Grassroots Engineering

Words: Roger Meiners

For every famous Ramcharger such as Tom Hoover and Jim Thornton there are supporting engineers, product planners and PR people you never hear about who are doing important work to make big headlines for Chrysler. One such engineer is Pete Dawson, who ramrodded one of the most famous accomplishments in Chrysler history—the HEMI®-powered Goldenrod’s 409 mph land speed record. We ran into Pete a couple of years ago, when the restored Goldenrod Bonneville streamliner was unveiled at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich. We were surprised to see Pete there because we knew him only as director of Ford Power Products in the 1980s. What we didn’t know was that Pete was first an engineer at Chrysler during the heyday of racing in the 1950s and 1960s. He had left the company, as many of the old racers did—including Hoover and Thornton, when the competition programs were shelved at the beginning of the emissions era in the early 1970s. It was a time much like the present, when engineering turned away from high performance toward the environmental challenges of the day.

Dawson went through the Chrysler Institute with Tom Hoover and others who would later form the Ramchargers. Though he wasn’t a member, he shared a garage with Hoover and another Chrysler racer named Ray Fales. The Ramchargers started their Super Stock program at the garage with the car they received from Dodge PR. Herman Mozer was a later tenant.

Pete went to Chrysler’s Marine and Industrial Division, at Marysville, Mich., near Port Huron. He worked in sales and then later moved to engineering. While Dawson was there, the first Chrysler drag racing engines were being built in the plant—the Max Wedge 413 cid powerplants that put Mopar® on the map. These cars were made available to many of the top racers of the day, but Pete figured that the average Joe wanted to race with the rare parts, too. He went to his boss and suggested that Marine and Industrial offer Max Wedge stuff by mail order. Here’s how he tells the story:

There were a number of unique parts for the 413 drag race engine—the camshaft, the chrome valve covers, the two 4-bbl manifold, headers, windage tray, a lotta stuff. My boss said, “OK, what do you need to get started?” and I told him I needed to run an ad in Hot Rod Magazine, and I needed a little brochure.

He called over the controller, a nice guy named Ken Templin. Ken wanted to know how we were going to pay for all this. I said, “Well, I’m going to charge a quarter for the brochure.” He thought that was OK, but wanted to know what was going to happen to those quarters. I told him we would have the orders sent to Chrysler Corporation, Marine and Industrial, Department T. ”And the T is for Templin,” I said. “That’s you. And you take the quarters out and give me the order, and I’ll mail the brochure.” He said OK and promptly forgot about it.

I put the ad in Hot Rod Magazine. Of course it took eight weeks for it to appear in the magazine [the May 1962 issue], but by that time we had all the parts made up in groups, so that when a guy ordered a valve cover he also got a valve cover gasket and the chrome nuts and everything he needed. And so we had that all put together—24 or 28 packages. Mopar didn’t do things that way at the time. The customer had to know what was needed and all the parts had to be ordered separately. Instead, we were going to send the guy the whole package and he didn’t have to know all those parts. We knew what he needed—and we were going to give instant service. The first day after the magazine hit the newsstands with the ad in it, the mailman came in with a duffel bag full of letters and asked, “Where is Department T?” Well, Ken’s secretary worked all day long opening these letters and taking the quarters out. And his phone wasn’t getting answered and all the stuff that she had to type—that wasn’t getting done either! So pretty soon Templin’s standing over my desk, which is out in the bull pen. He says, “You know these letters that got these quarters in them? I’m going to send them back to you and you can open them.”

I said, “Wait a minute—you didn’t trust me before; why are you trusting me now with these quarters? How do you know they are going to get where God intended them?” And he smiled at me and turned around and he said, “Well, you’re right. I’ve got to figure out a better way.” The next day there were two of those duffel bags full of letters sitting on this girl’s desk and you couldn’t even find her! So it was a sensation.

We’d been doing this for two or three months and it was going along pretty well and everything had simmered down and the quarters were flowing in and the brochures were going out and the orders were coming in and it was slick as hell! And we could handle it. It was our kind of business.

Well … the long and short of it was Mopar heard about it and we had a come to Jesus meeting at Chrysler headquarters. And I was sent over there. Cahill and Reeker were in the meeting I think, because they knew about it. I had talked with them—they liked the program because all the parts were in the box.

Mopar said the charter for this corporation only allows Mopar to sell parts. So we gotta take that over. And they did. But after a while Reeker and Cahill ended up back in the performance parts picture and appointed a guy named Brian Schram, who had been the parts guy at the Lynch Road garage. He was told to put the parts packages together and get the program going. He stayed 20 years and built a big business.

By that time Dawson was at Product Planning, working for Bob Rodger and doing racing programs. He worked briefly on an Indy car program that was shelved before it got off the ground. He also helped get 426 HEMI production moved to Marine and Industrial from Trenton Engine. There were problems at Trenton. The engine was assembled on Saturdays on a short “push” line with crews that were never the same, week to week, so there were quality problems. Dawson helped set up the process at Marine and Industrial. The work force was enthusiastic about it, hand-building each engine. Each block had the engine builder’s initials stamped on it.

Another program was a fast-shifting 4-speed for drag racing. Dawson worked with the British BRM grand prix car company and its chief engineer, Tony Rudd on the racing transmission project. He sent ten 4-speed transmissions to BRM to be modified. They changed first gear to a higher ratio and put in spur gears and dog clutches, such as used with the BRM grand prix cars. These gearboxes were then made available to top teams. They could be shifted much faster, even without using the clutch. These transmissions were used for a while until Chrysler Engineering created the Slick Shift, which was a standard Chrysler gearbox without synchronizers and with the dog clutches modified by removing every other tooth. This modification was described in a dealer bulletin so amateur racers could also have the benefit of fast shifting.

Chrysler got involved in the Goldenrod land speed program when George Hurst brought the Summers Brothers to Detroit to find sponsorship money and engine help. Chrysler agreed to an engine deal and Dawson was appointed to shepherd it. The four 426 HEMI engines were modified with special fuel injection systems and dry sumps and produced around 600 hp on gasoline. The result was a 409 mph record that still stands. Also with Dawson at Bonneville was George Wallace, the performance simulation genius at Chrysler. They also took a prototype Plymouth Satellite with them. It was the first car to have the Street HEMI installed. They took a couple of different rear end ratios with them and had Bob Summers drive it to a 164 mph stock car speed record while they were at it.

Dawson spent 17 years at Chrysler. “He was a great guy and a big idea man,” said Bob Cahill. “He had lots of ideas; some were crazy, but most were bright.” Maybe his brightest idea was the high-performance parts program. Was it the beginning of what is now Mopar Performance?