 23 on its 50th anniversary list of the 50 greatest drag racers of all time.  Photos by Lincoln-Mercury Division.