CHARLES IN CHARGE – A MAN, A SHOEBOX, A LEGEND
Wed, 2008-03-05 06:54
Charles Carpenter, 49, residing in Harrisburg, N.C., thought at one
time about campaigning a body style other than a 1955 Chevy and as
quickly as he entertained the idea, he brushed aside the notion. The mere thought of owning a race car outside of the 1955 Bel-Air was nothing short of blasphemy. For over three decades, he’s been completely faithful to this particular breed of shoebox. Well, there was that one tryst with a Pontiac Firebird, but that was just Carpenter being a good southerner and helping out a friend while his new 1955 Chevy was under construction.
Other than the five-race stint, Carpenter has had eyes for only the double-nickel icon.
“My older brother raced a ’55, and when I went to the races with him as a kid, the ‘55 was a popular car,” Carpenter explained, when asked why the dedication to this one body style. “When I became old enough to drive, I bought the car from my brother since he was going through a divorce and needed to get rid of it. The rest is history.”
Charles Carpenter prepares for his finest championship effort in years …
Roger Richards Photo
Charles Carpenter, 49, residing in Harrisburg, N.C., thought at one time about campaigning a body style other than a 1955 Chevy and as quickly as he entertained the idea, he brushed aside the notion.
Since he was a teenager, Charles Carpenter has made the 1955 Chevy a centerpiece of his racing efforts.
Other than the five-race stint, Carpenter has had eyes for only the double-nickel icon.
“My older brother raced a ’55, and when I went to the races with him as a kid, the ‘55 was a popular car,” Carpenter explained, when asked why the dedication to this one body style. “When I became old enough to drive, I bought the car from my brother since he was going through a divorce and needed to get rid of it. The rest is history.”
History is one thing Carpenter has established in his drag racing career. From humble beginnings of running a stick-shift, all steel 1955 Chevy at Shuffletown Dragway (Charlotte, NC) and Spartanburg Dragway (Spartanburg, SC) to qualifying No. 1 in Hot Rod (then a 10.50 index) at the IHRA Spring Nationals in Bristol, Tenn. and later becoming the World’s Fastest 1955 Chevy, Carpenter accepted the fame and reasonable fortune admirably.
Carpenter has done well rekindling those memories in the minds of tens of thousands of American Drag Racing League (ADRL) fans who clamor over the intense world of eighth-mile, Pro Modified drag racing. He’s found a niche in the three-year old sanctioning body. To Carpenter, the ADRL presents him with a national event atmosphere.
Pro Modified is not a class restricted to one sanctioning body. It is an outlaw-based class that has transcended barriers and made its way onto the main stage. What I am saying is there is more than one history book when it comes to this class, and everyone seems to forget that. There are many others like me that helped start this class who are forgotten, but since I have been around so long, been to so many different places, and am still racing, I have escaped that fate in a way. - Charles Carpenter
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Charles Carpenter has made the ADRL's Pro Nitrous division his new home.
While the IHRA and NHRA might provide a larger stage, Carpenter isn’t convinced he’s best served there. Maintaining a healthy bottom line has always been at the forefront of Carpenter’s racing tendencies.
“Bottom line, I go where the money is,” Carpenter said matter-of-factly. “I have always raced on a shoestring budget, regardless of what people may think. People would honestly be shocked or may even laugh if they saw the budget we race on. There are no full-time employees at Charles Carpenter Racing. The closest thing to a full-time employee is my son/crew chief Michael, but he’s got his own freelance design deal on top of the racing to make it all happen. Most of the time, it’s just him and I. The fact that we have been able to do well despite that limitation really has added to the satisfaction when we win a race.”
Make no bones about it; Carpenter doesn’t beam nearly as much when discussing his accolades as when he describes the frugal manner in which he earned them.
“It would be great to have the unlimited funds that some of these guys have, but at the same time I don’t think they appreciate it when they win in the same way I do,” Carpenter said. “I’m not afraid to say that over the course of the entire history of Pro Modified, nobody has done more with less than I have. I’ve learned to deal with it and be resourceful. If that dream sponsorship came along one day, it could be terror for the competition. I could make $250,000 work like a million dollars. Until then, I have to go where the payouts are right.”
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Carpenter has a new 1955 Chevy for the 2008 season being fabricated by Terry Murphy.
“Having that guaranteed deal with Super Chevy helped to attract the right sponsors in the fact that I was racing in their venue, right in front of their target market,” Carpenter said. “IHRA has always been regarded as the competitive venue, but nobody can convince me that Super Chevy was any easier to run than IHRA in its heyday.”
Sure enough, Carpenter did battle with such Pro Modified icons and SUPER CHEVY regulars as Robbie Vandergriff, Ed Hoover, Fred Hahn, Donnie Little, Mark Carter, Gordy Foust, Wally Stroupe and even squared off from time to time with the likes of Scotty Cannon and Bill Kuhlmann.
“We dealt with less well-prepared tracks on top of dealing with tough competitors,” Carpenter added. “Racing these venues also afforded me the chance to race in a way that today’s Pro Mod drivers will never experience. We were superstars, pioneers. Like Don Garlits or Prudhomme/Mongoose in their heydays.”
Because Carpenter stuck to the SUPER CHEVY tour, he often missed out on the fanfare that often stuck with those who ran with the IHRA. Carpenter adamantly disagrees.
“I don’t feel that I have been left out of any of the pioneer banter,” Carpenter interjected. “Today I am called “the legend” or marketed as the “father of Pro Mod”, and I didn’t make that stuff up myself. Maybe I am left out of IHRA’s official record of Pro Mod, but I wasn’t there. I was running Super Chevy. Everyone says the first Pro Mod race was an IHRA race in 1990, but it was going on way before that.
“Pro Modified is not a class restricted to one sanctioning body. It is an outlaw-based class that has transcended barriers and made its way onto the main stage. What I am saying is there is more than one history book when it comes to this class, and everyone seems to forget that. There are many others like me that helped start this class who are forgotten, but since I have been around so long, been to so many different places, and am still racing, I have escaped that fate in a way.”
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This was the al-steel 1955 Chevy that pu Carpenter on the map. This was the original "World's Fastest 1955 Chevy."
Carpenter won’t remind the racing world, but we will. When he bolted a nitrous bottle into the old steel car, which was barely safe for Super Gas, he ran an 8.30 elapsed time that prompted longtime photojournalist Dave Bishop to coin Carpenter’s ride as “The World’s Fastest 1955 Chevy” in his IHRA’s Drag Review column.
Bishop’s declaration was gas on the fire of the movement.
“I think I was very humble throughout the whole experience,” Carpenter said. “I was very honored by the statement, and I can’t thank him enough for that title now since it has become my calling card. There were others that helped us get that national status along the way like Francis Butler, Dave Wallace, Bret Kepner, and many more. I was the dog that didn’t know his size. I loved to race, and that was what I was out there to do, and I happened to have a big ’55 Chevy.
“That’s the way it is now. I would rather go out there and kick ass with my shoebox than fall in with everybody else and get a ’63 Corvette, ’68 Camaro, or ‘67 Camaro/Firebird. I like to be different. Nothing is better than watching a video and hearing the crowd go wild when I lay down a number in my ‘55. There is just something special about that, that underdog feeling.
“At the ADRL race in Norwalk last year, when we were about to run the final round, Bill Bader Jr. was on the PA hyping the race up. He asked how many people wanted to see Rod Houck win in his ’63 Corvette. Rod got some cheers, but when he asked how many people wanted to see me win in my ’55 Chevy, the place went nuts. We hadn’t started the cars yet so I could hear it. I knew then that it was my race to lose, and that all those fans were riding along with me. Nothing against Rod, but it illustrates my point. I think people can associate with that underdog mentality, and I love it.”
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A diehard nitrous racer, Carpenter once entertained the idea of abandoning the nitrous combination for a blower. Then came the ADRL.
Precarious nothing; for Carpenter this was downright scary. He’ll admit to this day he took his life in his hands in chasing the seven-second barrier against west coast veteran, and similar ’55 Chevy aficionado Dave Riolo, in the race for bragging rights for being the first. Had Carpenter taken the steel Chevy out of circulation and waited for a safer car, history would have gone the opposite direction.
Carpenter beat Riolo by two hours to the seven second mark by pulling off the feat in Richmond, Virginia during an IHRA points meet.
“It was a pretty wild ride at the end,” Carpenter admitted. “When we originally adapted the Alston chassis kit to the car in the floor of my auto repair shop, it had a small block and a Doug Nash 5-speed in it. We thought it would go low 10s at best. At the end, it has a 540-inch nitrous motor running 7.80s at 3000 lbs. The car twisted, rolled and dog-tracked all the way down the track. It had massive rear steer. At the end of a quarter-mile run, I would have the wheel turned almost a half-round to keep it in my lane. It is a scary sight to look at now and think that I went that fast in it.”
Carpenter parked his beloved steel deathtrap and contracted longtime friend and chassis builder Tommy Mauney to fabricate a double-frame rail and lighter fiberglass version better suited for the rigors of fast doorslammer racing. This style of racing had drastically changed from the program he originally signed up for. The art of showmanship was quickly becoming replaced by pure racing.
“I always considered it a competitive class, and it was an art to be able to get these cars down the track,” Carpenter said. “The showmanship just happened to come along with it. At that time, I never thought the class would be as competitive with as many cars out there as there have been over the years. At that time there were probably only 20 true Pro Mod cars in the whole country. Compare that with today, where there are probably thousands of Pro Mods out there around the world. It has gone worldwide, and I can attest to that personally after selling my most recent car to a guy from Holland.”
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Dating back to the days of the all-steel shoebox, Carpenter still enjoys a tremendous fan following.
“The longer I sat out, the better I was with it,” Carpenter confided. “But I wasn’t content. I bought a Harley and put 30,000 miles on the thing in the first year trying to keep my mind off racing. This was before the internet was so prevalent, so I tried to keep up with it through the grapevine. I was like a bad junkie.”
Just as Carpenter was content to ride off into the sunset, an admiring fan called Carpenter and asked what he planning to do in the future. This is a brief description of the fateful conversation.
“Charles, when are you coming out to the races again,” the fan asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess when I get a sponsor, I’ll be back,” Carpenter responded.
“You know you can’t find a sponsor underneath one of those cars at your auto repair shop. You have to get out here at the races and beat the bushes. Plus, I have an announcing gig at one of the NHRA Pro Modified events; I wouldn’t mind stepping aside for you to do some color commentary.”
Carpenter made the trip to Baytown, Texas and announced, and before the season’s end – was back in competition.
“It was definitely an addiction rekindled,” Carpenter said. “I renewed contact with everyone and helped Steve Vick for a few races, setting his car up. I still had my whole operation, minus an engine, sitting at my shop collecting dust. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew I had Vick’s spare motor in my car and I was back running a few races. Then I met Pat Doherty and subsequently Paul Albino through my old buddy Donnie Little. We teamed up in 2003, and haven’t looked back since. We put more runs on the car between 2003 and last year than we did the entire time before that. If I could I would race seven days a week and I hope it continues going as well as it has been.”
Making those runs up and down the strips quickly made Carpenter aware today’s Pro Modified wasn’t the same one he walked away from in the 1990s. A nitrous combination represented the majority of the Pro Modified fields, but he quickly witnessed the transformation of the nitrous combination from leading edge technology to yesterday’s hot tip for winning in the class.
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If you're a fan of European Pro Modified racing, you'll see this 1955 making the rounds.
“I can’t lie and say that I never considered it,” Carpenter admitted. “But it was never more than a thought. I had several offers to put a blower in my car at no expense to me, but they never came to fruition. I just couldn’t do it. I know nothing about a blower, and there is always more to learn about nitrous, but I know it like the back of my hand. At its lowest point, it looked like Pro Mod was going to be blower only, despite all of our best efforts. But then along came a God-send for us nitrous racers, the ADRL. Without it, who knows what all of us nitrous guys would be doing by now with the IHRA’s refusal to acknowledge the problem?”
Carpenter admits he’s as happy today running in the ADRL’s Pro Nitrous division as he was in the SUPER CHEVY days. He’s even got a new 1955 Chevy under construction by chassis builder Terry Murphy.
“I’m like a kid in a toy store,” Carpenter declared. “It’s been 10 years since I got a new car, and I can’t wait to get it. Terry Murphy and his crew are doing an awesome job with it. It looks incredible, and we are doing a lot of unique things with it, inside and out. It’s going to be the trickest, lightest car I’ve ever had, hands down. With that said, it’s not a cookie-cutter car and is requiring some extra time and effort to make the necessary modifications and tweaks. We want to make it right, even if it means missing the first ADRL race. It’s all being done with the goal of remaining competitive. Sure, I was competitive last year, but this year is going to be a whole new ballgame. There are going to be tons of purpose-built cars, and everyone is going all out.
“Budget permitting, we are going to try to be a contender again this year, but it meant selling my old car and getting this new one. I knew this was how it was going to be after PRI in 2006. Michael and I agreed that 2007 was going to be the year for us to make moves in the ADRL, because once it takes off, it could get crazy. So far, that is all turning out the way we predicted, and 2008 is shaping up to be a wild one. 2007 was awesome for us -- it was a completely rejuvenating experience. We are going to do our best to have an encore performance in 2008.”
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