Gary Gabelich - "Plenty Boss, Man. Plenty Boss."

Unlike most car geeks, I wasn't much of a gearhead when I was a kid. No subscription to Hot Rod or CarToons, no shelf of carefully-constructed Revell car models, no posters of scantily-clad girls posing next to race cars. I certainly noticed old cars on the rare occasions that I saw them, and did have a passing interest in kid-candy like the Munsters Koach, but my Dad was so OVER being an auto mechanic by the time I came along that there was no romance under the hood. 

The only time I really remember being enthralled by a car as a kid was when we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats on a road trip. I was fascinated by the lunar landscape - and by the idea of cars going hundreds of miles an hour out there in the middle of nowhere. We stopped at a gas station in Wendover and I bought a postcard of the rocket-shaped car that then held the Land Speed Record: The Blue Flame, driven 622 miles an hour by Gary Gabelich. I still have that postcard.

You can imagine my surprise when I discovered last month that Gary Gabelich got his start in a Crosley.

Junji Nakamura went to high school with Gabelich in Long Beach, California. While Nakamura was a a hardcore car guy, hot rodding and customizing a 1951 Olds with his brother James, Gabelich was on another level. "[Gabelich] went to the same high school as the rest of us mere mortals," says Nakamura, "but, as for being a teenager from Long Beach and going to the same high school as most of the local kids, he was an impressive teenager, when most [of us] were just driving regular sedans."

When James Nakamura began racing his brand new 1958 Impala at Lion's Drag Strip, Junji was assigned to cover the action. "I was 13 at the time. But, I learned to point and shoot the 16mm color camera at our favorite hot rods and drag racing vehicles." One of those vehicles was piloted by Gary Gabelich.

"As a 17 year old teenager, he had a most unusual drag racing vehicle that he built and raced at Lion’s Dragstrip... a Crosley Altered Sedan." 

Gabelich also ran his dark blue altered Crosley at other tracks; Nakamura shared the footage he shot of Gabelich making runs at the Bakersfield Smokers March Meet in 1960. "He was having a great day racing."

Nakamura's footage captures Gabelich early in his career, although he had already won the first-ever jet-powered drag race the year before, when he was still just 19 years old. I've dug around to see if I could find more information about Gabelich's Crosley, but Nakamura's footage - and his memories - are the only documentation I came across.

Throughout the sixties Gabelich continued to race, first on the strips and later in drag boats and at Bonneville, where he made a 356 mile an hour run. As if all that wasn't cool enough, his day job was as a test astronaut for North American Rockwell, the company that later built the Space Shuttle. 

In 1969 he got a different gig: he was hired to drive a 37-foot-long, rocket-powered vehicle called the Blue Flame for a Land Speed Record attempt sponsored by the American Gas Association. He beat out Don Garlits and Craig Breedlove for the job.

Like all serious record attempts, the story is loaded with drama, and I don't have the space to do it justice. I found a short documentary loaded with vintage footage on YouTube - it's broken into three parts, and is well worth watching if you are interested in Land Speed Racing and have 40 minutes to spare: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.

The short version is that the experimental rocket boost had a malfunction on an early run that caused damage and severely limited the car's power. Even with the malfunction, the car was able to creep up to the 600 MPH mark set by Craig Breedlove in 1965, but could not get two qualifying runs in a row to take the record. Finally, on October 23, 1970, Gabelich managed a two way run with an average speed of 622 MPH. Gabelich got out, said, "Plenty Boss, man - Plenty Boss" and gave his dad a bear hug.

The American Gas Association pulled their funding, and The Blue Flame was mothballed. His record stood for 13 years.

Sadly, the rest of Gabelich's life was not so charmed. His right hand was severed in a 1972 drag racing accident - it was reattached, but the accident ended his racing career. He may have been out of the cockpit, but he never lost his taste for speed: he was killed when his motorcycle hit a truck "while traveling at a high rate of speed" in January, 1984. He was 43 years old.

But for Junji Nakamura, Gary Gabelich will always be the dashing young man in the Crosley sedan.  

"For us, [he was] famous before he got famous with the land speed racing... [Gary was] an automotive icon.  In the drag racing world... Gary Gabelich has a wonderful history with cars and speed."

Thanks much to Junji for reaching out and sharing his story and photos (from The Nakamura Brothers’ film collection).