Terry Earwood the "Can Do" Teacher

Terry Earwood may be the premier high-performance driving instructor and coach, tutoring countless road racers, police officers and enthusiasts. He is also a championship-winning Mopar® drag racer, a multiple-road race winner for Dodge, a stunt/precision driver for auto advertising, and once manager of the Gainesville drag strip. And, with his father, Charlie, two of the most-respected chief stewards in road racing.

Words: Roger Meiners

If you raced anywhere on the road courses of America during the last decades you heard his exhortations as he led drivers meetings each day. You laughed at his stories, and maybe cried a little if you had a chance to go up to the tower during a race event to experience his polite but devastating comments on your errant driving.

He started drag racing in 1970 and was successful right out of the burnout box. In 1971 he was the NHRA’s Southeast Division Super Stock champion and took runner-up in Super Stock at the NHRA U.S. Nationals in a HEMI® Challenger, then won the whole Super Stock thing at the 1973 Nationals in a HEMI Plymouth Barracuda. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996 in the NHRA’s Southeast Division.

That’s not all. According to the prestigious Road Racing Driver’s Club he is the IMSA Endurance Championship’s winningest driver with 30 victories between 1986 and 1994 (in Dodge vehicles)—and he won the 1996 Touring class championship. He also holds the series record for most starts (121), and he’s second in top-10 finishes. Along with brother, Steve, owner of the drag strip at Rockingham, N.C., he organized the first police pursuit driving schools. Later he was the chief instructor for the Skip Barber Racing School.

On top of all that, he’s a great speaker, breaking up audiences with his fast-paced hilarity, laced with outrageous one-liners in his distinctive Southern style.

Raised in Florida, Earwood, 62, ran his first race when he was 14. He snuck his dad’s sports car to the drag strip and won a trophy. It cost him a whipping, “but it was worth it,” he says.

In 1969, as a result of a promotional campaign by Earwood, Dodge announced sponsorship for his friend Bill Tanner, who was at that time one of the hottest Mopar drag racers in the Southeastern United States. Frank Wylie, Dodge brand’s PR manager, also hired Tanner to put on Safety and Performance Clinics on the East Coast for 1970.

“In January of ’70 we flew to Detroit and picked up two Plum Crazy HEMI Challengers, one four-speed and one automatic,” said Earwood, “and drove back in a snowstorm on bias-ply tires to Atlanta. They ran the four-speed in Pro Stock at the U.S. Nationals. Tanner couldn’t get the car down the strip. He kept missing shifts.

“Every time he missed a gear we bent the valves, so we (Terry and his brother Steve) spent all week long putting valves back in,” said Earwood. They showed up in the staging lanes at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning for the last day of qualifying.

“The first round they call is Pro Stock qualifying and nobody’s there but me and Steve—nobody to drive the car,” says Terry. He proceeds to get the Dodge into the field; 32nd out of a 32-car field. “So, Monday morning (Chrysler Engineers) Tom Hoover and Dave Koffel came by and said [to Tanner], ‘So now that you’re in the field, who is going to drive the car?’ And Tanner says, ‘Well, I feel like Terry deserves it.’” Earwood went a losing 10.19 in the first round against Lee Smith’s 9.99 in the Crazy ‘Cuda, but his career was jump started big time.

He charged back in 1971, driving Tanner’s ’70 HEMI Challenger, though it was now owned by Henry Hartkens, this time in Super Stock D Automatic, and won class against 28 other cars, including big names such as Nicopolis, Ostrich and Mancini. He beat Al Olster’s ex-Grumpy Jenkins big block Camaro in the final, earning kudos from Chrysler’s Dave Koffel. He said, “This will be a big payday, Mr. Earwood,” according to Terry. Then he proceeded to wade through the 16-car Super Stock field, but broke a valve in the final against Greg Charney.

Two years later Earwood came back for his greatest drag racing victory, driving for Bagwell. The winning car was the Steve Bagwell 1971 Dodge HEMI Challenger convertible, a real one that started life as an original black on black on black version.

He won 29 out of 41 races for Bagwell in his first year and went on to many more victories until his retirement in 1976—to go into teaching. Not what you think. Earwood would teach police officers how to do pursuit driving, something he had started when he managed the Gainesville drag strip.

The local police came out to borrow the parking lot for training. That led Earwood and his brother Steve to develop a pursuit driver training course for the state police. “Two cops and I flew out to the Pomona Fairgrounds where I had been for the Winternationals, to take a course put on by theL.A. County Sheriff’s Department. There was no police pursuit school this side of the Mississippi River at that time, so we were the first-ever police pursuit school in the South that I know of.”

Fast forward to 1976. The Road Atlanta road racing circuit hired Earwood to manage the new Georgia State Patrol driver training course at the Road Atlanta Driving Center. It evolved into a civilian course. “We had so many cops at the school go, ‘I wish my wife could go, or my brother, or my kids,’” he said. “So we thought we’d do a civilian version. We took off the blue light and siren and we were teaching Advanced Driver Training. In 1984, he took the curriculum to the Skip Barber Racing School.”

“The Skip Barber School was sponsored by Dodge for ten years,” he said. “We had Viper, Neon R/T, SRT4® and the Barber Dodge Race Series.

In 1987, Earwood went pro road racing. And why not? He was teaching it. Fellow Mopar drag racer Paul Rossi knew it and asked him to join his team—Paul Rossi Team Dodge, sponsored by Dodge Motorsports and Mopar Performance—and drive Shelby Turbos in the IMSA Firestone Firehawk Endurance Championship series. His first race was at his home track, Road Atlanta and he won it. “I thought, damn, it’s pretty easy. I found out later it’s not,” he said. The team went on to dominate for the rest of the ‘80s with Earwood and Garth Ullom winning multiple races and manufacturers championships.

“Pete Gladysz and his guys did the corresponding SCCA series,” said Earwood. “At the end of each season we would all get together and help the other organization win the championship. So Pete’s guys 
all came to help us at Sebring one year and brought their cars, and that’s how I met Gladysz, Neil Hanneman, Jack Broomall and those guys. And we went to Mid-Ohio one year to help them clinch the championship for Dodge.”

Besides teaching high-performance driving, Earwood is currently chief steward for the Dodge Viper Cup Presented by Pennzoil Ultra, the North American Road Racing Association’s US GT Championship and Whelen US Time Trial Championship.

He has not only lived a successful life as a racer, winning big races and championships on the track and on the strip, but he’s one of the best at showing you how to do it yourself.