An Electric 10 Minutes with Drag Racing Legend ‘Big Daddy’ Don Garlits
September 2020 • By Benjamin Labiner • Photos Randy Anderson, Marc Gewertz and Steve Reyes
‘Big Daddy’ Don Garlits has never held back other than this time holding driver Connie Swingle at Bakersfield. Photo Charles Strutt/TorqTalk
88-year-old Big Daddy Don Garlits is known around the world for his tenacity and daring. From his humble beginnings racing across an airstrip to record shattering electric dragsters, it is hard to find a more accomplished racer. On the anniversary of his 189.04MPH pass in his electric Swamp Rat 38, Garlits agreed to sit down with TorqTalk at his drag racing museum in Ocala, Florida to talk about his life, his career, and what comes next.
Q: Would you please describe your start in drag racing?
A: “Well when I got started there wasn’t really any drag racing, it was on the street. There were no drag race tracks around here (Tampa, Florida) to my knowledge; there was maybe one in California in 1949. In 1950 a bunch of us guys went up to Zephyrhills, Florida, met with the city fathers, and they let us use the old, abandoned Army Air Corps base out in the fields. There were about eighteen of us, we just painted two lines on the strip and had a stop watch down at the end.
Q: In the year since you set the electric dragster record at 189.04MPH, Current Technology 2.0 has surpassed 200MPH. How do you see these top speed records progressing in the future?
A: “As we have seen with the Steve Huff Motorsports ‘Current Technology’ car, 200 is easily possible, maybe lots more, I’m thinking maybe 225, something like that.”
Chevrolet has its electric ECOPO Camaro, Ford its electric Cobra Jet 1400 but no sign yet from Don’s long-time supporter Dodge on an electric Challenger.
Q: Electric cars have become more and more popular recently do you see electricity playing a large part in drag racing?
A: “The electric car has a place in drag racing, there’s a lot of these places that have real strict noise abatement laws, and you can’t run fuel dragsters there. These electric cars are very quiet so this would be an alternative to racing in these places, around the cities especially”
Q: Most of the vehicles in your museum have some impressive superchargers on them. However, recently turbochargers have become more popular and the technology used in them has changed immensely (variable turbine geometry, 3D printing, etc). Would you ever build a dragster using a turbocharged setup in place of a supercharger?
A: “I don’t like turbocharging. It’s good for a regular car, but I don’t think that it is quite as efficient as an actual positive drive Roots-type blower. If you really want some boost, that’s the way you’ve gotta get it. It has been tried several times and there have been some turbocharged cars in other classes that have done quite well, but not in top fuel.”
Romeo Palamides’ canopied dragster hit the cover of the December ’58 issue of Car Craft and was given away in a competition at the Oakland Roadster Show. It was one that got away from Garlits.
Q: Your museum is a fantastic representation of the world of drag racing. Are there any pieces that you would still want to acquire for it?
A: “Oh yeah, there’s one in particular. In 1959, Romeo Palamides built a really trick slingshot dragster with a canopy over the driver. He ran that car against me in Houston and I beat him in the final. Years later, that car was at the reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the guy wanted $25,000 for it and I told him I’d take it. Another guy who had a museum in California, the Justice brothers, wanted it too, so they gave the guy more money and got it.”
Q: Which racers are you following the most closely right now?
A: “Antron Brown is my favorite, he’s really a nice guy. Been through a couple of crashes, I think he needs to be keeping it between the guard rails.”
Q: Have you ever seen an innovation on another racer’s car that you wish you had thought of?
A: “I would be thinking about Kenny Bernstein, and not so much the car design, but some of the innovations on the engine. They came up with a couple really good tricks like the down nozzles that cooled the combustion chamber, I didn’t think of that. They did that; it was a really good innovation. They also came up with the double element wing for more down pressure, I was the first guy to have a wing, but it was just a single element.”
Garlits’ mono-strut car at the 2003 US Nationals. Photo Randy Anderson
Q: What is the most advanced piece of technology you put on any of your cars?
A: “My last ride, the mono-wing car that I went 323MPH in is still the most modern Top Fuel dragster in the world. People never got to the mono-wing because the NHRA didn’t like that. The mono-strut worked like a rudder, it allowed us to gain more MPH in the last half than any other car at that time.”
Lions Drag Strip1970 and the defining moment of Don Garlits’ career when the transmission of Swamp Rat 13 blew and took off half of his right foot. It was back-motored cars from then on. Photo Wynn’s courtesy Steve Reyes Collection.
Q: What do you see for the future of drag racing? John Force, Don Schumacher, and Connie Kalitta are all getting older, do you think that younger racers will keep Top Fuel and Funny cars popular, or will there be a shift towards electric vehicles?
A: “I think Pro Drag Racing is on a downward spiral due to the high cost of maintaining the cars, even I can’t afford to race them! As for nitromethane, it’s just a matter of when, not if, the Homeland Security Administration outlaws the product for civilian use. It’s just too dangerous for racing! Have you noticed the massive explosions at the NHRA races, and that is under strict control!”
Q: At 88 years old you’ve been racing over 50 years, in that time you became the first to pass 170, 180, 200, 240, 250, and 270 mph. The most recent record you broke was going 189.03mph in your electric dragster last year. With all these great achievements behind you, what is next for you?
A: “We are ready to go back to testing (Swamp Rat 38), as soon as everything gets back to normal. If it ever gets back to normal!”
For information about the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing visit: https://garlits.com/