Don Garlits’ Triumphant Return to England

Text by Tony Thacker

Garlits, Gar, Big Daddy, call him what you will, the man is a drag racing icon—NHRA’s numero uno. He won his first organized race with the first car he built in 1955. Sixty years on, he’s still Big Daddy to many people, me included.

I was just a snot-nosed kid when Garlits first came to England, but I had a paper route and a Sunday newspaper called The People sponsored The First British International Drag Festival; so, I knew all about it from reading the papers I was supposed to be delivering.

Garlits’ surfacing was bullet quick: He won that first race in a home-built flathead Ford V-8-powered ’27 T roadster-cum-slingshot that went 108 mph in 12.1 seconds. That crude car was quickly followed by the first in a long line of Swamp Rats, and within three years he was racing professionally. He won the Florida State Championships in 1956, turning 10.9 at 135 mph. By 1960, Swamp Rat II was blown on nitro running in the low eights. In 1957, he was the first to exceed 170 mph; the next year, he was the first over 180 mph. The “Wynns” kept a comin’ (pun intended) and Garlits’ reputation grew along with his consistency.

As we have shared here previously, in 1963, Dante Duce shipped the Mooneyes dragster to England and was quickly followed by Mickey Thompson. They weren’t allowed any side-by-side racing (not British, you know) but they put on a hell of a show, and the Brits got to see what drag racing was all about. Consequently, the newly formed British Drag Racing Association, with Sydney Allard as president, organized the festival and invited Garlits as well as Tony Nancy, Tommy Ivo, Dave Stickler, KS Pitman, George Montgomery, Bob Keith, Ronnie Sox and Doug Church. Dante Duce returned as team captain.

A series of six events was held throughout three consecutive weekends, this time with the Americans allowed to race side by side. The first event was held at Blackbushe, a disused airfield southwest of London on Sept. 19, 1964. A crowd of 20,000 came and nearly saw nothing. The British sanctioning body, the Royal Automobile Club, almost didn’t allow the cars to run because of their sponsor decals. Many believe that this was the turning point in the British allowing advertising on any race car.

Ivo went first and set the pace with a “Barnstorming” 8.46 and a speed of 184 mph. However, Garlits in the Wynn’s Jammer Swamp Rat IV went on to win with an 8.28 at 191 mph—the fastest speed ever to date in England. Remember, these were old World War II airstrips. At the time, Garlits commented, “Back then, a lot of our tracks were still airports, just like England. There were some uneven surfaces, but it was pretty close to racing at home. I had just cracked 200 mph in the U.S. and was about to run 197 mph overseas.”

Garlits was consistent throughout the events and won most of the races, however, the final round was back at Blackbushe where Ivo apparently defeated him with a 8.27 at 191 mph to Garlits quicker but losing 8.19 at 196 mph. Garlits contends in his book, King of the Dragsters, that Ivo’s win was arranged because he had won too many races. Garlits was awarded The People Challenge Cup, but Ivo got the last laugh by affixing a British learner driver sticker behind the rear tire of Garlits’ dragster and another stuck on the front wing.

Interestingly, when you study the photos, Don is sometimes seen running sans front bodywork, apparently to counteract strong cross winds at the exposed airfields.

Garlits was unable to make the 1965 festival, however, he was invited back to England in 1976 and again the following year to run at Santa Pod Raceway. It was in England, while receiving an award from racing driver Sir Sterling Moss, that Garlits got the idea for the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing: Garlits.com/museum.

Fifty years on from those heady days when British motorsports would change forever, Don was invited back to England to the famed Goodwood Festival of Speed. For those who don’t know, the Festival of Speed is essentially a hill climb up the 1.16-mile drive of the Earl of March’s 12,000-acre estate in the south of England. Goodwood is also home to a horse race course and an old Grand Prix road race course that hosts the annual Goodwood Revival in September: Goodwood.com.

For safety reasons, the hill climb is not quite as balls-out as it used to be when Nick Heidfeld set the track record of 41.6 seconds in 1999; however, it’s still an exciting spectacle, especially when Americans like Ron Hope in Rat Trap and Bob Riggle in the Hurst Hemi Under Glass negotiate the wriggly hill. This year, of course, it was Big Daddy and Swamp Rat 1’s turn.

Unfortunately, Don didn’t have the greatest weekend because of a dropped valve, nevertheless, he managed a typical racer’s fix with a Sprite can, saying, “I used the material from the Sprite can because it was very thin and I needed to block off the dead cylinder, which had a hole in the combustion chamber. I used Fixodent to hold the piece of aluminum between the manifold and the intake gasket while I reinstalled the intake manifold.”

The “Spritely” fix apparently worked, and Don went on to close the event with plenty of smoke on Sunday afternoon, however, Big will be back. He received the Mopar President’s Award in March for his 60 years as a Mopar Ambassador and will be presenting Mopar with the Lucas Oil Global Achievement Award at this year’s British Drag Racing Hall of Fame Gala awards dinner. If it hadn’t been for guys like Don Garlits, there probably would not be a British Drag Racing Hall of Fame. Thanks, Don, for 60 great years.

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