Collection of Tommy Ivo drag cars coming up for auction "pretty much touches all the bases" of T.V. Tom's racing history

Gary Runyon met Tommy "T.V." Ivo once, more than 50 years ago, as a 16-year-old kid looking for an autograph from his new hero during a series of exhibition races at Indianapolis Raceway Park. "I don't think he'd know me from Adam today," Runyon said. "But I distinctly remember his trailer in the parking lot by the staging area with his car in it. It stayed with me for life."

Enough to convince him to go racing in other forms of motorsport and to spend the last few years tracking down that car and that trailer, a quest that led him to acquire even more Ivo cars, perhaps the most ever assembled in one collection. "I think the collection pretty much touches all the bases on Ivo's drag racing history," Runyon said. "I'm sure there are other cars of his still around, but my goal was to get a sampling of the different eras."

That goal complete, he's now putting the entire collection up for auction with no reserve, possibly creating an opening for him to finally formally meet his hero.

When Runyon sold off a previous collection that included lightweight stockers and Hemi-powered racers alike, "it wasn't like I had a punchlist of cars to replace them, but I was in a position where I could go after something different," he said. So he turned to that decades-old memory, specifically of that exhibition car smoking its wheels down the track, and had a friend see if the Wagon Master was still around.

Though one of the cars most associated with Ivo, the Wagon Master wasn't entirely his creation. In 1961, Ivo determined that his twin-nailhead front-engine dragster might have done well at the track (180 mph, 8-second runs), but he could extract far more entertainment value out of a four-engine dragster, so he had Kent Fuller build a custom chassis that would support two banks of two tandem-mounted, fuel-injected 401-cu.in. nailhead engines - one bank of engines driving the rear wheels, another bank driving the front. Ivo assembled the car that Hot Rod magazine dubbed the Showboat, but contract stipulations kept him from driving it, so he hired first Don Prudhomme and later Bob McCourry to drive it for him.

McCourry ended up buying the Showboat from Ivo in 1964 or so and ran it as is for a couple of years before deciding to add a Tom Hanna-built aluminum station wagon body and Riviera-ish nose, rename it the Wagon Master, and continue its exhibition run schedule. Then, 15 years later, Ivo bought the Wagon Master from McCourry, gave it one more wild paint scheme, and recommissioned it for a 1982 farewell tour, which ended with him cracking four vertebrae after hitting a bump on a frost-hove track in Saskatchewan in the Wagon Master.

Eventually, the Wagon Master ended up in the hands of Ralph Whitworth before selling, at the 2009 dispersal of his collection of notable hot rods and customs, for $209,000. As Runyon bought it, "it was in really nice shape," but he nevertheless rechromed a number of parts, had the interior reupholstered, and had some of the graphics touched up.

Runyon couldn't have the Wagon Master without also having a real Ivo trailer to haul it, so he turned to the same friend to track one down. Going back to the Sixties, Ivo had a string of increasingly larger glass-sided enclosed trailers emblazoned with his name and accomplishments. "I remember seeing it go down the road, and Ivo would turn on the lights inside the trailer to show off the car he had inside," Runyon said. "These are things you just don't see nowadays."

The last iteration of Ivo's trailers, according to his website, was a much-modified 40-foot triple-axle Chaparral fifth-wheel trailer with the signature glass sides built for Ivo's brief foray into jet cars. The ramp for the car takes up the back three-fourths of the trailer, with the rest outfitted as air-conditioned sleeping quarters for Ivo to use while touring.

"We found it in Maine, along with Ivo's last rear-engine dragster and his last funny car, but the owner wouldn't sell just the trailer - he'd only sell it as a group," Runyon said. "I said, 'That's perfect.'"

The rear-engine dragster, perhaps Ivo's most infamous drag-racing vehicle, is well known. In 1974, while racing it at the Winternationals in Pomona, he leaned out the fuel-nitro mixture in the dragster's 484-cu.in. Hemi V-8 just a little too much, leading to an explosion that severed the Larry Sikora-built car in two. He survived uninjured, but crossed the finish line at more than 200 MPH upside down and backwards. Ivo restored it sans the front wheel pants, but successive owners almost literally ran it into the ground before drag racer Bruce Larson found it behind a New Jersey gas station and restored it with the wheel pants and with Ivo's assistance. The rear-engine dragster has since sold at auction in 2012 for $200,000 and in 2019 for $275,000.

The funny car, on the other hand, may be one of Ivo's least-known vehicles. Ivo switched to funnies in 1976, "mostly for something different to build and drive," he wrote on his website. Rod Shop sponsored the first two American flag-themed cars, with the second being a 1977 Dodge Charger on a McKinney chassis. Ivo claimed that the latter of the two Rod Shop cars got little exposure due to tight purse strings at Rod Shop. "That really complicated having the resources to fund an all-out effort at the NHRA National Events," he wrote. It also may be why the car retains its original fiberglass body, since restored by Cruz Pedregon.

In addition to the above, Runyon was able to acquire some Ivo memorabilia as well as Ivo's last front-engine dragster, built by Don Long with Tom Hanna bodywork for the 1971 season. Ivo called it his swoopiest, but its fate was sealed before it could finish its season as more dragster builders took Don Garlits's lead and switched to rear engine. Corey Connors has since restored it with its Keith Black 6-71-blown 426-cu.in. Hemi V-8.

Runyon said he didn't want the cars to become "just another show car," so he hired Shawn Dill, who had previously worked as an engine builder for Connie Kalitta's motorsports team, to prep the cars for Cacklefest duties. That meant pulling each of the engines apart, Magnaflux testing all the parts, rebuilding the entire engine and fuel pump to run on 85-percent nitromethane, and removing the driveshafts. The exception is the Wagon Master, a car that requires a push for every start. "We made sure everything was correct for all the cars," Runyon said. "I spared no expense - I wanted them exactly the way I'd have them if I were to take them to Cacklefest."

On the other hand, Runyon said that in all the years he's been involved in champ, midget, and Indy cars, he's never worked with nitromethane, so he's decided to leave actual Cacklefest duties to somebody or some bodies else. "I don't want to get anybody hurt, so selling the cars is the prudent thing to do," he said.

While each of the above will run as a separate lot alongside more than two dozen other vehicles from Runyon's collection - including the Chrisman Bonneville coupe, a Bill "Maverick" Golden Little Red Wagon wheelstander, and a 1968 Tom "Mongoose" McEwen front-engine dragster - Runyon said "it would be tremendous" if the Ivo cars remained together. Runyon plans to cackle some of the cars at the auction, and he said he is working on inviting Ivo to see the cars cross the block. Mecum has not released preauction estimates for the Ivo cars.

The Ivo cars and the rest of Runyon's collection will sell as part of Mecum's Kissimmee auction, scheduled for January 6-15, 2022. For more information, visit Mecum.com.