(This is an article I did for the April 2006 issue of Mopar Muscle Magazine (PRIMEDIA PUBLICATIONS).  The subject of this article was a relative and close friend to my father.  I spent many weekends at the race track watching him as a child.)

Rotating the Earth a quarter-mile at a time

Drag racing changed drastically in the early 1970s.  One driver whose career mirrored those changes was the late Don Carlton.  He successfully drove for both Sox & Martin and Rod Shop, but Carlton will always be remembered as the pilot of the legendary Motown Missile and Mopar Missile Pro Stock cars.

Carlton’s racing career started like the careers of many drivers – in his spare time.  But the hobby for average guys who labored over their cars after putting in eight hours at work quickly evolved into a mainstream sporting event with sizable corporate sponsorships and previously unthinkable amounts of money.

Even though drag racing existed since the 1930s, when racers gathered in California’s Mojave Desert to test their mechanical and driving skills, it didn’t get organized until the 1950s.  When the first drag strip opened at an old airfield in California in 1950, modern day drag racing was born.  During the 1950s and 60s, it was still viewed more as a “pastime” than a “sport.”

Carlton’s racing career began while he was still working in the furniture factories near his home in Lenoir, NC.  Like many drag racers of that era, he put in long hours at the factory before going home to work well into the night on his cars.  Weekends for Carlton could include as many as four races, many of which were hundreds of miles from home.

The typical drag racer of the late 1960s spent a considerable amount of his own money building and rebuilding his car, only to spend more of his money taking that car to the track.  Every now and then, he might have won a race and recovered a small portion of what he had invested.  It was not a sport that made people wealthy.

According to Don Carlton’s son, Donny Carlton, things started to change during the 1967 and 1968 racing seasons.  “Before that time, a guy working out of his own basement or garage could show up and be competitive,” Donny said.  “By 1970, it was very difficult for the weekend guys to compete with the full-time racing teams.”

The changes in drag racing were obvious to fans and racers alike.  Racing events that had been sponsored by small, locally owned businesses (primarily auto dealerships) were now being sponsored by large national corporations.  Team sponsorship was following suit, and cars that once had “Ernie’s Garage” on the side were now sporting beer logos.  It didn’t take the major auto manufacturers long to recognize the potential.

With a major sponsor of his own, Chrysler, Don Carlton left his job at the furniture factory and became a full-time drag racer.  He was now able to implement many of the things he wanted to try with his cars, but couldn’t afford in the past.  The relationship with the factory allowed access to professional automotive engineers from Chrysler’s racing and testing programs.  With a new team, new cars and corporate funding behind him, Carlton was winning championships, setting records and making a living doing what he loved to do.

Joe Pappas worked directly for Carlton from January of 1973 until the end of 1974.  Pappas explained that while Chrysler provided many of the engineers and technical experts on the Motown Missile and Mopar Missile programs, Carlton – as a contractor to Chrysler – also hired many of the team members personally.

“In the early days,” Pappas said, “the drag racers were just out there developing as much horse power as they could by the seat of their pants.  After 1970, it became both a business and a science – and it changed the sport dramatically.”

When large companies invest huge amounts of money in something, it is always with the expectation that there will be a return on that investment.  If wins, championships and record-breaking runs were the measuring sticks, the Motown Missile and Mopar Missile programs were blue-chip investments for the folks at Chrysler.

Before his death in 1977, Carlton had won six major NHRA events and had earned at least one major title – including national championships – each year for five consecutive years.  Following a particularly dominant season, one well-known magazine reported “the earth rotates a quarter-mile every time Don Carlton drops the hammer.”

Dick Oldfield, who was also a key part of the legendary Motown Missile and Mopar Missile programs, said the team relied heavily on data to ensure consistent performance.  “Our instrumentation included a variety of sensors and transmitters in the car,” Oldfield explained.

“We had the ability to see everything that happened in the car sequentially, from the launch through the finish line.  That was 35 years ago and I don’t think most of the teams can do that even today,” said Oldfield.

Other tests the team conducted involved taping small pieces of string all over the car to monitor airflow and resistance.  Oldfield was often tasked with taking pictures while hanging out the window of a car driving alongside the Motown Missile and Mopar Missile.

The innovative Motown Missile and Mopar Missile programs are widely recognized for being among the earliest to use computers.  The team also did extensive development and testing with ClutchFlite transmissions and worked on both two- and six-speed configurations.  The infamous “Don Carlton Wire Car” utilized titanium and magnesium components from the suspension and axle tubes down to the nuts, bolts and pins.  Because the chassis ended at the rear wheel housing, the rear end of the Wire Car was literally held together with wires.  Much of what they did was considered light years ahead of its time.

The team’s technical philosophy was simple; eliminate all variables.  By knowing the oil pressure, temperature, airflow, RPMs and everything else that could possibly be monitored by computer, the crew could easily determine the best configuration for the car at any given time.  Testing and re-testing was the foundation of the entire program.  Although the program focused on gathering information about the cars, the team also relied heavily on Carlton’s skill in the driver’s seat.

“My dad was never boastful,” Donny explained.  “He would have quickly pointed out that there were ten or twelve other drivers out there in the early 1970s – guys like Ronnie Sox and Dick Landy – who were all equally talented.  Dad never thought he was doing anything new or different from behind the wheel.

“He was confident in his driving – but he knew he could beat those guys with technology.  Dad always believed it was the technology that won races.”

Joe Pappas agreed with Donny Carlton’s assessment of his father, but was quick to point out that Don’s skill behind the wheel was a significant factor in winning races.  “I watched a lot of drivers and I worked with a lot of drivers,” said Pappas.  “Don Carlton was by far the best driver I ever saw – ever.”

“He believed in the technology – and that was very important,” Pappas continued.  “But as we worked to eliminate variables, we knew the one place most racing teams had huge variables was in the cockpit.  Not us.  When Don Carlton was behind the wheel, he was so methodical, we knew we’d get exactly what we asked for from him.”

According to Pappas, Don Carlton had the unique ability to duplicate a run flawlessly many times in a row, a critical part of the team’s testing program.  If the engineers asked Carlton to shift to third gear at very specific RPM, Carlton would shift at precisely that RPM without any variation, and – according to Pappas – Carlton could do that all afternoon.

“For every one run we did at the track on race day, we did 50 test runs in the weeks leading up to the race,” Pappas said.  “We were always well-prepared and we always knew what we had to do before we ever got to the track.  Knowing what Don was going to do was as important to the plan as knowing how the engine would perform.  Fortunately, we always knew how Don would perform.”

Because Don Carlton believed races were won and lost before a car was ever staged, his pit operations were noticeably different than most racing teams.  Don and his team were more like a surgical staff than a pit crew.  Cursing, yelling and throwing damaged components – all commonplace with many racing teams – was not part of what they did. If it weren’t for the abundance of grease and the absence of surgical masks, an engine overhaul could have easily been mistaken for a delicate surgery.

Everything the team did was deliberate and precise.  Under normal circumstances, the crew rarely did more than minor adjustments once they arrived at the track – all of the major work had been done days, weeks and months before during the design and testing stages of their comprehensive preparation.  Carlton’s team was different, and it was easy to recognize what they were doing was entirely unique at the time.

The ultra high-tech Motown Missile and Mopar Missile programs relied on a large number of specialists.  The team, at various times, included Joe Pappas, Dick Oldfield, Clyde Hodges, Ted Spehar, Tom Hoover, Mike Koran, Tom Coddington, Al Adams, Len Bartush and Ron Killen.  Each contributed a special expertise, and the results were consistently successful.

While Don Carlton recognized the value the trained engineers brought to his team, he also treasured the “roll-up-your-sleeves” approach of his long-time friend, Clyde Hodges, who had been with Carlton from the beginning.  Also a Lenoir, NC native, Hodges was a self-taught mechanic who knew his way around an engine and could be relied upon for ideas that the “educated” mechanics were quick to dismiss.

“There were many times that my dad and Clyde were told something simply would not work,” Donny recalled.  “Some of the things they wanted to do looked impossible on paper – but they did those things anyhow.  Sometimes the engineers were right, but many times those ideas worked, and they worked well.”  Hodges passed away in 2004.

In keeping with the “eliminate all variables” technological philosophy, the Motown and Mopar Missile programs also relied on sciences not normally associated with drag racing.  At a time when many racing teams could barely afford a trailer to haul their car to the track, Carlton’s race-day equipment included a fully equipped weather van.

“We had this cargo van full of weather monitoring equipment,” said Pappas.  “It was a full-scale weather station and it told us how much moisture was in the air, what the track temperature was and, basically, what the weather was going to do to the car’s performance that day.  No one else was doing that kind of thing in the 1970s.”

The introduction of fully staffed racing teams, a never-ending supply of components and large-scale testing programs forever changed the daily routine for professional drivers.  While he no longer juggled his time between a furniture factory and the garage, and the Chrysler sponsorship put significant money behind the program, there were some aspects of drag racing that never changed at all for Don Carlton.

“As the money came into drag racing, it started to change some of the drivers and racing teams,” Donny Carlton said.  “Some of the guys were really concerned about who had the biggest trailer and the prettiest paint job – many of the teams went Hollywood.

“My dad was never into all of that.  He couldn’t have cared less about the politics, the huge trailers and the fancy jackets.  To him, it was all about being the fastest, and a lot of people loved him for that.”

Although Carlton never viewed drag racing as a popularity contest, he was a track celebrity by the mid-1970s.  Recognized as both a mechanical genius and a top-notch driver, he consistently won national titles and set the standard for speed and elapsed time in the Pro Stock category.  His match-ups with Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins and Don “Dyno Don” Nicholson were the stuff of drag racing legends.

In 1977, following a few seasons competing in (and completely dominating) the Comp Eliminator and Sportsman categories because of rule changes and uncertainty about the Chrysler Racing Program, Carlton was back at the top of his beloved Pro Stock game.  Coming off a 1976 national title win at Indianapolis, the team was busy fine-tuning a 1976 Dodge Colt that looked like the ticket to another dominant season.

“We had just come off about four or five days of intense testing in Milan, Michigan – about an hour outside of Detroit,” Oldfield recalled.  “It was Tuesday afternoon, July 5, 1977.  We’d been running that Colt all day with the temperature well above 90-degrees for about the fourth day in a row.

“It was a normal test run.  Don launched the car and everything looked perfect until it sounded like his foot came off the pedal – the car just started coasting.  Then it started to swerve and it dug in.  The car rolled and he sustained a serious head injury.”

Don Carlton, who was only 36 years old, never regained consciousness following the crash.  A thorough investigation of the car he was driving did not identify any mechanical problems that would have contributed to the crash.  Crewmembers who were at the track that day believe Don Carlton simply passed out from dehydration and the stifling heat.  Following the investigation, the wrecked 1976 Dodge Colt was buried in a landfill.

At the time of his death, Carlton was so far ahead in the lead for the Grace Cup, the points program that determined the NHRA’s Champion, his lead stood for months before it was overtaken.

Today, Donny Carlton runs a machine shop out of the building that was his father’s garage in Lenoir and has partnered with Gary Olliver (formerly of Tri-City Buggy) to build racing chassis for weekend racers.  So far, the chassis business has sold more than 1,700 racing chassis.

Now 43 years old and the father of three, Donny has a trophy case in his office (built by his grandfather, Dewey Carlton) with a large collection of national championship trophies and awards bearing his dad’s name.  Donny’s son, Don Allen Carlton, now ten years old, is a huge racing fan and plans to someday be the third generation to stand in a winner’s circle.   Donny’s sister Robin also lives nearby with her three children.

“Dad was a one-of-a-kind,” Donny said.  “He was so good at what he did but he always stayed very humble about it.

“He absolutely loved racing and he would have told you that he was lucky to have been able to make a comfortable living doing what he loved.  I know that he would still be racing every weekend — even if he had never made a dime at it.”

Donny Carlton raced stock cars for a few years, but has not been involved in drag racing since his father’s death.  “They have a Don Carlton Memorial Race every year at the Wilkesboro track here in North Carolina,” Donny said.  “I’d like to go to it sometime, but it’s just not the same going to the races without my dad.”

Most drag racing fans from the 1970s would agree with Donny Carlton – going to the races just isn’t the same without his dad.

All text and photos property of RBL.  All rights reserved 2006.