We went to Hurst, we took the car completely apart, I say we, my wife and I, that's all
there was, there wasn't even a helper.
Took it completely apart, laid it out on the ground, they photographed it, it was a famous
picture, me by all of the parts, put it back together, and drove out to Great Meadows the
next day on Saturday, and no warm-up or anything, I was just setting it on the tire of the car
and this kid came up and he said, when are you going to go 200 big daddy?
And I said right now, and I put that helmet on, told my wife to push into the starting
line and went up to 201.34, 7.78 seconds.
August the first of 1964.
That all kind of ties in, it would be nice if I could be the first over 200 in an electric
car, I've been dragging my feet, it's been a long time, we thought that we would have
done it long before now.
You know, I've been around since the beginning of drag racing when it started in 1950 here
in Florida, and I've always been around the automobiles since it nearly started way back
in the early 1900s and you know we used Holley carburetors on early Ford engines, they were
called Chandler-Rose, that later became part of Holley, then Holley built those tremendous
four-barrel carburetors that just dominated the sport for years and years, I think one
was called the Dominator.
So, and it's so neat that now here as we go into the future, no one really knows what
the future is going to be but we got a pretty good idea that a lot of it's going to go electric
because it's so clean and it can be controlled, that's the whole idea of the thing.
There's an internal combustion engine, as much as we love them, is great the moment
it rolls out of the factory but 50,000 miles later it ain't so clean, but it still runs
good so you can't expect the person that bought it to throw it away and get a new one.
That doesn't hold true for electricity because electricity is generated at a plant that is
completely controlled how it is made.
The scrubbers, everything is done, it keeps always is the same, the electric vehicle is
always the same, there may be some minor thing but nothing comes out of internal combustion
engine, so for the future of the cities, they are going to have to go electric, and people
will go in and park and there will be charging stations everywhere, I saw it in England,
I mean I'm not dreaming this up, you walk down the streets of London and the parking
meter has got a charging station, so it's coming and it's so neat to see Holley from
the beginning of the sport, right now they are leading the charge into the future and
I like it because I have always been an innovator, you can come up and look at my museum and
see all of the stuff that I came up with.
It's a perfect fit, I think, and I'm just having soo much fun and that is the whole
key to life, philosophically speaking, as long as you are having fun, you are in good
shape and the day that you stop having fun and you don't really care about getting up
in the morning it's all over.
One of the famous questions that I'm always asked is how does the electric vehicle going
to fit into drag racing?
How can it possibly eliminate all these fantastic engines that have?
Well, the answer to that is that they are not, if anything happens to natural methane
in top fuel and funny cars, it will be because of its self, it won't be because of some electric
dragster.
It will either be that it gets too expensive or homeland security does something about
the fuel, we don't know what the future is for that, but I look at this as an alternative.
This is a vehicle that can be used and I think it will be inexpensive to operate once we
get all the bugs worked out and the batteries and everything perfected.
Anybody would be able to have one of these and it won't be that much to maintain and
they'll be able to race it anywhere, even in the downtown area, it will not make noise
just like the sports cars that have the electric sports cars, that's what I see for it.
Now in the way distant future, who knows, maybe the drag racing will be all-electric,
who knows, but for the time being, it's a viable alternative.
You know I see the younger generation being very interested in this because this is the
green thing and so the younger generation, and I applaud them for that, they are thinking
green and of course, they have a long way to go, but I mean, just to have that thought
in their mind is good, and this will go right along with this will complement what they
are trying to do and I get a lot of letters and nice thankyous for doing this for that
reason.
Innovation comes from being able to see the future, my father was able to that, he told
me things when I was a kid that I couldn't believe and that's what causes innovation
and what you are looking at right now, but what will it be in the future?
What will it take to change it to be in the future?