Don smokes 'em at Pomona in the '60s. (DRO file photo)

FAVORITE CAR

I'd love to be different here, but I hardly feel like a stranger in picking the 1971 rear-engine dragster. I won't bore you with a rehash of the details of how it came about, but I will say that when I first saw it at the 1971 AHRA Grand American at Lions Dragstrip, I thought this can't be what he had in mind. Even though it was new, the car was a spindly, black-piped, homely thing with just a decal-cluttered body around the driver. Garlits didn't even qualify in the top half of the field, but once eliminations got rolling, he really came to life. He made the final against Gary Cochran's front-motored dragster and narrowly lost. Right then, I knew he'd be bad news.

A week later, Garlits brought this weird creation out to Orange County International Raceway for their second of three All-Pro Series races and again, he runner-upped to Cochran, who this time was driving Carl Casper's hard-running "All-American." A week later, Garlits won the NHRA Winternationals.

Don will evidently try anything once. (DRO file photo)

Garlits dominated AHRA during the late 1970s and early '80s. Here he smokes the tires at Tulsa. (photo by Jeff Burk)