Museum of Drag Racing

Back in the 1950s, in the early days of organized drag racing, the stars of the sport were mostly affluent, college educated young men from southern California who could afford to hire the best engineers to build their cars and could pay for the best equipment available. Being a poor boy from Florida definitely put you at a disadvantage. But apparently nobody ever explained that to Tampa’s Don Garlits.

Garlits was running a small family-owned auto body shop when he became interested in drag racing, and when the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) held races in Lake City, Florida in 1955, Garlits built himself a racecar out of a 1927 Model T, and surely raised a chuckle or two out of the rich boys when they first spotted his crude homebuilt dragster being unloaded next to their sleek custom speedsters. But they didn’t laugh long – Don Garlits won that first race he entered, with a speed of 108 miles per hour! A legend was born.

The big names in drag racing in those days may have sneered, calling the newcomer names like “Don Garbage” and “Swamp Rat.” But they could only do it behind his back, because Don Garlits was always way out in front of them on race day.

The year after his debut, Garlits won the 1956 Florida State Championship, hitting a top speed of 135 mph in the first of several racecars he built and named Swamp Rat. In 1957, he was the first man to exceed 170 mph. He broke his own record the next year, passing 180 mph. Before long he had hit 240 mph. There followed a long string of firsts and wins – Garlits won the American Hot Road Association (AHRA) Nationals, and the Texas State Championship in 1958, the Northern California Championship in 1959, and the NHRA Nationals in Daytona, Florida in 1960. By the early 1960s, someone had hung the nickname “Big Daddy” on Don Garlits, and nobody was laughing behind his back any more.

Always popular with racing fans, Don Garlits was not only a superb driver, he was an intelligent man with a strong work ethic and innovative ideas. He was the first to put bike wheels on the front of a dragster, the first to experiment with extended wheelbases, the first to use an air spoiler, the first to use a 4-disk clutch, and the first to use the successful streamlined design racing fans know so well today, among his many pioneering accomplishments.

But Don Garlits’ success on and off the racetrack did not come without a price. He was burned terribly in a race in Chester , South Carolina in the late 1950s, and in 1971 his transmission exploded during a race in Long Beach , California , tearing his car in half and slicing off part of his right foot! Always one to learn from his experiences, good or bad, Garlits used the accident to help himself design the first rear engine dragster. One year later, at the same race where he was injured, Garlits debuted his new rear engine Swamp Rat XIV and drove it to the finals. A few weeks later he became the first driver to win an NHRA national event with a rear engine car. Within two years, front engine dragsters had disappeared from racetracks, replaced by the Garlits rear engine design!

Don Garlits’ racing career continued into the early 1990s. He drove his last race when he was 60 years old. Along the way, he won more victories, set more records, and introduced more new technology to the sport of drag racing then anybody before or after. He was a ten time AHRA World Champion and a five time IHRA World Champion. Before he was done, he had won 144 national events, an unheard of accomplishment!

Don Garlits was voted Man of the Year by Drag News three times, was named Top Fuel Driver of the Year by Car Craft magazine nine times, was voted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, and was the drag racer to have his car placed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Those were just a few of the accolades heaped on the poor boy from Tampa , Florida who became a racing legend.

In 1984, Don and his wife Patty, who had been his high school sweetheart, opened the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala , Florida . Housed in two buildings just east of Exit 341 on Interstate 75, the museum is a fascinating collection of drag racing cars and memorabilia tracing the evolution of America ’s largest motorsport from the 1940s to the present. Exhibits include not only Garlits’ cars, but also top winning dragsters driven to victory by many of the greatest names in racing.

Perched outside the museum on a pedestal is a Navy A-7 jet airplane. In 1971 Don Garlits made a Christmas tour of Vietnam to help boost troop morale, and when he returned home, the racecar driver worked with the United States Navy on a recruiting poster, the first of three he would be part of. In 1972 he raced an A-7 on the deck of the USS Lexington, and from that day forward, Garlits wanted one of the jets for himself. When the Navy’s Cecil Field was shut down in 1999, Garlits was offered the aircraft and quickly had it moved to his museum.

My wife had never heard of Don Garlits before we visited the museum, and never seen a drag race in her life, so she was surprised to find herself enjoying the exhibits so much. Each car is a bit of history in itself, and the evolution in design, of which Don Garlits was such a part, is easy to trace as you browse the many exhibits.

The museum showcases not only the streamlined style Top Fuel dragsters Don Garlits built and drove, but also drag racing motorcycles, and Funny Cars. The first thing visitors see as they enter the museum is Bill “Maverick” Golden’s Little Red Wagon, called by Hot Rod magazine and Peterson’s History of Drag Racing America’s most famous racing vehicle. The 1,500 horsepower super-charged Dodge pickup was the original wheelstander drag racer.

Don Garlits’ Swamp Rat I, the car he built in his garage and set his first World Record of 176 miles per hour at Brooksville, Florida is on display, along with many other cars he campaigned in. Many of his competitors’ cars are also included in the museum, along with special cars that broke new barriers in the world of racing.

Pioneer drivers such as Dick Craft, Art Malone, and Charlie Hogan are represented, along with champions like Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Don Carlton, and Jim Bucher to name just a few. Many racing legends have cars or artifacts on display, including such famous drivers and designers as Shirley Muldowney, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, “Broadway” Bob Metzler, Mickey Thompson and “Jazzy” Jim Nelson.

Shirley Muldowney, proclaimed the Greatest Woman Racecar Driver of All Time, a three-time NHRA Top Fuel World Champion, and winner of many other championships in the AHRA, has one of her cars on display. Seriously injured in a crash in the 1980s, Shirley had both of her legs severely broken, but came back after intensive therapy to race and win again. Shirley is the only drag racer to have a full length movie (Heart Like A Wheel) made about her life.

Some of the cars on display in the museum had short-lived racing careers, but are significant for other accomplishments. Craig Breedlove’s Spirit of America slingshot dragster was built in 1964 to attempt to break the FIA Kilometer Record, and only ran a year or two before being retired. The car spent several years on tour with car shows around the country before being placed in a museum, first in Hollywood, California and then at the Museum of Drag Racing.

Besides sleek dragsters and Funny Cars, the museum has several classic racecars and record holders. Old Noisy, the original Speed Sport roadster, is a little orange rocket that in 1957 set the fastest speed in history to that point, 169 mph.

Among the classic and famous Funny Cars on display is the late “Jungle Jim” Liberman’s 1973 Vega. Powered by a 494 cubic inch Hemi engine, the little car was clocked at 220 mph. Another gorgeous and well-known Funny Car in the collection is Don Prudhomme’s 1973 Plymouth Barracuda, flying the colors of the United States Army.

During the early 1960s a new breed of hot rods came on the scene, the full fendered gassers. Two such cars are on display, one of which is a beautiful 1941 Willys that set a record for the quarter mile in 1962 at Pomona, California .

Long before OPEC oil barons hobbled us, Americans loved speed and fast cars, and Detroit automakers responded by producing a breed of factory automobiles that were perfectly capable of winning on the race track Saturday night and then driving the family to church Sunday morning. Among the most famous of these cars were the Hertz rental Mustangs. More than one wannabe racecar driver on a tight budget found it easier to rent a racer from Hertz for the weekend than it was to buy or build his own car!

Chrysler was another big name in those days when gasoline flowed like water and nobody knew what the ozone layer was, much less worried about it. Plymouth Barracudas, Dodge Chargers and RTs, and other factory muscle cars were big sellers. The museum holds one very rare early factory racecar, a 1957 Dodge D501, one of only one hundred cars built for NASCAR and drag racing use. The beautiful original car is one of only four still known to exist today. With its factory-installed 354 cubic inch Hemi engine, dual quad carburetors, oversize brakes and special racing suspension, the car was pretty expensive in its day, selling for $3,314! Try buying something today you can drive right from the showroom to the strip for that kind of money!

The museum complex has two display buildings. Next to the drag racing exhibits, in the second building, is a very impressive collection of antique and classic cars, all in original condition or beautifully restored. Displayed along with the vintage automobiles are automotive memorabilia dating back nearly 100 years.

Here you will find the best examples to be seen anywhere of early coupes, roadsters, and convertibles. Remember the classic beach song Surf City and the line “I’ve got a ’34 wagon, and we call it a woodie. It’s not very cherry, it’s an oldie, but a goodie”? The museum has its own 1934 Ford Woody station wagon. In its life, the car was used on a wealthy estate back East, before being retired and eventually used as a chicken coop before Dave Walters and his son Dave Jr. acquired the old Ford and took on its restoration. The original wood had all rotted away, and even though Dave Walters had no woodworking experience, he lovingly created a new maple body that is just as beautiful as the original.

From Corvairs to Mustangs, Model Ts to roadsters, the entire history of American automobiles is on display in the museum, along with old gas pumps, oil company signs, a re-creation of Don Garlits’ original Tampa garage, and examples of every other automobile style you could ever think of. If you do not love classic cars when you enter, I bet you will be by the time you leave. And for younger generations who have never felt the thrill of straight pipes and raw horsepower, there is sure to be a touch of envy toward us “old timers” who remember when gas was cheap and cars were fast.

The Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is just south of Ocala on Interstate 75 at Exit 341, about an hour north of Orlando and Tampa. There is plenty of room to park any size RV. For more information, call 352-245-8661 or log onto the museum’s web site at www.garlits.com