Legend ‘Big Daddy’ Gives Advice To Aspiring Drag Racers, More
Jim Clash
Mar 17, 2023,10:44am EDT
The Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing houses photographs, uniforms, and actual racecars used by
famous drag racers near Ocala, Florida. | Location: near Ocala, Florida, USA. (Photo by Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images)
In the first two parts of this interview series with drag-racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, now 91, we covered a lot of ground, including his racing in the colorful sixties and seventies, breaking the 200-mph barrier for the first time, his 1970 accident which changed the design of dragsters, his epitaph and more. Here, in this final part, Garlits gives advice to aspiring young racers, discusses his drag-racing museum in Ocala, Florida, dissects his own fears and more. Following are edited excerpts from a longer phone conversation this past week.Jim Clash: You’ve put together a famous museum for drag-racing, correct?
“Big Daddy” Don Garlits: Don Garlits Museum Of Drag Racing, on Interstate 75, just outside of Ocala [Florida], exit 341. The
museum has been in existence for 46 years, 40 at this location and six in Seffner [Florida]. So many cars pass us, over a quarter million in 24 hours, that we are bound to get some visitors. People come from all over the world to see 65,000 square-feet of show area. We started with 15,000, and have expanded quite a bit. We’re open every day, except Christmas and Thanksgiving, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Come early, as there is so much to see. We have the largest collection of Prudhomme cars, and of Shirley Muldowney’s. We have Tom McEwen’s Coors Funny Car. We even have the very first dragster driven down a dragstrip. And, naturally, we display all of my cars. We’ve tried to gather all of the vehicles that contributed to the history of this sport.
Clash: I know you’ve been working on bringing electric vehicles into drag racing. They race quiet. Mario Andretti once told me that electric will never catch on in motorsports because fans want to hear the roar of the engines.