Mopar: When did you get started in drag racing?

DL: I got started drag racing in 1956. I was racing one of the four-letter word cars -- Ford - up until 62’. But in the middle of 1962 Chrysler came out with the 413 cube dual quad crossram wedge, what’s come to be known as the “Max Wedge”. At that time we were doing pretty well with our Ford but it was obviously not going to be competitive for much longer, we could see the handwriting on the wall - and the Mopar’s times! In the middle of the year as soon as they came out with the car I switched over to Mopars.

Mopar: Interesting! Can you explain a little more?

DL: In 1962 people from Chrysler, like Bob McDaniels and Ronnie Householder saw that I was doing pretty good here on the west coast and offered me a car and parts and pieces, to race their Chrysler because not many people were racing them. I said ‘Well, let’s try it out, let’s see what the deal is.’ I had heard a lot about it. They brought a car out and I ran it, and I realized that in dead-stock tune it was going almost as fast as we were going with our highly modified "stock" cars at that time. I was just shocked. I had to switch. The performance is what I liked. At that time, I said ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ So, they furnished me with a Plymouth, and I raced that all through ’62. Then in ‘63, I got the 426" Wedge, I believe they called it the Stage 2 at that time. I raced that all through that season. Then Dodge came along in ‘64 and wanted me too, because I had mainly raced on the west coast, so the Dodge dealers up here in Orange County wanted to sponsor me and they switched me over to a Dodge. I raced the Dodge Wedge that whole year. It was just fabulous. We were doing great! We were just kind of whipping everybody, you know, it was just remarkable. Chevys and Fords were dead meat, you might say… it was great.

Then, in February 1964, they pop up with this Hemi® engine, a creation of Tom Hoover and the boys - they have always been my heroes through the years. The things I’ve learned from them is just unbelievable and we had a good relationship at that point going over to the Hemi. By mid-year, we switched over to the Hemi two-door sedan with the aluminum front-end. It was fabulous. You know, we really, really dominated out here on the coast and it worked out really well. We went back east once with it, ran a few exhibition match races, raced at Indianapolis and we qualified, and did really well.

Soon, they came back to me and said we’re going to build these real odd-ball cars. They had looked at my car and already noticed some of the things I had been doing such as moving the wheelbase around a little bit. The rules weren’t very strict at that time; they didn’t watch very closely for the wheel-base. They decided to build a radical A/FX type style car. We didn’t call it an A/FX but the sanctioning bodies did. We raced a ‘65 Dodge, and man, that was just a killer car. We just totally dominated everything that was out here. Unfortunately, NHRA decided that they had no stock class for it -- we’d have to run it in a class they’d created called A/FX. The people there at Chrysler said they didn’t want me to race, they wanted me to go out and go across the country. We’d get exposure for the vehicle and not worry about running the NHRA because it wasn’t getting enough exposure that way. We could get a lot more exposure with these cars, get a lot more exposure for the dealers and their parts program at the time. So, we took the car out and did match racing, just up and down everywhere. Racing AHRA, which was far more lenient with their rules or left the rules the way they were, they didn’t change them when they saw the car. Because it was highly modified, it had some 15” wheelbase adjustment. So we raced all through that circuit there. It was probably the best car I had. Probably the most profitable car because of all the match racing we could do with it. It was such a wild looking car, everybody wanted to see it.

In ‘66, they built a Hemi powered Dart and of course it was lighter. We had the wheels moved around too, and we raced that. We did real good with it, but along came the flipper-body Mercury cars, with their overhead cam engine. On the Dart, we were making so much power at this time, the chassis and hadlinge became a very serious problem. Still, we did some experimenting with a supercharged engine that the Ramchargers built. They actually built a couple of them for me. Then Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin got working on a tube-framed deal like the Mercury and Ford guys were using. This was the route we were going to go for the following year.

These cars had become exotically funny at the time. There was no real category for them in any of the racing associations. They were mainly exhibition cars. But they were good cars for us because we could make a lot of money match racing them. But then Mr. Cahill and the other Chrysler bigwigs finally decided that we needed to go back to something more like what our customers buy. At that point they called me, Buddy Martin and Ronnie Sox in, and we sat down and talked. "You know, we have a plan here, and what do you think of it? We’d like to take you guys and schedule some performance clinics at dealerships".

Well, it all sounded pretty good to us. We really thought, boy, this could really turn into something a little more professional and a lot more credibility going to the dealer showrooms. So, I went along with it and of course Ronnie and Buddy went along with it. We did all the dealer clinic programs and we called ours the "Dodge Performance Clinic." The dealership we‘d go to generally was in the area where we had a race coming up. At this time, we went back to racing with all the sanctioning bodies, NHRA, IHRA, and AHRA. We had the fullest schedule possible. There were so many races, we couldn’t possibly participate in all of them. Then, they started a little bit of handicapping on us, but it was expected because we just dominated!

By this time, the Mopar Performance Parts thing was rolling along. Back then, it was called Chrysler Special Parts and then it was Direct Connection. And then finally it became known as Mopar Performance Parts. They really started a brand new business for Mopar with the Mopar products - a tremendous amount of business. And I believe the dealer programs we did were just tremendous because we’d get a thousand people into a dealership. The showrooms were very small. They were just packed outside. And we’d sit there with these display boards all stacked up and laid out with the good high performance parts attached to them so we could show and explain it to them. We even gave away some jackets for participating and had them fill out cards, which was all beneficial to the parts program. We did this for three years. The street guys loved it.

In 1970 we were still running those cars. But in '68 they had released the factory-built Hemi Dart and Hemi ‘Cuda and they became another match race style car. Back then, we had no idea that it was the quickest factory car that would ever be built, anywhere, anytime.

When you weren’t busy doing the clinics or racing at one of the meets you’d go out to the little-teeny race tracks, where they still got maybe 5,000-6,000 people out. Some of them 10,000 and at the big tracks up to 20,000 people come out watching; there were big crowds for those days. It was grassroots exposure for Mopar and Chrysler. It my case it was Dodge then and Ronnie and Buddy were Plymouth. It didn’t cost us much money because you had a little income from the dealers in the match racing. Then you’d run the national meets. So it worked out great. In ‘70 we stopped that and the clinic program just kind of faded away. The insurance, safety, and emission stuff was starting.

We kept racing, and finally they created Pro Stock in 1970, which was a class where all these type of cars that we had been match racing could all get together and race. So, we actually fought and and lobbied to get them to create this class and they finally agreed. Then we ran that class and we were whipping everybody, the Chevrolets and the Fords and pretty soon they were letting small blocks race big blocks, you know, 500, 426 cubic inch motors racing a little small block 327 Chevrolets and small block Fords. But they had to handicap, they kept handicapping these cars continually. Literally, it almost put us out of racing at that time. It was pretty disappointing. At that point, which was about '74, we wound up having to go back to match racing to make things work, to still get exposure for Mopar Performance, which those people were helping pay, helping us race. So we went back to doing the match racing. Then it appeared that they were trying to handicap the Hemis so badly that we decided to go back to the small block. They experimented with Bob Glidden, and fixed him up. In fact the car they used was the car I was building and they gave it to him to build a small block. They furnished a motor and got the whole program started. So, for a year he raced a small block. Fortunately, he did very well. In fact, after he’d run the car a few months he was winning a lot. So, at that time I decided I was going to build another car, a Charger with a small block. Well, again they started handicapping and pushing weight here, pushing weight there. This all sounds like sour grapes but it’s really what happened, NASCAR was no different. Everybody knew what was happening, GM had the money, and it was bad for Chrysler.

It evolved to the point where there was no sense even going out to race. We just couldn’t even afford to pay our crews and the fuel costs to go to the races and race under those conditions. We'd just start to get dialed in and, 6 months later, they'd change the rules -- put an extra half a pound per cubic inch, or what have you. It ended up where we were coming to the starting line with a little 318 cubic incher, and there’s a 396 Chevy sitting there and we have a small block Mopar, which were excellent running engines, a lot of good parts Mopar built for them . But we were carrying so much weight it was just difficult to accelerate all that weight. And they had the advantage, there was just no where to go. Six months later they would change it again. I basically quit racing at that time and got involved with the Mopar Performance guys, and their engineering people, development people. I continued on just doing some development work, testing, and writing magazine articles out here on the west coast. They’d come out with a new product and we’d try to get it exposed. So, we did that for quite a few years. It kind of evolved. It was a lot of good cooperation. Bob Cahill had set-up a system originally and everyone followed through with it, even after he retired. They tried to get the fuel people, the manifold people, the suspension and transmission people all organized in a group and had meetings to keep everything organized so that, if they’re going to make a part, they’re going to make a part that’s needed, not just an idea that one individual had. It worked out really great. They came up with some fabulous parts that people are using today. I thank them a lot for supporting me all through the year. But, I stayed with them also, a lot of people switched and went on with someone else.

Mopar: How did you learn about drag racing?

DL: A friend of mine owned this ‘56 Ford pick-up. And the local tracks created a pick-up class because so many people out here, this was farming country, had pick-ups and they had it at about six or seven tracks. They were all individual track records, they weren’t really organized together. Some of them were AHRA, NHRA. The other ones we used to name them “outlaw tracks.” If the guy had an old airport they’d have races every weekend. We would go out there, they had this class, and we’d run it. I just learned the hard way, by breaking gear boxes, losing clutches, and breaking rear ends. Fortunately, the rule everyone agreed on was if it had a truck part number you could use it. The Ford did quite well until Chevrolet showed up with their fuel-injection. At that time, we weren’t competitive because that was, a true, complete high-performance engine. We could take the four-barrel carburetor put it on the truck Ford V8 engine but that was about all we could really do. You could put a cheater cam shaft in there (they didn’t know how to measure them in those days). Different heads raised the compression up. It was just a lot of fun. The whole thing…how to be ingenious or find a way to get by the rules and it put a lot of fun into the whole thing. I mean, you’d go home and try to create some way you could get by the rules to run faster, without them throwing you out for it.

Mopar: When you first started racing was it just for pride?

DL: Sure. Pride or the trophies. There was no money involved. We’d work all day, get off work, and go work on the truck. That’s all the guy that owned the car and myself did every night. Then we took it out to test it with our Mickey Mouse stop watch on an old street in Northridge, just to feel how it ran, and whether it was going to break or not. We’d race somebody else all the time. The beginning was out at an industrial park that had a nice paved road. There was nobody on it, it was brand-new, no buildings on it, it was just street. Then my brother bought a ‘60 Ford high-performance when it first came out, the fast-back job…and I got involved with that. I was noticed by a guy who had a dealership, Andy Andrews. He had a car dealership where he sold Chevrolets and Fords, and later on Mopars when they came out. He hired me to come in and try to sell a few cars, then go out and work on the car, and eventually, go to the races with him where he’d drive it. He had a tremendous problem with driving, especially coordinating the column shifts that were really difficult to shift. So, he put me in there. In fact, he used to smoke these big cigars. He would come over and give me one for good luck. I got used to it, and felt that every time I went somewhere, like the starting line of a race or working on the car, I felt naked without one. So, it became a habit. I never smoked them. Once in a while I’d light one up when somebody gave me one, but I couldn’t stand to smoke them.

Mopar: Do a lot of people give you cigars?

DL: Yeah, that’s the number one thing they’ll give me. They want me to sign another one or a couple for themselves, you know.

Mopar: Do they know that you don’t smoke them?

DL: Yeah, pretty much a lot of the people do. What they’ll say is, “I never see you light it.”

Mopar: Now, throughout your life it sounds like you made a living off racing in some way, or being involved with racing. Is that correct?

DL: In 1961 I went completely into racing. I had owned a dyno tuner shop with a chassis dyno. I was the first one out here in the West Valley, the whole west city of L.A., that had one. Mine was designed and built for high-performance engines. Most of the dynos around here were for big diesel trucks, so they could set their fuel-injections on them. I used that, and raced it and, it worked out really well. I had a lot of business. Racing was like a bug that you caught. When I was getting so busy with the racing, I just closed the shop one day. I kept it to work on my car, but I stopped doing outside business. That was back in 1964. 1965 is actually when I really began traveling farther east. That’s when I was working 100 percent, full-time for Chrysler. But, that’s kind of how I got involved, the original fun and enjoyment of trying to beat the other guy, knowing the rules, and pushing them right to the end.Both the cars I raced were very, very, competitive. There was always the challenge there to try and make more power. In those days we did everything, you ended up driving and doing the engine work, too. You couldn’t afford a mechanic and a driver. There wasn’t enough money in the beginning. Of course when television came it just opened things right up for sponsorship funds.

Mopar: Did you ever think you could make a living racing?

DL: Not at first. I didn’t think so but I took a chance. I didn’t really close my shop up totally, I just closed for the summer – just put a sign on it! I had a match race set up and I raced three times a week at three different tracks. I’d only race one NHRA track. But the rest of the time I was out match racing. And you got paid money to do that. Then in those days you could sell your pictures. As it got more professional they would make what they call Hello Cards and posters. You couldn’t sell them because your sponsor was giving them to you just to give out to people. They wanted a lot more exposure. And signing autographs, in those days an autographed picture you got paid for it since there was no competition. You’d make as much selling your pictures and T-shirts as you would racing. Many times a lot more. It got to the point where I had to have one guy come along and that’s all he did. He drove the truck or rode in the truck all the time and stayed in the hotels. I paid all the expenses and all he did was collect and I’d just give him a small percentage. He’d just sit there while I was racing the car, he’d be selling pictures. You could make thousands of dollars doing that.

Mopar: So they call you “Dandy” Dick Landy, is that correct?

DL: Yeah, Eric Belcore from Hot Rod Magazine nicknamed me that because I was very meticulous with my dress. Most the guys out on those cars looked like grease monkeys - they looked like the guys working in sewers. These days, guys are pretty clean in the workshops, but years ago guys used to just let all the grease sorta hang on their clothes. They never took a rag up and wiped their hands off, but I wore white tennis shoes, matching shirts and pants. And we had fancy shirts with our name on it. Like golf shirts, not T-shirts. I guess we were pretty dapper Dan looking. And they nicknamed me that when they did an article on one of my cars back in '64. Most people had a nickname on their cars. You know, Don Purdell and “the Snake”, like that. They all had kind of a little nickname and soon mine was “Dandy” Dick.

Mopar: How did you feel about that?

DL: It sounded a little crude to me being from a real staunch catholic family. And using the word “Dick,” you know. My parent’s would never use that name. Everybody else nicknamed me “Dick,” I didn’t. But I was always Richard to my family and still my good friends still called me “Richard.” But some days it sounded like a dirty word or something.

Mopar: What was your first race car?

DL: The first one I owned, personally, was a '62 Plymouth. The first car that I raced was a good friend of mine Vince Hart’s pickup truck and I was in construction at the time and he bought it because he needed it. And we figured out, “hey, this thing's fun,” I said “let’s go out to the track.” He couldn’t work that shifter if he had to. But he’d go along and you could ride double -- you could have a passenger. We’d go along and he took it back and worked on it, do this and do that, and I’d work on the motor. It was just kind of a fun thing. We won 40 trophies that year. We thought we were just great, you know. We took and ran the thing out at the dry lake beds, any place to go race. Those days we had a 92 mph pick-up truck. You know, that’s kind of fast because they’d really only go about 60 in a quarter mile. So, that’s kind of what got me started on it, but I went into the boat business, building drag ski boats. And I built those until Andy Andrews came along. Said, “I like you to tune up my car.” I worked on it then he said “you know, what would it take to get you to work on my car and not all these other people’s cars?” And that’s at that same time I realized this is more profitable than building boats. So I got the Dynomometer and put that in and I could Dyno tune and check what I was doing instead of having to go to the track to find out. And that’s kind of how that professionalism started.

Mopar: Now when did you get your first factory ride?

DL: Depends what you call a factory ride. People have a lot of different preferences. I got the first factory car in 1962, the Plymouth.

Mopar: There’s some debate as to whether your 64’ Dodge was the first funny car or not. What are your thoughts on that?

DL: Well, we had the most wheel-base relocation. We had a solid axle on the front of it and I think that I would, looking at it I think you would definitely say that it was a funny car. I mean, it was high and strange looking – we had it way up in the air. It only had 7” tires, the rule in those days. And height was an important thing. Now it's dangerous, especially as fast as the cars go. When I first got my 65’ car we were still on 7” inch tires and we weren’t match racing them yet. And I had the car way up in the air. As soon as we went to the big tire and started match racing the car started flying, literally. We went about 140, 142 mph for instance. In match racing, that was the beginning of the year when I left the west coast. And then when we came back we were going 165. That’s a tremendous increase. We had the car back lowered on the ground as low as we could get it, little kick spoiler up front. You know, we had to get into aerodynamics whether we liked it or not. We were forced into paying attention to it -- for survival! Of course, we didn’t know anything about it. We just looked around at what some of the sports car, Trans-Am type cars were doing and just copied the best we could.

Mopar: How did the A/FX class come about?

DL: Well the '64 car, I moved the rear wheels. There was a 2” differential in wheel-base between a Dodge and a Plymouth. The Plymouth had a little shorter wheel-base for nothing more than a bracket change. And I picked up on that and realized that I was giving up two inches of wheel-base, the advantage went to the Plymouth guys when I went to Dodge. So I just had them send me the Dodge springs and brackets, put them on my car and that was two inches. Well, if two works let’s go a little more so, bang! -- four inches instantly. By 1963 I had the car, the rear-wheels pulled in 4 inches and the front-wheels forward an inch. And we got away with it but later on it was getting a little more noticeable, they started checking wheelbase measurments so then they had to pull the front wheels forward the same amount. Then in '64 we got the Hemi car and decided to do some other type of racing with it. We were getting away with the wheel-base movement thing. We finally got a total of six inches in the rear and six inches in the front. Have you ever see some of the old pictures on the car when they had the sawed axle on it. The whole front fender well had to be cut out and moved forward about 4 inches to fit the tire in there. That’s when they really began to look funny, this big long wheel well – the tire sitting way outside of the center of it, way forward of the center of it. And then it started really picking us up. Then the sawed straight axle, instead of the stock independent front suspension. We knocked 30 lbs. off the front of the car by putting a sawed axle on it. It was allowed because there were part numbers for a Dodge van, the little A-100 van. So Dodge PR people like Frank Wiley, who was the head of that whole thing, said, “I guess you can run it.” Well, they changed the rules right after that. Then the Mopar Chrysler guys decided: “Well, let’s do it right.” So they went 15 and 10 inches! Hey, if you’re gonna move it, move it. But even those cars I shortened up some more.

Mopar: Now, you saw NHRA coming up with the A/FX, the factory experimental……

DL: They wanted the cars to run but they didn’t want them to run against all the cars that existed. There’s 7 directors in NHRA and each of them take a vote and the majority of the racers were GM guys. There were a few Ford’s and a few Mopars, but not many Mopars out there at all at that time. Very few. Bill Maverick was about the only guy that was out there trying to race a Dodge. But, he wasn’t competitive to them. Anybody that had the hot setup from Chevy or Ford could beat those cars. He could beat the standard ones because, for Daytona, they built a bunch of dual- carbureted, mild-cammed things but they were a lot better engine then what they had in the past. A Chrysler engine was never a slouch for durability, but they just weren’t really into real high-performance like they were doing with all that wild stuff that Chevrolet made, and Ford. Ford made a ton of stuff that was just unbelievable. I don’t hardly remember seeing a Dodge out there running in those days, the one I know of was Bill “Maverick” Golden.

Mopar: I know you said that they were calling it “factory experimental.” Did you guys have a name for these cars before that?

DL: I never really put the FX on my, car but I did put the lettering on the window with shoe polish. I never called it that, I just still called a Dodge race car a Super Stock racer. Then when they took ‘em out of legality and made them all race together, Chrysler didn’t want to do it. In fact, I was told by them not to. I know Buddy Martin and Ronnie were also told. That started the first boycotting.I don’t like to talk about that, it’s just sour grapes.

Mopar: How do you think today’s funny cars relate to the early A/FX cars you were racing in 65’?

DL: There’s no comparison. Least those old cars, they looked funny, but, they looked like stock cars, they still had doors on them. I don’t think there’s any comparison. You can’t tell one from the other. If they didn’t put the name on the side you don’t know if it’s a Mustang or a Dodge. It’s just all painting and lettering and the sponsors. It’s the same with NASCAR. You know, the templates for NASCAR and the templates for funny cars, it’s the same. They don’t make templates but all of the dimensions are the same. You can’t deviate from them. The roof has to be a certain height, the roof has to be a certain width, and the side of the car has to be a certain width and so much overhang and so much this and that. True, the engines are different, but, basically, it’s just personalities racing is what it is. Which, I didn’t care about. I thought that the old way was always good. You got more recognition for the work you were doing, both with the factories and the individuals.

Mopar: In the golden era of racing, when you were very active, do you think it was the driver or the car that was more important?

DL: Well the drivers definitely had to do more. And most of the drivers did all of their own engine work. Ninety to ninety-five percent of them did. Today, it’s not that way at all. A driver is a driver. Actually, nothing against Ronnie and Buddy’s operation but it was a better way to do it because Buddy took care of all that. Ronnie only had to worry, basically about driving. And of course he had to know how to change a clutch because if it broke between rounds he’d have to help out. And he knew how to lash valves, change plugs, and all of that. But as far as building the engine, the hard parts of the whole thing, he was very, very fortunate. Because that’s the way it’s done today. You’ve got an engine builder and you’ve got a crew chief manager and you’ve got a driver. Of course it’s gone to the extreme now, they’ve got a lot more people. Like Purdell’s has sixty employees out there on his cars. But that’s just progress, that’s all television. You know, without television those sponsors wouldn’t be there.

Mopar: What do you consider yourself, an engine builder or a race car driver?

DL: These days I guess I consider myself an engine builder. We don’t have racecars at all.

Mopar: What about then? What about in the 60’s?

DL: In the 60’s I was racing all the time. I quit in ‘80. I hired drivers from then on. Otherwise it was too big of a load.

Mopar: Would you have said you were a racecar driver then?

DL: Oh yeah, Sure. That was my profession.

Mopar: That’s interesting. People were probably interested in talking to you after you told them that you were a racecar driver. What did your family think of that?

DL: Oh, they loved it. They liked all that exposure, me sitting there and signing autographs and that sort of thing.

Mopar: Did they go to a lot of races with you?

DL: Well, in the summertime I had the daughter and two boys and the daughter got gypped out of a lot of it because the boys could stay with the crew. And a girl along was kind of not the plan. It wasn’t very acceptable in those days.

Mopar: In 1967 Dodge had you running a Coronet R/T, both the 440 and Hemi version. What was it like to transition from a 9 second to an 11 second car?

DL: It was a little bit of a letdown as far as the actual performance goes. But the competition was still there. And the challenge was even greater. We were always ahead when we quit racing the funny car. Ahead of everybody else. We won, like, 85% of the races. You lost because you broke or you just had a bad engine and you couldn’t fix it in time or something like that. But I didn’t care for that part of it at all. But, it was still a very, very big challenge in all of racing, involved with it. Staying involved with the people, the sport. Staying to watch the fuelers and the funny cars race all of the time. Every round I’d sit there watching them. And got to know them all very well. In fact I still make a lot of parts for them – they all still run Hemis!

Mopar: What was it like to drive the Hemi Dart in SS?

DL: That little Super Stock car? That was fun because Ford had a the Mustang. And I got to beat those guys with that little family car. That was great. We’d laugh and kid about it all the time. After driving those real fast cars, like Don Nicholson driving that flip-top car and then he’s sitting there in a Mustang. You know, with that little bit of power. He got all the way into the supercharged flip-top but he campaigned, he enjoyed the cars when we were allowed to run the Pro Stock. All of us did. Everybody enjoyed that much more than the funny cars, I think. You know, real 4-speed trannys. The funny cars were just automatics, the only exciting thing was always trying not to spin out and hit the guardrail or something. That’s only exciting for a second, the after part’s kinda bad. It wrecks things, burns you and all that nasty stuff.

Mopar: When NHRA created Pro Stock in 1970 did you think that Hemi powered cars would be factored in a few years?

DL: No. But it wouldn’t have mattered. We still would have run them until they did. Chrysler was getting big into parts and pieces, not to mention I was working for them. I was under contract to them, so, for me, it wasn’t just parts and pieces. And so was Buddy Martin. I think those were the only two people in the whole group but the rest of the racers were getting, a dealer would buy the car and they’d get the free parts or help. They’d do their own engine work and stuff. And they boycotted NHRA. They told everybody they’re not going to give them any parts or help them at all. Boycotted them when it got so bad for awhile in an attempt to get the rules changed, I think it was all futile. I don’t think it worked really.

Mopar: What do you think of Pro Stock today?

DL: Oh, it’s a very competitive class. You got to have your stuff together there. Years ago you could have a car that was almost a half a second behind because you’d screwed something up, and the four-speeds weren’t easy to work in those days. Today, they’re a pretty locked and loaded deal, it’s pretty hard to miss a gear. But they’re harder to drive than a funny car is. The driver doesn’t do anything but let off the brake and jump on the pedal, it’s all electronically shifted and everything.

Mopar: Did your brother Mike ever drive a racecar?

DL: Yeah, he drove a couple of the clinic cars for two years. He did pretty well and won a bunch of classes with them. He drove a Coronet, ‘68, did real well with that car. HE had a four-speed but I saw that was a problem so we put an automatic in. Driving the four-speed in those days required a lot of experience. And the transmission would need a lot of work so they would shift with a wide-open throttle. You’d just leave the throttle wide-open up and shift it all the time. But now, you don’t even have to have to put the clutch in you just pull the lever. The Pro Stocker.

Mopar: Do you have any children that are involved with racing or cars?

DL: No. My son works for me here at the shop. My brother works here. My oldest son is off in another type business, but it’s mechanical type stuff. He deals in automotive type products that they sell. He gets them engineered, developed, and works with the development people. A lot of the stuff comes over form China, so he’s always flying overseas, working with those people. My daughter’s into computer stuff. She loves the computers.

Mopar: You mentioned Tom Hoover as one of your heroes. Was there anyone else you admired or considered a hero, especially during the golden era of racing?

DL: Bob Cahill was probably the best of the whole product planning bunch. Of course, he was the boss. He was great and under him worked Dick Maxwell. I worked with him when Cahill left. He took over the job of managing that whole thing. We all had our brains in the same direction, so it worked out well. Tom Hoover was, you know, just the best engineer there was because he would analyze a problem, then work on it and he was determined to solve it and he always did. I mean not 100%, nobody does but he always solved the problem. And when you had a problem, you’d get a hold of Hoover. I was able to get directly through to him all the time. Dale Reeker was the head of the program there in ‘64 and ‘65, but nobody hears much about him for some reason.

Mopar: Well, you’re mentioning mainly engineer’s and administrative people. Was there any racecar driver’s that you looked up to?

DL: Don Purdell (Prudhomme maybe?????), he was Top Fuel Dragster guy. He was one of my heroes in that area. But in drag racing, I think there was a couple of excellent drivers. The best was probably Ronnie Sox. I don’t know anybody that would really argue about that. Ronnie raced all of the time like we did. And his percentages were very good. You had to work on the percentage when you raced that much. I’d be gone 200 days a year, gone from home. That’s a lot of racing and traveling. A lot of happenings – a lot of miles. There were times when everybody was kind of a hero because they were hot n’ heavy. I had a lot of respect for Warren Johnson, I’m talking back when he wasn’t winning. I had a lot of respect for him then, probably more respect. I still have a lot of respect for him. That’s when I first learned he was pretty knowledgeable, pretty quick guy about what to change and what to do and what not to do. There were a lot of people that just did it because somebody else did it. You know, copy cats. I guess I used to be a copy cat when I first started in it. But then I realized these people can’t help me. Majority of hot rodders out here all raced highly-modified cars and dragsters. There were just certain things that couldn’t help you, you had to help yourself. But now everybody’s got somebody to look up to. Today, it just takes a lot more money instead of brains.

Mopar: What kind of cars do you have now? What do you own?

DL: A Dodge Durango. I still kept an old ‘74 Dodge Dart, it’s all original. My mother in-law owned it and I just kept it to have around. It’s looks all cherry neat and stock and all that. My ‘64 cars have been completely restored. The ‘65’s restored. ‘70’ Challenger, too. There are 4 of them all restored. The ‘73 car is all restored. I take them to shows but they’re owned by other people. I own a small percentage of some of them. And I have a little bit of control over them as long as they have my colors and name on them. That’s the safe way so they don’t go out and race and crash and sue me and not the guy that owns it.

Mopar: Have you driven the new Dodge Magnum with the 5.7L Hemi?

DL: Yeah, it’s a nice engine. It’s an excellent engine right now, a real Hemi, dual rocker shafts, even dual plugs like the old D-5 Hemi. Boy I’m sure glad they did it.

Mopar: What do you think about the Fast and Furious type cars, the import tuners?

DL: They’re great. That’s what the young fellas can afford. They can’t afford those big cars. They cost a lot of money. They can take those little cars and buy some aftermarket parts, put a loud pipe on them, chrome air cleaner, and chrome valve covers and go out there and look like a hero. Lower it on the ground and buy a spoiler for the back and the front and they’re in. Not a lot of them do a lot of work to the engine yet. The trick is, really it’s a shame that Chrysler dropped the little two-door Neon. I mean, that would be the hottest seller there is right now with that 2.4L Turbo engine.

Mopar: You probably see a lot of those little cars out there don’t you?

DL: Oh yeah. Little cockroaches everywhere. I drive a Durango with a supercharger on it. And you get at the stop light sitting back there 5 car-lengths. You let off at the 65 or so and here they come and here they come flying by (makes noise) waaaaaahhhhh..... They’re weaving in and out of traffic to catch up. You can swat them like flies out here, too. Some of them look fast but they don’t all handle too well. They crash just like Matchbox cars. They’re light and they get hurt in them pretty easy.

Mopar: Dick, thanks for your time. You’re a legend in your own time!

DL: You’re welcome. Tell the new bosses they have an awesome heritage to protect.

Mopar/DaimlerChrysler Media

redriderbob

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Dick Landy at the Chrysler Carlisle show many years back. He's a very personable nice guy, as well as being a Mopar fanatic! Thanks for sharing....
Like the new signature, by the way!

 

I could use Dick's help with my traction, or lack thereof, on my Coronet. I always enjoy reading about the Older racers like Dick Landy, Shirley Muldowney, Herb McCandles, and especially Don "BIG DADDY" Garlits. He's still the man in my mind. The Baddest 70 YO someone on the frickin planet.

 

Not to be rude, as I have the utmost respect for Mr. Landy & his accomplishments, but what is the deal with all the f'd up typing in the article?

 

Thanks for the sharing!