Roland “Rollie” Lindblad built race cars have won championships up and down the east coast. From pro stocks to midgets, from modifieds to super modifieds and pro stocks, “Rollie” set the bar when it came to race car fabrication. His ‘Badger’ revolutionized midget racing in the 1970s. The car dominated NEMA for a decade, and was banned by most other midget organizations in the country because of the speed the car generated.
In the early 1960s, Rollie raced a front engine slingshot dragster that he had designed. In the mid 1960s, at the Connecticut Dragway, promoter Frank Maratta had a scheduled match race between legends “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and Art Malone. When Malone blew an engine just before the race, Maratta asked Lindblad to fill in. Rollie not only filled in, but he BEAT Don Garlits. Tommy Grove and “Jungle Jim” Liberman are just two of the drag racing legends that competed in Lindblad built cars.
Lindblad’s Badgers won championships with Butch Walsh (1973), Johnny Mann (1974, Dave Humphries (1978), and multiple championships with Drew Fonoro. Ron Bouchard drove a Lindblad car to the 1978 Seekonk championship, and Denny Wheeler won the Supermodified ISMA championship in 1983. Lindblad’s Pro Stocks have won 3 Seekonk titles, 2 with Leo Cleary (1986 and 1994), then again with Fred Astle, Jr. in 2000.
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