The Bradford family started racing in 1946.  Brad Bradford and his father ran roadsters at the dry lakes during the late 40’s and early 50’s.  In 1963 Randy Bradford (son) started racing with dad.  The first Bradford and Son drag car was a 1940 ford truck that was 327 Chevy powered.  The next race car was a 1955 Chevy C Gasser that was run 1963-1966. This was a very competitive car and won many trophies at local drag strips in Southern California, and won a gold cup race at Fontana Raceway.                          

      Fuel Altered racing began in 1966 with the purchase of a car from Lee Lebaron.  This car was powered by an injected 427 Chevy on nitro with best times in 1967 being 8.60 ET at 178 MPH.  The injected car was a giant killer and they were runner up at 3 fuel altered shows at Orange County Raceway in a row and won many rounds at all the tracks. During late 1967, the local promoters of fuel altered shows put pressure on injected altereds to add superchargers and so the Bradford Fiat  complied.  This was also a success as fuel altered racing was at its peek in southern California.   

Randy was given the opportunity to join the Army during half of 1968 and all of 1969 returning to drive March 1970.  While Randy was in the Army, Frank Harris drove for Brad and they were very successful winning 3 fuel altered meets in a row and many winning weekends during the year.  They were runners up for the Bakersfield smokers meet March of 1969 against the winner Pure Hell.  1969 and 1970 were interesting years as The Bradford Fiat was called to run the east coast tour with Pure Heaven, Rat Trap, Leroy Chatterton and Wild Willie Borsch.  The team of Bradford & Son raced all over the country from May to September each year.  In 1969  the race car was  re-powered with a 392 Chrysler and with the use of better tires and slipper clutches the Fiat kept competitive running a best of 7.06 seconds at 209mph winning a fuel altered show at Fremont.   

During 1972 it was obvious the fuel altereds were fading and funny cars were taking over.  Randy and Brad decided to build a funny car.  This car was started but never finished partly due to the commitments and demands of family. I

In 1999, Brad and Randy after a 27 year absence returned to their racing roots and began building a new replica of the original fuel altered. The new car was built to modern safety specifications,  keeping the original classic look of the old car.  The new car was completed Oct 2000 and first ran at the California Hot rod Reunion.  We are currently searching to book more races  including match races with other Nitro fuel altereds.