We immediately added a 32 funny car event in the 1973 schedule. It would require additional night lighting, more grandstands, asphalt throughout the pit area and concession/rest rooms. The City of Portland along with the Rose Festival Association were willing to finance these improvements with dollars coming from the additional rent
and concession percentage that the bigger events would bring with Bill Doner as the new event promoter. And the new improvements would make it nicer for the Rose Festival Drag Races.
Michael Campbell, The City of Portland PIR Manager, was able to railroad through a lot of projects in a hurry so that the improvements could get completed in a timely manner and meet the needs of the larger crowds. Without his efforts to get things done we would have been in a real time problem as the events were all set for the needed night lighting, grandstands and improved pit area. Later, during that year, Michael Campbell became General Manager of IRP, moving to the Seattle area. Dale LaFollette then was hired as the City of Portland PIR Manager, thus beginning his long and storied career there.
The next few years at PIR brought many large crowds, especially for the night events, thanks to the new track lighting and the bigger promotions that we were doing. With the closeness of PIR to the city it was a natural for local race fans to take in the drag races for their evening activities.
With several years of the 32 funny car event being a big success, Doner felt that the local fans there in Portland-Vancouver hadn’t understood that the event had 32 funny cars and, as the promoter he is, he could fill the stands even more with a little “encouragement” in the event promotion. An extra little push for the local race fans would certainly send the event into the ozone layer for size.
The radio ads that Bill produced for the 32 funny car event that year boldly said, “32 funny cars or double your money back!” Of course, the media buy in the area was a monster so the stage was set for a few of those event attendees to count a few funny cars just to test out the bold statement. Late in the afternoon that Saturday, we were counting the cars ourselves to make sure that we hadn’t made a huge error here. Remember that all of these funny cars and many more, are heading to SIR for the next Saturday night. It could very well be that a person could get mixed up a little and be short a car or two. After several counts, as you might imagine, there was only 31 funny cars on the property with just a few hours before the 6:00pm start.
Now what? Do we just forget about it, or is our credibility on the line? We needed to have 32 funny cars, as advertised, period, one way or another!
The panic set in at that point. I told Bill that he could pull his 1974 Thunderbird out during the fire-up so we could jack it up really high to make it look like a funny car. (By the way, he didn’t appreciate that very much)
Jack Slawik, of North West Race Cars, a race car builder south of Portland, was building a funny car and was mounting the body on the car when we called him. The conversation went something like this:
“Hi Jack, it’s Saturday and you are working in your shop there in Tualatin today?”
“Yes, I have this funny car chassis complete and I’m mounting the body on it.”
“Would you like to go to 32 funny cars tonight?”
“Hey, that sounds like a fun time, yeah.”
“Could you bring the funny car you are working on up to PIR and display it on an open trailer in the pit area?”
“I sure could. I’ll see you guys there in about an hour”
Whew! Just before the “big show” got underway, here came Jack towing funny car number #32 into the pit area at PIR. What a grand sight that was!! The promoters’ nightmare had been answered as the “double your money back” was void…..and the race went on!
Interesting enough, there was always a large crowd around Jack and his yet-to-be-completed funny car in the pit area. Seems as though the race fans really enjoyed seeing what one of these race cars looked like in the early stages of construction.
Maybe, just maybe, that evening in Portland was just the beginning of vendors displaying race cars in the early stages of construction just as the NHRA National events do these days… Nah, not really!
ROCKY’S ROAD: Next edition - |
Seattle’s 1979 64 FUNNY CARS, earthshaking, at least! |  |