Prudhomme’s 3 Chariots of Fire Go on Quiet Display

It’s easy to haul cars out of a racer’s shop, but it’s hard to get them off a racer’s mind. Just ask funny-car driver Don Prudhomme of Granada Hills.

Prudhomme, who has driven some of the world’s fastest quarter-mile machines for almost 25 years, had three cars hauled from his shop Monday. Not to the wrecker, mind you, but to the Drag Racing Museum set up by Don Garlits in Ocala, Fla.

The three cars--a 1969 front-engine dragster, a 1971 rear-engine “wedge” dragster and a 1973 Plymouth Barracuda funny car--will join 50 others that Garlits has gathered across the country.

Some of the cars belonged to such drag luminaries as Connie Kalitta, Fred Goske, Lou Baney and Shirley Muldowney of Northridge.

Of course, Garlits has a few of his in there, including the original “Swamp Rat” dragster that tore up tracks from 1956 to 1961.

Prudhomme watched reluctantly as his cars were loaded into a Bekins van for their final ride to Florida.

“I really didn’t want to do it, because I wanted them for my own private collection,” Prudhomme said. “But the only ones that would see them are me and the spiders, so I figured, why not have them on display? It was getting kind of crowded around the shop, anyway.”

Two of the cars were one-time record holders. At 28, Prudhomme won with the front-engine dragster at 1969’s most important National Hot Rod Assn. race--the nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park--with a time of 6.51 seconds at 223.34 m.p.h. At last October’s NHRA World Finals, Prudhomme, 44, broke the world record at 264.86 m.p.h. in a funny car.

Despite his success over the past 22 years, Prudhomme himself may be ready for a museum. He has not yet found a sponsor for the 1986 season.