Dyno Don Nicholson Drag Racing Legend, Chevrolet, Mercury, Ford

This video covers (in very broad strokes) the life, cars and career of drag racing legend "Dyno" Don Nicholson.

Learn more at: www.dynodon.com

Originally a circle-track roadster campaigner in the late 1940s and then a participant in dry-lakes racing in El Mirage, Calif., and Bonneville, Utah, Nicholson went on to become a pioneer in Stock, Factory Experimental, Funny Car, and Pro Stock competition.

Because his career spanned the 1960s and 1970s when there were relatively few NHRA national events on the calendar, the bulk of his wins came in match race competitions, where he usually won more than 90 percent of his races.

Many drag racing historians agree that if Nicholson had been able to race in the 1980s and 1990s, he would have compiled an NHRA record similar to that of Funny Car racer John Force (97 career wins) and Pro Stock racers Warren Johnson (86) and Bob Glidden (85).

Still, Nicholson holds the record for final-round appearances in the most NHRA eliminator categories, scoring either wins or runner-up efforts in Funny Car, Pro Stock, Super, Comp, Stock, and Street.

He was the first Ford campaigner to win a national event in Pro Stock, at the 1971 Summernationals, and he earned the NHRA Winston Pro Stock championship title in 1977 at the age of 50.

He earned his “Dyno” nickname as one of the first to utilize the benefits of a chassis dyno, which he operated at a Chevrolet dealership in Pasadena, Calif., in the late 1950s. By the time that NHRA announced to hold its first Winternationals at Pomona Raceway in 1961, he was ready to put his well-honed skills to use.

Mercury’s racing manager, Al Turner, had the foresight to envision where the whole Funny Car phenomenon was headed, and he accordingly commissioned the Logghe Bros., of Detroit, to build tube-chassis Comets with one-piece flip-top bodies for the 1966 season.

This gave Nicholson such a performance advantage that the only driver who had the potential to defeat him was his protégé and Comet teammate, Eddie Schartman. Today’s Funny Cars still use the same flip-top format that was established by Nicholson’s Eliminator I Comet.

Nicholson was virtually undefeated in 1966 and recorded the first Funny Car seven-second clocking at Martin, Mich., late that summer.

He enjoyed another banner season in 1967 with his Eliminator II, but when Funny Cars switched to supercharged engines late that year, Nicholson became concerned with the danger of blower explosions and engine fires. After completing the 1968 season with his 7.3-second Eliminator Cougar, Nicholson teamed with Sox & Martin, Bill Jenkins, and Dick Landy to form a match race circuit with carbureted, four-speed-equipped heads-up Super Stock cars, a throwback to the original A/FX vehicles of the mid-1960s.

Nicholson continued to campaign with his Ford entries through the 1980 season. He made a comeback effort in 1984 with an Oldsmobile before retiring from Pro Stock at age 57.

In 1988, however, he returned to drag racing with a nostalgia version of his 7.5-second, 152-mph Chevy Bel Air, and he made a brief attempt in Pro Stock Truck competition in 1998 and 1999.

Nicholson earned the Car Craft All-star Drag Racing Team Ollie Award in 1977 and was Funny Car Driver of the Year in 1967.

He has been inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in Ocala, Fla., and the Motorsports Hall of Fame in Novi, Mich. Nicholson was most recently honored as the grand marshal of the California Hot Rod Reunion in 1997, and he is spending this season running his exhibition car in the Super Chevy racing series.