The most-celebrated driver in Drag Racing history. Don Garlits was born on January 14, 1932 in Tampa Florida. Garlitis was “a racer’s racer” who could do it all. The first driver to officially surpass 170, 180, 200, 240, 250, 260 and 270 miles per hour in the quarter mile, he also designed the modern rear-engined Dragster. His presence in American motorsports was such that even non-fans knew about “Big Daddy” and his legendary series of 34 black “Swamp Rat” Dragsters.
Garlits first raced his street cars – like his 12.1-second/108-mph flathead-powered 1927 Ford Model T Roadster – in early events on abandoned World War II airfields. Then, in 1955, he turned a set of 1930 Chevrolet frame rails into a flathead-powered front-engined Dragster.
A Chrysler Hemi-powered slingshot Dragster – supercharged in 1959 with fuel-injection added in 1960 – was then built in his Don’s Garage & Speed Shop and from the late 1950s through the early 1960s it won many events and set numerous records. And in March 1959 Garlits advanced his career and helped the sport’s future when his quick elapsed times and high speeds proved legitimate at the first U.S. Fuel & Gas Championship in Bakersfield, California.
As a professional racer, Garlits competed in the American, International and National Hot Rod Associations and won 10 AHRA titles (1971-1974, 1978-1980 & 1982-1984), three NHRA World Championships (1975 & 1985-1986) and four IHRA Top Fuel honors (1974-1977).
Overall, Garlits won 144 national races, which includes 51 AHRA events, 26 IHRA races and 35 in NHRA. He also won the NHRA’s prestigious U.S. Nationals a record eight times (1964, 1967-1968, 1975, 1978 & 1984-1986). But his NHRA total probably would have been higher had nitro-methane – the “fuel” in Top Fuel – not been banned from 1957-1963.
Always popular with fans, Garlits – ranked No. 1 on the NHRA’s list of Top-50 Drivers – was on the U.S. Drag Team that went to England in 1964 and he wore one of the first full-body, fire-resistant driving suits complete with socks and gloves. He was also first to: put “bike front wheels” on a Dragster; experiment with extended wheelbases; use an air spoiler above his front-mounted engine in 1963; use a 4-disk clutch; and, successfully use a streamlined race-car design.
But his most important contribution came after an accident at Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach, California, on March 8, 1970, when the two-speed transmission in his front-engined slingshot “Swamp Rat XIII” exploded on the starting line and took a piece out of his right foot.
Sidelined for the rest of the season, Garlits and T.C. Lemons designed and built a newer and safer mid-engined, front-cockpit Top Fuel Dragster – a car that changed Drag Racing.
In its 1971 California debut, “Big Daddy” and “Swamp Rat XIV” were runners-up at Lions and Orange County, then won the NHRA Winternationals at Pomona and the second of Garlits’ five (1965, 1971, 1979 & 1986-1987) U.S. Fuel titles at Bakersfield. And the car was made even better after a rear-mounted aerodynamic wing helped it to go quicker and faster.
On October 20, 1987, “Swamp Rat XXX,” the sport’s only successful streamlined car, was enshrined in The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Then, on September 4, 2001, at age 69, “Big Daddy” returned to the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis during the NHRA’s 50th Anniversary season and made his first 300-mph run in less than five seconds (303.37 mph/4.720 seconds) in his Matco Tools entry. While his best-ever T/F runs were 323.04 mph & 4.737 seconds in his 2003 Summit Racing-Mono Winged Dragster.
Don Garlits – who was defeated for a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1994 as a Republican in Florida’s 5th District – finally retired from driving in 2003. And since 1984 he and his wife Pat have run the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing on the grounds of their home in Ocala Florida, where a treasure of over 75 famous cars and much racing memorabilia are on display.
