The Women of Mopar® Drag Racing

NHRA drag racing is one of the very few major sports where female competitors go head-to-head with their male counterparts—and win.

Words: Roger Meiners

In 1952 Chrysler Chief Engineer James C. Zeder called them “the hot-rod boys.” He was talking about the grassroots racers who were running the newly-introduced Chrysler “Hemispherical” V-8 engine—the first-generation HEMI.® Chrysler was on a traditional course with the HEMI, “one of orderly progress with no fireworks,” he said. But then the engineers met the hot rodders—“or rather they adopted us with all the gusto attending induction into any other tribe of wild men.” One can only imagine Zeder’s astonishment when he witnessed what these shade-tree mechanics were doing with his 180-horsepower engine. They were going 200 mph at Bonneville, running nitro on the new drag strips in California and cramming the big V-8 into unlikely places such as Model A and Model B Ford roadsters.

Said Zeder, “It was a pleasure and, in many ways, an inspiration to meet a group of men in whom are rekindled the enthusiasms of an earlier era; men to whom owning and driving a car are sport and adventure, and not merely a chore inherited by default from the streetcar motorman. Nor has the association been technically unprofitable. The boys may not always have the solution to the differential equations, and are sometimes impatient of questions involving ‘why,’ but they have had the opportunity and the interest to find out ‘how’ and many of their answers are remarkably good.”

The “boys” included smart guys such as Ray Brown, who “engineered” a 5-liter version of the 331 cid HEMI in 1951 with the help of fuel-injection guru Stu Hilborn and camshaft genius Chet Herbert to go 198 mph in 1952 at Bonneville. Meanwhile, drag racing was just getting started when the HEMI was introduced and racers discovered that it could produce way more horsepower than the then-prevalent Ford Flathead V-8. The reason: way better breathing through the big valves and straight-through intake and exhaust ports. The Chrysler HEMI responded astoundingly well to traditional hot-rodding techniques, such as increased compression, bigger valves and ports, more carburetors and optimized valve timing. But the biggest hit came from the use of special fuels, such as methanol and nitromethane—and forced induction (supercharging).

The HEMI was slow to be adopted by drag racers. Not because it didn’t have the power. Rather it was because it had the power. Too much power. The hot-rodders did not yet know how to use the superior power of the HEMI engine without their tires literally going up in smoke. Art Chrisman and Bean Bandits’ Joachin Arnett tried dual rear wheels in the early 1950s and most racers ran bald tires, but those solutions were not effective. By 1953 the So-Cal Speed Shop in Burbank, Calif. began selling “asphalt slicks” and others started selling tires re-capped with slick treads. Gradually, the drag cars were reconfigured to move the engines way back in the chassis to get more weight on the rear wheels, pushing the driver even further back until he was positioned behind the rear axle. This “slingshot” layout became standard in around 1956. In 1955, the first NHRA Nationals saw a Ford Flathead in Calvin Rice’s winning dragster. Rice also ran a Chrysler engine in the car, but chose the Flathead because he could get the power down and produce a quicker E.T.

The Chrysler HEMI won out over all the other possibilities when good drag slicks finally became available. One of the Chrysler-engine dragsters, a Scotty Fenn-built TE-440 owned by Cliff Bedwell and driven by Emery Cook of San Diego, began a march toward the stratosphere with speeds progressing all the way up to 167 mph on “fuel” (well, it was the stratosphere in 1956). The speed was so fast that the NHRA and several California tracks banned fuel—methanol with nitromethane—limiting propellant strictly to pump gasoline. Later Cook went 168 and the Speed Sport roadster turned 169 in Arizona.

Then cam-grinder Ed Iskenderian got everyone’s attention when he placed a full page ad in the February issue of Hot Rod Magazine declaring that “Don G. Garlits, driving his stock bore and stroke 1957 Chrysler … [set] a new Top Time of 176.40 mph and an ET of 8.79 sec.” at Brooksville, Fla. More good publicity for the Chrysler HEMI.

Another top Chrysler runner was the late Serop “Setto” Postoian of Detroit, Mich. He barnstormed a somewhat primitive slingshot of his own construction in the Midwest and East, and met Cook and Garlits at Cordova, Ill in a 1957 shootout at the ATAA World Series of Drag Racing. Garlits famously learned how to tune for nitro from Cook, then beat him in the semifinals, but lost to Postoian in the finals. Postoian was every bit as good as Garlits on the track, but was far less well known. His widow, Christine, told us that Setto was not a promoter like Garlits. “After Setto beat Garlits at the World Series we were leaving the track and I noticed Don at the pay phone. I knew he was talking to the press and that the big news would be that he beat Emery Cook and not that Setto beat Garlits. Sure enough.” Setto retired from racing after a horrific crash at Detroit Dragway, while Garlits went on to become the greatest drag racer of the century in his Chrysler HEMI-powered dragsters. In fact, the Chrysler HEMI—the Gen I 392 and the Gen II 426—was the star of drag racing throughout its history, and the HEMI configuration continues in that role today.