The memories flowed as the reality set in for Charles Carpenter. His original ’55 Chevy, the one billed as the World’s Fastest ’55 Chevy, moved into its new home at the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of Fame.
Of all the flashbacks, one that happened over four decades ago overshadowed the others.
In 1981, few knew who Carpenter was outside of the North and South Carolina brackets tracks.
Charles Carpenter had decided to race the big show of the IHRA at the 1981 Winston IHRA Spring Nationals. He rolled into the burnout box for his first run and paused for a minute to look out the windshield of his small block, stick shift 1955 Chevy. He marveled at the legion of drag racing fans there for an event on a Friday at Thunder Valley Dragway, now known simply as Bristol Dragway.
Carpenter was not predominantly a national event drag racer; he usually raced brackets close to his Charlotte home, whether on Saturdays at Spartanburg Dragway or Suffletown Dragway. He wasn’t the only one of the home racers competing at the IHRA’s marquee event. There were over a dozen racers there he faced on any given weekend in competition.
Immediately, the focus returned to the task at hand as Carpenter went through the motions of revving up his high-winding shoebox for a burnout. Carpenter was competing in the IHRA’s new Hot Rod class, a division much like today’s Super Gas with an index and a pro-tree. The target for this division was a 10.50 elapsed time.
Carpenter eased forward to stage, and when the light flashed green, he rowed through the gearbox in an era long before throttle stops and electronics had aced the manual transmission out of competition. At the finish line, the scoreboard flashed up a 10.50.
This run wasn’t just a 10.50. It was a 10.50 with a 0, making Carpenter the No. 1 qualifier. He figured why mess with perfection, took the shoebox back to the pits, and parked it until final eliminations began.
Little did Carpenter realize that one moment of perfection would be the first of many accolades to come his way with the old, steel ’55 Chevy. That day was the start of a legend that came full circle this week.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected what became of this car,” Carpenter said. “This is the car that we’ve basically built there in my shop with some friends, and we built it on the floor and just using Alston kit parts and stuff and putting the engine in it with nitrous oxide on it to try and see what we could do. But whoever dreamed it? I’m very honored for it to be there, though. It’s where it needs to be now, for sure.”
Little by little, Carpenter transformed the car, which started as a four-speed F/Gasser with a flip-over front end, complete with a Gene Fulton small block screamer, into a thundering big block doorslammer with a Lenco.
Nothing could have prepared Carpenter for what would come two years later. He had gotten his revamped ’55 Chevy outfitted with new performance parts and went on a diet of fiberglass body panels. He managed to get the car into the 8.80s on naturally aspirated horsepower. Then came the nitrous oxide, and as the car dropped into the 8.50s, 8.40s, and then by the end of the ’83 season, the 8.30s prompting photojournalist Dave Bishop, who wrote a column for IHRA’s Drag review to make the proclamation heard round the world.
Bishop declared Carpenter’s ’55 Chevy to be the World’s Fastest ’55 Chevy, and from there, the craze of fast old school doorslammers began a movement that would lead to Top Sportsman Quick Eight races and eventually Pro Modified.
Finally, with the real 1955 Chevy reaching the end of its safe existence running these speeds, Carpenter made one last historic push when he attended an IHRA points race at Richmond Dragway in late 1986 and recorded the first seven-second pass by a 1955 Chevy, running a 7.95 elapsed time at 176 miles per hour.
Then the car was retired to a back corner of his Charlotte-based repair shop.
Carpenter knew he’d pushed the old girl as far as she could go. Each run had become an adventure at this point.
“I won’t say they were real scary,” Carpenter admitted. “I could tell that the car wasn’t as rigid as it needed to be in today’s world, for sure. I knew when I ran the seven-second run I needed a new plan moving forward.”
Thousands of people walked past the historic vehicle for nearly two decades when it was uncovered for a photoshoot. The historic car had been gutted of its tin work and other components, which were expected to find a place in the newer 1955 Chevy, a purpose-built car Carpenter had commissioned Tommy Mauney to build.
When those parts were abandoned, they were never put back, making the relic a shell of its former self.
“I never really thought about selling it,” Carpenter said. “It was just special to me, and what career that I have had in racing, it was what launched it for sure. It had a lot of sentimental value for that.”
The ’55 Chevy was pulled out in 2008 for a photoshoot with Drag Illustrated alongside one of his newest editions of race cars, but once this was done, it was returned to its resting place, where it sat until recently.
The father and son fabricating team of Gene and Robbie Keziah began crafting new tin work for the classic Chevrolet and, with the help of Ken Hively and Bruce Nalwewajk, returned it to museum-quality status.
“We basically brought it back to new,” Carpenter said. “It looks really good. It cleaned up great. I’m really proud of it.”
