Happy Days Return : Eckman Stuck in ‘50s, but He Generates Strong Racing Career

For born-to-drag Jerry Eckman, what better place to grow up than Van Nuys during the “Happy Days” decade? The 1950s was a time when teen-agers discovered rock ‘n’ roll and began spending a lot of time in their cars. Van Nuys Boulevard, not Hollywood, was the epicenter for cruising in L. A.

And hot-rodders ruled the streets.

“Van Nuys was the drag-racing capital of the world back then,” says Eckman, now a professional racer. “It was heaven.”

When Eckman was a teen, his idea of a good time was cruising the boulevard in a ’52 Ford, a cute blonde riding shotgun and Bob’s Big Boy dead ahead. But his idea of sheer pleasure would not occur until sometime later that night at a stoplight, let’s say at the intersection of Van Nuys and Oxnard. Some guy in his mother’s ’55 Chevy would drive up and rev a pathetic straight-six engine. Eckman would rev back. Then they would race until one driver ate the other’s exhaust.

It was a purely cool teen-age lifestyle that most outgrew as soon as they had to buy their own car insurance and pay for their own repair bills--What, burn rubber off the four-plies?!--but Eckman still has the hottest car in his neighborhood, still cruises with a cute blonde, and certainly has remained on familiar terms with a quarter-mile track. Admittedly, he is 48 going on 17.

“Most people evolve after high school,” he says, “but drag racing always stuck with me.”

Eckman, however, has gone far beyond the intersection of Van Nuys and Oxnard. Last year, he ranked among the elite in the pro stock division of the National Hot Rod Assn. Driving a 1,200-horsepower Pennzoil Pontiac, he finished third in the NHRA’s Winston Championship Drag Racing series, took home cash purses exceeding $250,000 and won the sport’s most prestigious race, the U. S. Nationals in Indianapolis.

Early this month, Eckman was looking to repeat as pro stock champion in the NHRA’s Winternationals at the Pomona Fairplex. The Winternationals was the first event in the 18-event Winston series, and Eckman, owner Bill Orndorff and engine builder Dale Eicke knew there were question marks going into the season.

“I know we’re going to lose this year,” Eckman says with a grin. “I just don’t know how many times.”

Eckman, who has lived in Ventura since 1966, was concerned because he had not raced his yellow Pontiac Firebird since the Winston series finals in October. And he knew the competition had warmed up the week before at races in Bakersfield--he and his crew were too busy getting ready for Pomona.

“We flat ran out of time,” says Ron Swift, Eckman’s clutch man and transmission specialist for the past 10 years.

Swift was standing under a canopy in the pits, which is a labyrinth of big-rig trucks on a parking lot behind the quarter-mile-long stands. Around him, dozens of top-fuel dragsters and funny cars, along with pro stock cars, were being pit-tested, their engines emitting fearsome clatter and clouds of carbon-monoxide fumes. The experience was not unlike cranking up the stereo in your convertible while being stuck behind an RTD bus for three hours in a freeway traffic jam.

Eckman drove into the pits after getting the car weighed at the official track scale. Lean and mustachioed, he emerged from the driver’s side in his race shirt and tight black jeans. The passenger door opened and his petite blond girlfriend Julie Hall got out. They just as well could have been at Bob’s Big Boy.

Is his life “Happy Days” revisited? “Exactly,” Eckman says, laughing.

Eckman knew he had a need for speed even before he was old enough to drive. “When I was 14 or so, I went to Disneyland the first day it opened and rode those wild Utopia cars,” he says. “I was hooked. Drag racing is a little more costly now, but it’s still as thrilling.”

Eckman’s first legitimate race occurred in 1958 at San Fernando Drag Strip, which was built by the community expressly to keep hot-rodders off the streets. Eckman’s ’52 Ford lost to a ’58 Buick, but the experience motivated him. “I could never forget the feeling of losing,” he says. “It was inspiring to go home and work on the car and go out the next week and win.”

Except for six years in the Army, including nine months in Vietnam, Eckman was a regular at local tracks, competing in Sportsman races on the weekends. He started out racing his wife’s Camaro and later raced a ’58 Corvette. But he did not go on the pro circuit until 1981, after forming a partnership with Orndorff, a driver and longtime friend. Orndorff would handle the finances, Eckman would drive. To finance the venture and buy a new ’81 Camaro, Eckman and Orndorff both sold their Vettes.

“We were dabbling,” Eckman says of their effort in the early ‘80s. Neither quit his day job. Eckman was in charge of oil field maintenance and construction for an oil company in the Ventura area. Orndorff, 40, owned an electronics store in Camarillo. As independent little guys battling factory teams, they did not have a chance.

In ‘85, they quit drag racing, but a year later decided to make an even bigger commitment of time and money. After getting sponsorship from Pennzoil in late ‘87, Eckman quit the oil company and he and Orndorff went big-time into drag racing. They had a decent year in ‘88, Eckman says, but the following year was a disaster. Put simply, “We ran out of horsepower,” he says.

His competitors were just a step ahead of him in technology. Needing a veteran engine man, they hired Eicke, a specialist in cylinder heads who has worked for some of the top drivers in pro stock. Eicke, a 39-year-old former Canyon Country resident, updated the 500-cubic-inch General Motors engine in the Pontiac. “Getting Dale was the turning point for us,” Eckman says. “We knew we’d do well in 1990. Then we came out and won the Winternationals.”

When it was almost time to start the defense of his title this year by taking his first qualifying run, Eckman and his pit crew bolted the cocoon-like hood back to the chassis. Moments later, the Firebird shot off the starting line and streaked the quarter-mile in 7.43 seconds, a speed of 188.70 m.p.h., good enough to qualify for the finals.

But Eckman was not happy. The car had been all over the track, something was wrong with the clutch, and the brakes did not work, forcing him to rely on his parachute and a row of hay bales to stop the car.

“He loves that rush of adrenaline when he can’t stop,” Swift joked in the pits after the run.

The hood once again removed, the mechanics inspected the engine while Orndorff made a printout of data on the car’s on-board computer. He wanted to see what the RPMs were each time Eckman shifted. Whatever the problems and the kinks, the team eliminated them by Sunday, when Eckman made it all the way to the semifinals before losing his heat to Warren Johnson by .096 of a second.

Eckman “didn’t run that bad,” his girlfriend Julie reports. “He was pretty much satisfied.” And probably pretty inspired, too.