Yahoo Autos We Sit Down and Chat with Don Garlits, 17-Time Champion Who Changed the World of Drag Racing
C/D: Your father was an electrical engineer and your stepfather was a dairy farmer. How did they each affect you?
DG: The work ethic and all that came from my stepfather, because I worked on the dairy with him morning and night before and after school for eight solid years-from the time I was 10.
C/D: And your father's natural abilities?
DG: As a little boy, I never liked toys. I wanted the real thing. I got a lot of whippings for tearing up good tools trying to make things in the shop. I didn't want to play, I wanted to be the real deal.
C/D: After high school, you went to work as a bookkeeper in the Maas Brothers department store in Tampa. Did you like that?
DG: It was okay. I was really surprised when my stepfather said, "I can tell you're not happy in your job." And I looked at him and said, "Alex, what are you talking about?" I always called him by his first name. "Look at me. I have nice, clean clothes on, and on top of that, I'm making more money than you." He said: "When you do what you love, you'll be a success. You love cars and that's what you should be in." So, I gave them my two weeks' notice and I told my girlfriend. She was a clerk there. She never spoke to me again.
C/D: Ever think you should've stayed at Maas Brothers?
DG: Yeah, when I got nearly burned to death in '59 in Chester, South Carolina, with the fire. The doctor told me I was going to have to have my hands taken off or I was going to die. When they moved me to Tampa General, all the way there during the train ride, I thought what a terrible mistake I had made not being a bookkeeper. I was going there to die.
C/D: Was the fire your most horrific moment in a dragster?
DG: I couldn't get out. I had on no gloves and no face mask. I finally got out of the car and on both of my hands, the outer skin just slipped off them and fell to the ground. It was terrifying.
C/D: Worse than when your transmission blew apart in 1970 at Lions Drag Strip in California? That led to you building the revolutionary rear-engined car.
DG: I knew that I wasn't going to die in that one. But I wasn't going to have a piece of foot. I was just infuriated. My goal then was to put the slingshot dragster out of business. Because about six of my friends had been killed in 'em leading up to that. And [rear-engined dragsters] haven't killed six people in the 47 years since.
C/D: A few years ago, you built an all-electric dragster. Are you still working on that?
DG: That was Swamp Rat 37. And I have retired it. I'm building Swamp Rat 38 as we speak. We're doing the body panels right now. The chassis is complete. An electric dragster feels just like a fuel dragster when it leaves. The problem is that it doesn't keep accelerating through the lights, like a fuel dragster, to reach 300. Mine has only reached 185 mph. I'm trying to go 200.
C/D: In 1994, you ran for Congress as a Republican. Was that fun?
DG: Frustrating. Politics is so bad. They do such nasty, dirty, underhanded things to try to get elected. And it works, in a lot of cases. I won the absentee ballots by 60 percent-the people who weren't subjected to all that bullshit on the TV and the radio. I'm so glad I didn't win because I probably wouldn't even be here today. Because of the sedentary life, sitting around eating all the fancy food, drinking, and doing what you've got to do with the lobbyists and all that crap. I'm happy it didn't work. It is what it is.
C/D: Your wife, Pat, passed away in 2014. How important was she to your success?
DG: She didn't give me any flak. She never said, "We can't do that. I want a new fur coat." Or "I need a new Corvette." She supported my racing. Way back in 1953, they played what they called "paycheck poker" at the American Can, where I worked that winter. All 450 of us walked in every Friday morning and put a dollar in the kitty, and the guy with the best poker hand took the $450. The bill's serial number represented a poker hand. And I won it. And I took it home and put it on the table. More money than we had ever seen in our lives. I said, "Honey, we can get those two lots down the street we've been looking at to build our house on." We were living in a crap, cracker-box rental. And my wife said to me: "No, honey, why don't you get that Mercury motor and that crankshaft you've been wanting so bad for your dragster? 'Cause the Korean War is going on and you might be called up any minute. And you might not come back." It brings tears to my eyes right now just telling you about it. She was one super little woman.
C/D: Is there anything you'd have done differently?
DG: Yeah, I did a few foolish things that young men do. Personal stuff. That's about all.
From the December 2018 issue
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