A Blast from the Past with the Rosebush Brothers!

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be – Today, you can buy a 400-plus horsepower, twelve-second car straight off the showroom floor, drive it every day on the street, and listen to a thousand-watt stereo while doing it. But not so long ago, driving and racing a “Stock” car was a very different experience…

Headlines from 1970:

– The Beatles give their last studio performance
– Super Bowl IV: The Kansas City Chiefs beat the heavily-favored Minnesota Vikings 23-7
– Mick Jagger is fined 200 pounds for possession of cannabis
– AMC introduces the Gremlin.
– Elvis begins his first concert tour since 1958 in Phoenix, Arizona
– The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations
– The Ford Pinto is introduced

1970 turned out to be a good year for rock & roll (but not so great for celebrity hemp enthusiasts), football fans, and the environment, but based on Page 1 above-the-fold, you might not think it was all that good for hot rodders. The Detroit musclecar wars were at their peak, but the coming threat of new emission and safety standards was just starting to put an end to that party.

Before the cops came and sent everybody home, there was time for a few more amazing seasons of drag racing, done with cars that actually looked like the ones in suburban driveways and the support (sometimes public, sometimes hidden) of the factories that made them. What started me on this little walk down memory lane was a trip to Orlando, where I saw this really beautiful 1965 Chevelle convertible.

The car shown here is a recreation of the one campaigned back in the day – in 1970, the Rosebush Bros. (Terry, Richard, Roger and the youngest Mark) were the real deal with this little NHRA and IHRA Shaker series upsetter.

Don’t think of it as a knock-off, though, because the car it represents was actually one of a series for the Rosebush Bros. that simply spanked every other car that ever strolled up to the tree alongside. You might consider it number four in line, with a three-decade pause in-between.

It all started with a 1965 hardtop Chevelle SS 283 with 4-speed running in the NHRA N/Stock class. They disassembled the car, put it in the poor man’s body color (white), and reassembled it into an SS/P NHRA class car with a very cool psychedelic paint job, which was laid down by Stan Gravis of Midland, Michigan. This car was raced for a year, and at the end of that year Richard was at Lapeer Dragway (which is still in operation today in Michigan) when the rear control arm broke and rolled the car over and over and over. Richard walked away unhurt, but the same couldn’t be said for the car.

The Brothers loaded what was left on a trailer and headed home. Terry called the other members of the team, Marty Foss, “Doc” Watson and John Capp, and with their help the brothers disassembled the car within 24 hours and Terry was on a mission to find a new ‘65 Chevelle hardtop for the next season.

Car #2 was found in Saginaw, Michigan. It had been running in the FX class at the local dragstrip, Tri-City Dragway in Freeland. Terry got it home and the team started building the car into an identical twin to the one recently tuna-canned. The only difference was this time it had a roll cage! Believe it or not, back then it was not mandatory to have a roll cage in Super Stock.

The brothers ran car number 2 from 1973 to 1974 under NHRA #3228 for Richard and #3229 for Roger. They were taking turns behind the wheel and were doing quite well until the NHRA mucked with the rules, changed the weight, and factored the engine for SS/P. After reading the rule book and finding some loopholes, they found a way to keep running the same setup they have been so successful with.

Well, the crafty guy big brother Terry was (and still is), he read the rule book and the NHRA class spec books and figured out that a 1965 Chevelle convertible would fit in SS/P. That’s where car #3 comes into play. The brothers knew of a convertible body in Essexville, next door to their home town of Bay City, Michigan, and purchased it.

They blew it apart, stripped it, tubbed it, caged it, and built it using just the rear clip. Car #2 came apart and donated the front clip, doors, deck lid (which , by the way, was the only sheet metal panel saved from car #1) and the complete driveline and anything else they could use.

B&B Custom of Saginaw, Michigan put the pearl white and candy colors on the rear clip to match the rest of the sheet metal. The team knew this would be a winning combination because they already had the driveline figured out. The only question was if they would need to throw a roll of “racer’s tape” in the tool box to help keep the ragtop from peeling off! With Roger behind the wheel and Terry’s built 292ci small block twisting out insane numbers, the Rosebush Team combination was feared when they rolled into any Mid West or East Coast Dragstrip.

Standing left to right; Terry Rosebush, Marty Foss. Kneeling left to right; Richard Rosebush, Roger Rosebush.

About the author

Kevin Shaw

Kevin Shaw is a self-proclaimed "muscle car purist," preferring solid-lifter camshafts and mechanical double-pumpers over computer-controlled fuel injection and force-feeding power-adders. If you like dirt-under-your-fingernails tech and real street driven content, this is your guy.
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