Press On Regardless

How a Michigan cop sent a shock wave through the 1970s Rally world.

Words: Roger Meiners

It was not supposed to happen. A truck wins a World Rally event. Nobody expected such a thing, much less believed it when they heard that a Jeep® Wagoneer, driven by a Dearborn, Mich., cop was the first American car to win an F.I.A. World Rally Championship event. It happened in 1972 at the Press-On-Regardless (POR) rally in the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan.

The cop, Sgt. Gene Henderson, with navigator Ken Pogue, beat the World Championship team of Italian Lancias, and all the other rally cars, to become the first Americans to win a world championship event. The Jeep was the first American “car” to do the same. Why such a big deal? The Jeep was a big piece of American iron, not a lightweight, nervous, highly-tuned rallying machine. And the Jeep was driven by Americans, not the high-strung European rally specialists. This was big news back in 1972.

Henderson, with the Dearborn, Mich., police force was also the most successful American rally driver of his time. The POR was his home event, so if anybody was going to break through against the Europeans, it was him.

Henderson started his driving career as a way to improve his skills as a police officer. He went to the nearby Waterford Hills, Mich., road course in 1959—in the family Volvo 544. He also drove his first POR that year—also in the Volvo, but didn’t finish. He kept working on his driving skills, many times practicing on snow-covered parking lots close to home and work. He rapidly improved, and then graduated to more specialized road racing machinery, stepping up briefly to professional road racing in the Trans Am series. He adopted rallying as a way to continue competition in the winter.

Mike Van Loo, a veteran of the SCCA rally scene, and long-time friend of Henderson experienced Gene’s driving ability many times. “His incredible experience made him fast right out of the box,” said Van Loo. “The younger, less experienced, drivers had to get up to speed, but Gene had already opened up a lead.” When the young guns got going, Henderson was far enough ahead to hold on under their onslaught.

In 1961, Henderson and Chrysler engineer Scott Harvey, Sr., were co-chairmen for the POR and Gene got even more involved in the big time rally scene, winning the 1963 event in a factory-sponsored Chrysler 300, on a team of three cars put together by Harvey. Scott was a racing driver and a driving force in Mopar® rally racing history—and in road racing under his Team Starfish banner. That team took Chrysler into the TransAm series in 1966 with a driver named Richard Petty. But that’s another story.

In 1964 Henderson shared a V8 Valiant with Harvey in the 1964 Monte Carlo event, finishing fifth in class. Harvey put the Valiant team together and engineered the car with the V8 engine and the one-off four-wheel-disc brake package. Chrysler France got the brakes homologated for the Monte Carlo event. The cars also had skid plates and chassis reinforcements originally specified for Valiant convertibles.

Henderson didn’t give up road racing completely, though, winning ten of twelve national SCCA races in 1967, but he also won the Press-On-Regardless rally again that year. Then in 1968 he won his class in the Shell 4000 TransCanada Rally, driving a Plymouth Barracuda. His friend and co-competitor Harvey won overall in a Barracuda that year. The ‘Cudas were even more “engineered” than the 1964 Valiants. Everything was special on these cars.

Henderson ran with several teams during the next few years and finally landed with Jeep for the 1972 season and the big international win at the POR in the Jeep he called Moby Dick. The next year he managed a two-car Jeep Wagoneer team in the ProRally championship, with himself as one of the drivers. He finished second in the championship to old friend Harvey.

In 1974 Henderson brought a highly modified Jeep Cherokee to the ProRally fray. He won four of seven events (and finished second in the other three) in the 320-horsepower beast, called “Running Bear,” and took the championship. His exploits in rallying led to his induction into the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame that year.

Henderson retired from the police force in 1976 to run his rally equipment business, Competition Limited, which he founded in 1969. He also slowed down a bit on his competition program, passing the torch to his sons Garry and Mark.

He passed away in 2005, not soon to be forgotten by the world of rallying or law enforcement.