This is an old fart question. The guy was recently inducted to the "off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame in Reno. Yes it's a real place and will be overflowing with history on every facet of off roading: EVEN SAND!!

The inventor was very good friends with Larry Minor and many sand drag competitors. This was invented in the LA area too! If that helps any.

Winner gets to know that he might be the only one that is REALLY into the sand scene. Or spends too much time on the internet!

Carl

My pops and a friend when we were kids in the 70s used to shave stripes in old tires giving it the oppisite of paddles. I dont know - but it brought back some great memories.

Dick Cepek? Parnelli Jones? Malcom Smith? Herman H. Booy, that's him

Matt

I will call Larry and find out. We use to take dragslicks and cut groves in them
like little paddles, then put them on 16" wide rims, I still have some 16" wide rims.
I remember the first ones were grafted to slicks.
Larry was out plowing potatoes.
LATER DON~~~

Don't really know if he was the inventor of the paddle tire,but back in the 70's their was a guy named Beckett sure selling alot of them.Our group also grooved their own drag slicks back in the early 70's and the late 60's even.

Dave Beckett is my guess, as well
Jay
I hope Im wrong ,I wouldnt want to be classified as a "OLD FART"

Hmm, how about Malcolm Smith?

I invented the paddle tire in 1959. Al Gore would like to take some of the credit, but his original intention for the tire was as a road racing F1 tire in the rain.

He still isn't very good about tread design, only marginally better as a politician.

The reason you didn't see any of my designs running around the dunes is because there were no long travel LS1s at the time to take advantage of the huge traction and floatation that my designs afforded. I was also having a difficult time finding used Lunar Rover tire carcasses to vulcanize the paddles to, but that was secondary.

Don't let the fact that I was born in 1960 throw you, I was a VERY intelligent fetus. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) I've done a lot of drinking since then...

Other than me, we have: Herman H. Booy: Sand Sports. Known throughout Sand Sports as the “Abominable Sandman”, Herman has been instrumental in every aspect of Sand Sports as a builder, driver, promotor and innovator since the early sixties. A long-time resident of San Jacinto, Cailf., Herman has worked as a builder and mechanic for Roger Mears and Larry Minor, among others. He developed paddle tires for use in sand racing, built a long list of winning sand buggies and Jeeps and worked with sanctioning bodies to standardize the rules for Sand Drag racing. Herman also drove hilllclimbs and sand drags and is named in the Guiness Book of World Records as the top speed record holder on sand over a 100 yard distance.

But I grooved drag slicks for many years before anything else was available .

(Don't forget the NEMO vulcanized paddles..)

Very good! Yes it was Herman Booy. Met the man over the 25th of June in REno. Along with a number of people that I held as Supermen in the sport of off road racing. Also sat on the first Honda Scrambler 250 used to officially record the first point to point of Baja from Ensenada to La Paz.

It had all of about 4.5" of rear travel. My kidneys hurt just lookin at it.


Carl

If you had met Al Gore in Reno, he would have insisted that he had invented paddle tires. My paddle tires from 1959 predate anything anyone else has done.

Uh hello! What am I chopped liver I got it right in the second reply. I finally got one right and demand credit

Matt

give him his 15 minutes of fame.

WOW!!! Herman Booy, A name I haven't even thought about since the San Jacinto sand drag days, oh I'd say about 30 years ago. My guess was gonna be Murdoch (Mr. Quick) Murphy.
Gotta love the early sand drags, was just a kid, but what a blast it was to sit behind the starting line and watch the cars launch

I sure miss reading Carl's posts.
He hasn't been on in a long while....

i was just thinking the same thing , he stopped posting right after i started here , hopefully just a coincidence .lol. tim

Yep,
Miss Carl and what he contributed

My thoughts as well.

He sure had a lot of info tucked away in that head of his.

TOP moofer for sure..

http://www.offroadmotorsportshalloffame.com/index.htm

http://www.offroadmotorsportshalloffame.co...lmon-George.htm

Does this count as a paddle tire?? I am not sure but the ride could be a bit on the stiff side

There was another group not mentioned here that was vulcanizing paddles on drag slicks.
Back in the early early 70's out of I believe Bakersfield. They were the Boyton brothers and did
alot of tires for Jeeps and sand drag cars. You could send them your drag slicks and for the sum of
$150 they would vulcanize as many paddles on them as you requested. I had a pair of these
that I had done and thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Oh, and yes I qualify as an old fart as I am 63 and have been duning since 1972 and still like to
DUNE.