A century ago, breakneck speed was defined as 40 mph in a Model T Ford. As horsepower increased, so did the potential for higher speed, and with it came the new thrill of sheer acceleration. It’s a physical rush, but if you are the pilot, whether of a jet plane or a motorcar, high speed also demands intense concentration in the moment.
One facet of the quest for speed is on display at the Harley-Davidson Museum in a new exhibition, “Drag Racing: America’s Fast Time.” The exhibit takes the viewer through the origins and evolution of the sport (and technology) of drag racing through informative wall panels and videos. The heart of the exhibit is the hardware—the two- and four-wheeled buggies that propel racers forward over flat surfaces. Today’s Top Fuel machines can top 320 mph in a quarter-mile run. Appropriately, the exhibit is arrayed inside the Museum’s Garage, a structure whose name and design alludes to the beginnings of many innovations in automotive history, drag racing included. Coming from America’s vernacular culture of unschooled inventors, the original dragsters rebuilt engines and chassis in their garages. They had no instruction manuals to turn to. They wrote their own book.
According to the exhibit’s curator, David Kreidler, the sport of drag racing began in 1949, but as with any history there is a prehistory. Already in the 1930s, speed freaks were pushing the limits on dry lake beds in Southern California. The main impetus for drag racing as a sport, however, was concern over street racing, a hazard not only to the drivers but to anyone in their vicinity. Those great-grandparents of Fast and Furious were a subset of something larger—the “Kustom Kulture” whose adherents spent uncounted hours at night or on weekends in garages rebuilding automobiles and motorcycles to suit themselves. Jalopies were modified by their owners into hotrods. “Some were interested in cars that looked good,” Kreidler says. “Others wanted cars that could go faster.” There was a split between custom car fanatics and speed racers, but some people kept a foot on each pedal. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the Rat Fink kingpin of custom cars, also built a drag racing car.
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And there was another fork in the road of high speed: Stock car racing, the Southern-fried NASCAR sport, versus drag racing, California-born and sanctioned by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). Aside from different histories, there is an important distinction: “In drag racing, the competition comes down to acceleration,” Kreidler says. “It’s all about reaching the end of that quarter-mile.” As a result, the engines in drag cars underwent more extreme modifications than in stock cars. “In drag racing, you have to rebuild your engine after one run—the engine burns out,” Kreidler explains. “Pumping at 10,000 to 11,000 horsepower in a quarter mile puts it through its paces! The clutches will have fused together. The spark plugs will have melted down.” As far back as the 1940s, the first generation of drag racers began experimenting with fuel, mixing nitro methane into their tanks.
For the general public, drag racing usually conjures images of fantastically constructed four-wheel vehicles, but given Harley-Davidson’s historic commitment to two wheels, most of the hardware displayed in the exhibit consists of motorcycles, not cars. “Drag racers have always considered themselves to be outsiders. Motorcycle drag racers are the outsiders of outsiders. But motorcycles have always been there,” Kreidler says. He cites the example of Chet Herbert, part of the original pack of drag racers. His bike, based on a 1947 Harley and dubbed “The Beast,” is on display in the exhibit. “He taught himself how to do it,” Kreidler continues. “He knew what he needed but the parts didn’t exist. He needed a camshaft with a new shape—one where the valves opened real fast. No one made them.” Herbert didn’t just make a new camshaft; he built the machine that made the camshaft. “It was ingenuity in action,” Kreidler adds.
Like the music that poured out of California in the 1960s, drag racing did not remain a local phenomenon, but spread—one could say sped—across the country. In drag racing, however, the outlaw status of the participants was ameliorated from the get-go by the authorities. Police agencies across the U.S. fostered drag racing as an alternative to the dangerous game of street racing. Established in the mid-1950s, Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin, is one of the longest-running drag racing venues in the country.
Since its debut almost 70 years ago, drag racing has gotten faster—and safer—as technology has developed. With NASA’s manned space program as the model, drag racers began wearing “fire suits” and adding parachutes to their vehicles in the ’60s. While the early drag racing subculture was no social utopia, Kreidler says it was more inclusive than many other arenas in American life with women and African Americans playing active roles in the sport. Like the vehicles they drove, drag racers were moving faster than the mainstream.
“Drag Racing: America’s Fast Time” opens June 17 at the Harley-Davidson Museum Garage, 400 W. Canal St. For more information, visit h-dmuseum.com.
