Wally Parks, a pivotal figure in American drag racing, transformed the chaotic world of street racing into a legitimate sport by founding the NHRA. The episode dives into his early life, the birth of the NHRA, and his relentless pursuit of safety in racing. Through engaging anecdotes, the hosts explore how Parks advocated for organized events, created a comprehensive rulebook, and fostered a sense of community among racers. His legacy continues to influence motorsports today, making the episode a fascinating look at the evolution of drag racing.
Get After It! Enter for a Chance to Win a Custom Car Co-Built by Donut and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. All brought to you by NOS Energy. For more details visit: https://bit.ly/3Jb9w2LThanks to Allstate for sponsoring today’s episode! Click here [https://bit.ly/4kk8WwW] to check Allstate first and see how much you could save on car insurance.Also thanks to Hankook for sponsoring today's video! Click here [https://bit.ly/44p5YAF] to learn more about Dynapro tires!This week on Past Gas, we’re talking about the man who took drag racing from outlaw chaos to legit sport: Wally Parks. In the ’40s, hot rodders were crashing on city streets and scaring the hell out of cops and civilians. Parks had a crazy idea — make racing safer, organized, and bigger than ever. From Hot Rod Magazine to founding the NHRA, Parks didn’t just save drag racing — he gave it a future.
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"...we are talking about Wally Parks and the genesis of the NHRA. The governing body for all drag race in the US."
The NHRA is the main organization that oversees drag racing in the U.S. They help organize races and ensure safety standards are met.
The NHRA, or National Hot Rod Association, is the governing body for drag racing in the United States. It was founded to promote safe and organized drag racing events and has played a significant role in the development of the sport.
"...was there from the beginning of hot rotting and tuning. And kind of formed it into this safe thing that we know of today."
Hot rodding is when people make changes to their cars to make them faster and look cooler. It started in the U.S. a long time ago and is linked to drag racing.
Hot rodding refers to the practice of modifying cars to enhance their performance, speed, and appearance. This culture emerged in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s and is closely associated with drag racing.
"...dance halls again. The lone ranger was riding the airwaves and the southernmost point in the US. Sloppy Joe'..."
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"Back at the salt bed, Wally crammed into a 1925 Chevy and stomped on the long, thin accelerator pushing it across the flats."
The 1925 Chevy is a car from Chevrolet made in the early 20th century. It was one of the many cars that people used for racing and speed records.
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"He clocked in at 82.19 miles per hour. More than double while your average 1925 American car could muster."
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"Which is a really nice track. Yeah, Tucson Speedway, great track. But I'm not super into dra..."
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"Yeah, Tucson Speedway, great track. But I'm not super into drag racing."
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Tucson Speedway is a motorsport facility located in Tucson, Arizona, known for hosting various racing events, including stock car racing and drag racing. It's a popular venue for local racing enthusiasts.
"That was the track that Brittany Force beat the record on, I think, last year. And she just beat it two more times this year."
Drag racing is a sport where two cars race each other in a straight line to see who can go the fastest. It's usually done on a track that is a quarter-mile long, and the cars are built to go really fast in a short time.
Drag racing is a type of motorsport where two vehicles race in a straight line over a short distance, typically a quarter-mile. The goal is to reach the finish line as quickly as possible, and it often involves specialized vehicles designed for high acceleration.
"Funny cars scare the shit out of me. They're wicked."
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Funny cars are a type of drag racing vehicle known for their unique design and extreme performance. They feature a modified chassis and body, often resembling production cars, but are built for maximum speed and acceleration on the drag strip.
"Yeah. By 1937, he was in tight with the Roadrunner's car club, a crew of like-minded speed junkies and gear heads who weren't just shown up to set records."
The Plymouth Roadrunner is a classic car from the muscle car era, famous for being fast and powerful. It has a unique look and was designed to be affordable for people who wanted a fun car to drive. It's often talked about because it's a symbol of a time when cars were all about speed and style.
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"He immediately ripped a V8 from a passenger car and crammed it into a Willis jeep."
A V8 engine has eight cylinders that help it run smoothly and powerfully. It's often found in cars that need a lot of strength, like sports cars and trucks.
A V8 is a type of engine configuration that features eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. This design allows for more power and smoother operation compared to smaller engines, making it popular in performance and luxury vehicles.
"...the first jeep rod in existence. And it helped to put Wally on the radar of the Army High Command. It wasn't long before Wally was driving his jeep rod with wide open exhaust..."
A 'jeep rod' is a modified Jeep that has been customized for better performance or specific tasks. They were often used by the military to help with various jobs, especially in tough environments.
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"...driving his jeep rod with wide open exhaust all over the Philippines doing mechanical troubleshooting for the military."
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"The hot rod exposition, which eventually launched in January of 1948 at the Los Angeles Armory, was a hail marry for hot rodders. Before this, car shows were more like the Pebble Beach concourse delgons and less like a cars and coffee behind a grocery store."
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"It became the definitive voice for the Hot Rod community. The magazine was pumping out positive vibes..."
The Hot Rod community is made up of people who love to change and improve cars, especially older ones, to make them faster and cooler. It's a big part of car culture in the U.S.
The Hot Rod community refers to a group of automotive enthusiasts who modify and customize cars, particularly classic American cars, for performance and style. This culture is deeply rooted in the history of American car culture and often emphasizes speed and racing.
"...the seed was the National Hot Rod Association. So he's so effectively what's happening is he's saying everybody you guys should all race,..."
The National Hot Rod Association, or NHRA, is a big organization that helps people who want to race cars in a straight line. They set the rules and organize races for both beginners and experienced racers.
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is the largest and most recognized drag racing organization in the world, promoting and organizing events for amateur and professional drag racers. It plays a significant role in the development and regulation of drag racing as a sport.
"The SCTA was great for dry lake runs, but drag racing needed its own champion."
The SCTA is a group that helps organize races where cars try to go as fast as possible on flat, dry land. They set rules and make sure the events are safe.
The SCTA, or Southern California Timing Association, is an organization that promotes and organizes land speed racing events, particularly on dry lake beds. It plays a crucial role in the history of hot rodding and racing culture in the United States.
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"...the cook and bedwell dragster driven by Emory Cook set three new records in its first three runs."
A dragster is a fast car made for racing in a straight line. They are built to go really fast over a short distance, like a quarter of a mile.
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"First, Cook bested the track elapsed time record."
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What's up everybody? This is Nolan Sykes. Actually, it's Joe Weber. Nolan is out this week because he's in Bonneville doing speed week stuff. And speaking of speed, we are talking about Wally Parks and the genesis of the NHRA. The governing body for all drag race in the US.
This dude is like a super interesting character. Was there from the beginning of hot rotting and tuning. And kind of formed it into this safe thing that we know of today.
It's a really interesting story. I'm so excited for you to hear it. So let's jump into it.
A short 100 miles northish from where the Peterson Automotive Museum sits today, there's a very flat bit of land dubbed Rogers Lake.
Formerly, Murock Dry Lake. And that stretch of salt flat is where a young Wally Parks got his first taste of speed. Or at least the 1933 equivalent of it.
This was truly the Wild West of racing. White Earp had died in bed still wearing his shoes just a few short years before in 1929. And the Great Depression was finally, mercifully, crawling to an end.
It was that sweet spot in history where anything felt possible.
Barrels of whiskey were being delivered to dance halls again. The lone ranger was riding the airwaves and the southernmost point in the US.
Sloppy Joe's open for business giving car enthusiasts a new destination.
Back at the salt bed, Wally crammed into a 1925 Chevy and stomped on the long, thin accelerator pushing it across the flats.
He clocked in at 82.19 miles per hour. More than double while your average 1925 American car could muster.
But Wally wasn't there just to feed his need for speed. He was soaking it all in.
The barely controlled chaos of those time trials unfolded in front of his eyes and he was already blueprinting how to improve it.
He saw the dust, the oil slicks, the burning rubber and thought,
I'm the guy who can make this whole fast car thing a safer way of life.
But how did a young kid from a desolate town in the dry plains of Oklahoma set the standards for drag racing across the entire US?
How did curbside carnage result into his desire to save lives and legitimize an entire sport?
And how did say no to nitro help prove the National Hot Rod Association of all people were serious about safety?
This week on PassGas, Wally Parks and the NHRA!
What's up? Welcome back to PassGas. I am your host, Joe Weber.
With me is Bart Bidlingmire. We meet again, Joe. And Steph Gutierrez.
What up? What up? What up? Thank you guys for joining us.
It's been a minute. Yeah. You've been in the studio here.
It has been a fat man. Actually, I'm glad you noticed that, Bart.
I've missed your energy. Thank you. You missed the LeBubu, I think.
Yeah, the LeBubu. If you really loved it, don't you get a tattoo?
Bart's been on a kick, guys. Let me get a LeBubu tattoo.
So I don't know why you wouldn't get one. You're super ahead of that, right?
You have tattoos, so you're not against the concept, right?
Yeah, I just don't know why not a LeBubu?
I think the concept of having a silly little LeBubu right next to all my hard ass tattoos
is not the move. Okay, that's a good point.
You got some hard ass tattoos. And then I'm not going to fill up this one
because then how am I going to flex in the mirror?
That's what you should do. You should put the LeBubu right there.
Oh, on. And you could make it jump up and down when you do that.
Wait, it's actually a really cool tattoo concept.
I know. If someone else is willing to get it, that'd be amazing.
I just want to see it. I should get one of those like mad magazine
for once. The ones where you fold on my fat folds.
And I'll make, oh, look, it's actually like a woman now.
It's a car. Now it's a woman.
I saw it was a post. I don't know why it got served to me.
But it's a lady got the sun, no, the earth and the moon.
And did them to scale. And when she held her arms out,
it was to scale how far the earth and the moon from each other.
Would that just be two little dots?
No, they're about, they're like that.
That's pretty cool. Like quarter sized.
I mean, that's quite a party trick.
Imagine she's just going out places and doing this.
That is, yeah, it's kind of dorky.
Yeah, I mean, obviously she was a nerd.
Yeah, right? There's space.
And if her arms ever grow, then she's going to have to cover up.
Yeah, don't do Pilates.
Today, we're going to be talking about Wally Parks
and the Genesis of the NHRA,
the National Hot Rod Association.
We've done a couple videos with them on the main channel.
I think the finale of last high-low season
was held at an NHRA event, right?
I think it was our own event.
Yes.
But we did have like NHRA dragsters and stuff there.
Yeah, I think it was, they helped us get that track
and set it up and stuff.
Which is a really nice track.
Yeah, Tucson Speedway, great track.
But I'm not super into drag racing.
This is kind of no one's wheelhouse, no pun intended.
Have you guys ever gone to an NHRA event other than that?
You've done pretty good amount of racing, right?
Since starting with Dona, yeah.
And it's been really late.
But wait, can I?
Yeah.
Actually, YouTube just allowed person there.
Oh, okay.
You can say fart.
It's not your daddy's YouTube.
But yeah, I've been to a few NHRA events.
The one that they have in Pomona, Pomona dragsters.
Yeah.
That one is owned by In-N-Out and is strictly only for NHRA dragsters.
I thought you were going to say it's strictly for people buying burgers.
That's it.
It's just a long drive-thru.
You always drag shit on it.
You have to grab it on your run.
I'll take my protein style.
Oh, my God.
That was the track that Brittany Force beat the record on, I think, last year.
And she just beat it two more times this year.
She hit 341.
341 in like three and a half seconds is nuts.
Yeah.
Funny cars scare the shit out of me.
They're wicked.
Do you guys know anything about Wally Park?
It's called Scary Cars.
Yeah.
It's honestly fun.
Yeah.
Why do they call them funny cars?
Actually, wait.
You want to look at Google?
Yeah.
The endomology of funny cars racing.
Okay.
Google AI is telling me because they have clowns in them.
Damn it.
The term funny car originated in the mid-60s to describe a new type of drag racing that doesn't
help at all.
They were just funny cars.
I guess it's just like the actual like the way it looks on the exterior because it's
just a dropped on like body type.
Yeah.
This is telling me that it just means it refers to the unusual or strange appearance.
The proportions are all weird.
It does look funny, you know?
Yeah.
It just seems a little on the nose and underwhelming.
It's like a funny bone.
That nothing funny about a funny bone.
Should we get into it?
Let's do it.
We all know what funny cars are.
Okay.
Wally Parks was born on January 23rd, 1913 in the dusty farmlands of Goldtree, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma was not exactly okay at the time.
The fertile land was starting to dry out and people were starting to notice, people like
Wally's folks.
So when his family like half the country at the time packed up and chased a dream all
the way to California in the early 20s, a whole new world opened up for this curious
kid.
The speed bug was contagious and the wide open expanse of the Mojave Desert just outside
LA became the perfect playground for anyone itching to push all those new machines to
their limits.
Wally had the natural mechanical genius of a hard-scrable farm boy and it showed.
Scrable is hard.
You guys good at Scrable?
I pride myself.
I don't want to say I'm very good at it.
But I will say.
So humble.
People get mad at me.
I either one that like fills in the gaps and does three words at a time.
Yeah.
That stuff.
I do a lot of my wife hates playing games like that with me because I want to win.
Yeah.
I like taking advantage of the rules.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
It's hardwired.
It's hardwired into me.
I'm sorry.
Ain't no shame.
We're trying to win, Bart.
Yeah.
Bart's out there trying to destroy his loved ones and make sure that he's the king.
I'm aware that it's not a positive trait of mine that I want to beat people at
stupid games.
That should be fun.
Yeah.
I'm aware of that.
Well, that has it.
But I'm so good at them.
I can't not do it.
I can't help that I'm so good.
Yeah.
It's a burden.
It's my cross.
Get mad at mine.
This guy.
Amazing educational background.
It didn't take words.
I like words.
Yeah.
So that's, I think that comes up a lot where you're just like, well, the etymology of
this is blah, blah, blah.
And it was the way that you're saying it is actually the wrong context.
Yeah.
Well, especially now in the kid that, like, kids are learning new words.
Yeah.
He's like, well, what does that mean?
And sometimes I'm like, like, make you give an answer and it'll be like, but it's a
little, you know, yeah, I had something she's like, just shut up.
What does bro, deadass cooked mean?
It didn't take long before Wally was a fixture in the early hot rod scene.
You'd find him perched on the edge of the sun cooked like beds throughout the late 20s
and 30s.
He wasn't just watching.
He was learning.
Wally was writing safety manuals in his mind long before he'd made a name for himself
behind the wheel.
But as anyone very involved in any kind of race scene knows, it wasn't just about speed.
It was about family.
Yeah.
By 1937, he was in tight with the Roadrunner's car club, a crew of like-minded speed junkies
and gear heads who weren't just shown up to set records.
They were one of the earliest groups sharing what they had learned racing and wrenching
to help improve the scene.
I remember we talked about the Roadrunners in the Customs episode, but at that point,
I think they had already been around for a long time if this is like the early 30s.
That's crazy.
You have to figure out everything by yourself for this kind of early engines.
I wonder what they were doing to like, sup them up, mess with the timing.
What could you do on those early, like a model engine?
What do you do with that?
Screw with compression and timing.
Yeah.
It probably had like six to one compression or something like that.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
I can even think that far back.
I can smell that car.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
These clubs were the soul of early hot rotting.
They were informal fraternities built on a shared obsession with fixing cars and breaking
limits.
The Roadrunners, along with a few other outfits, joined forces and became a Southern California
timing association, or the SCTA, the predecessor to the NHRA, and Wally was right there on
day one.
This was his first true taste of wrangling all that chaos into some kind of structure
and he liked it.
When World War II came knocking, the GM plant he was working at was forcibly converted
into a tank assembly line, and Wally volunteered to put them through their paces and see how
they could be improved.
Wally got so good at tankery that he became part of the US tank exhibition team that showed
off new products and offerings for the US Army.
That's cool.
That'd be a cool show to go to.
Yeah.
And Uncle Sam liked the cut of Wally's jib so much that they sent him to the South Pacific.
Oh my God.
It seems like punishment.
Yeah.
Great job.
All right.
The middle of nowhere.
The middle of nowhere.
Yeah.
Oh, are you sure I can't just keep building these things?
Look, I really like testing tanks.
Can I just stay in Texas?
But thousands of miles and limited resources wouldn't keep Wally down.
He immediately ripped a V8 from a passenger car and crammed it into a Willis jeep.
That's sick.
That's quite a flex right there.
Yeah.
This was no distress.
That's what.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
This was no doubt the first jeep rod in existence.
And it helped to put Wally on the radar of the Army High Command.
It wasn't long before Wally was driving his jeep rod with wide open exhaust all over the
Philippines doing mechanical troubleshooting for the military.
This combo of hands-on experience, a deep-seated understanding of mechanics, and the natural
urge to organize would become the very foundation of his legendary achievements.
When he landed back in the States, he left GM to focus on building the SCTA full time as
their business manager.
All over the US, the hot rod scene was exploding.
Fueled by GI's returning home with all new mechanical skills earned in the field and
a few bucks in their pocket.
As well as a bit of PTSD-fueled need for dopamine hits that office jobs waiting back in the
States just weren't providing.
That's fair.
Yeah.
That sounds alright.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, imagine we've talked about it before because it's the genesis of so many different
car cultures of like, ah, I'm going to blow my head off if I don't feel adrenaline right
now.
Coming back from war and being shot at and then just having to go back to like the suburbs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm in a build of motorcycle whip some chains around and people.
Oh my God.
You got to be all never played road rash on PC.
I didn't know what your reference was.
Yeah.
Road rash was a great game.
Yeah.
But this boom brought side effects, mainly illegal street racing.
The allure of late night sprints on public roads were too hard to resist but the consequences
were brutal.
From bloody wrecks to innocent bystanders gaining caught up in the carnage, hot rotters were
getting painted as reckless delinquents by big media in the police.
While he could easily see where it was all heading, it was a ticking time bomb that
was threatening to blow up legitimate racing altogether.
Enter Robert Peterson.
Peterson was quiet and unassuming but he had a brain for business.
We talked about him, ah, maybe 80 episodes ago.
He started a hot rod magazine.
He started like a media empire and now he has the museum named after him in LA, coolest
car museum in the world.
We'll be right back after these messages.
All right, y'all gather around because Monet exchanged from sibling rivalry is here
with an announcement.
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Google Gemini.
Melison, the girls over at Google said, Monet, tell the children so I'm telling you, US college
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