Committed to nailing every detail down to the last nut and bolt, Dave Mandella is restoring the Ron Attebury-built dragster that Shirley Muldowney drove to the 
first of her three NHRA Top Fuel championships.
“It’s definitely the right car,” said Muldowney’s son, John, an integral part of her crew, who worked alongside then crew chief Connie Kalitta and future crew chief Rahn Tobler.
“We were lucky because probably 90 percent of the car was already here,” Mandella said. “All the heim joints, the original wheels and tires, the wing stand, and all the big stuff was already here. Right now, we still need a two-speed transmission and a few other little things, like a cross-shaft, fork, and throwout bearing. Other than that, we’ve had to replace a couple of the body panels. Some of them would take more time to repair than it will be just to have new ones made, but we’re getting close.”
Muldowney has already seen the car, which was on display last month at the Bakersfield March Meet, where she served as Grand Marshal. “What I most remember about it is that we picked it up on the way to Seattle [for the second annual NHRA Fallnationals in September 1976],” she said. “We were so far behind that we really had to thrash to get everything done in time. John and Ron Capps [not that Ron Capps] worked on the car right in the trailer while we drove down the road. The things we did back then… That’s the kind of thing that makes me laugh loud and hard at some of these racers today. They have no earthly idea what we did to race – how we did it or why we did it. That’s what separates the real racers from everybody else.”
After a pair of 250-plus-mph blasts at Beeline Dragway outside Phoenix, Muldowney drove the new pipe to victory at the 1976 World Finals at Ontario Motor Speedway in just the car’s third appearance, running low e.t. and top speed of the meet along the way. She had almost a tenth on the field in qualifying with a 5.77 at 249.30 mph and set low e.t. and top speed of all four rounds of eliminations, culminating in a 5.94, 248 final-round win over Jerry Ruth.
“Ruth broke a blower belt and swore he would have won if he hadn’t, but there’s no way,” John said. “He wasn’t running almost 250 mph like we were. At the time, nobody was.”
The next time out, at the 1977 Winternationals, Muldowney qualified No.1 with low e.t. and top speed, 5.85, 248.61. “Other than that year, we didn’t qualify No. 1 too often,” John recalled. “Usually, we were between No. 3 and No. 5.” A spot-weld on the mag clamp broke after it was over-tightened in the pits Sunday morning before the first round of eliminations, retarding the ignition timing and allowing Rance McDaniel’s Chevy-powered Valley Fever dragster an upset win.
Three races later, Muldowney went on a tear, winning back-to-back-to-back national events – the Springnationals in Columbus over Englishman Clive Skilton, the Summernationals in Englishtown over Jeb Allen, and the Grandnational in Montreal over Pat Dakin. She qualified No. 1 or No. 2 at every NHRA event that year except Seattle, set top speed more often than all other drivers combined, and won the championship in a landslide.
“That car was good to me,” Muldowney said. “It was one of my favorites ever, definitely. We match-raced it all over the country. Who knows how many runs I made it in, just hundreds and hundreds.”
Two of them were the fastest in drag racing history. At a Saturday night race at Orange County International Raceway in early 1977, Muldowney became the first to eclipse 253 mph. “I’ve had one of the tires from that run in my office for years, with the same wheel in it and glass on top,” she said. “It makes a great table.”
At the 1979 Winternationals, Muldowney made the fastest run in the history of the sport, 255.68 mph. The only runs over 245 mph in all of eliminations were her consecutive 247s in the first and second rounds. She campaigned the car through the end of that season before replacing it with a longer, lighter Attebury car that, without ever having made a test run before it was rolled out of the trailer, won in its debut at the 1980 Winternationals. It eventually carried Muldowney to her second NHRA Top Fuel championship, and her next car, built by Al Swindahl, won the 1982 title.
The car being restored has all the authentic, period-correct parts and pieces that made it what it was: a Hilborn fuel pump, a little Crower injector, the original 1777-compound Goodyear rear tires, just a single gauge in the cockpit instrument panel [oil pressure], the same brake handle with custom Don Long wooden grips, and narrow 2-inch seat belts (unlike the three-inch-wide belts of today).
“The hardest thing to find has probably been a Crower injector,” said Mandella, of Seal Beach, Calif. “Originally, I was looking for a car for another project. I knew the individual who had it, and as soon as I found out that it was Shirley’s ’77 championship car, it was a no-brainer. We threw the idea around for probably a year before we made a deal on it, and one of the first calls I made was to John and Shirley to make sure they were OK with it.
“We have a lot of plans for the car,” Mandella said. “I want to display it at some local car shows in Southern California, starting with one April 30 here in Seal Beach, where it will be on the end of the pier with six other significant cars from the era. It will just be in pink primer there, but it’s going to be painted exactly the way she had it. Pete Santini is doing the paint, and John has sent a bunch of the numbers for the colors.
“We’re trying to work out how to have the car at some of the NHRA events Shirley will be appearing at this year, including Sonoma. Hopefully, NHRA will invite us to Pomona for the World Finals and next year’s Winternationals, and we’d also like to have the car at some of the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series races when we can. Ultimately, we hope to have it at the [Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California] so that everyone can see it and get to enjoy an important piece of drag racing history.”
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