Longtime residents of Seattle will no doubt remember the radio ads for the Funny Car match races out at Seattle International Raceways, or SIR. "SATURDAY NIGHT!" they'd scream, "FUNNY CARS on Nitro! Towing in from nearby Oregon - Ed 'The Ace' McCulloch - in the Revellution Duster, racing against Seattle' own - Jerry 'The King' Ruth - in his Competition Specialties Mustang. BE THERE!"
Those days have long since passed, but recently at Pacific Raceways, I had a chance to catch up with Ed McCulloch, or simply "Ace" as the 65-year-old tuning wizard is known to the drag-racing community, at the Schuck's Auto Supply NHRA Nationals. There he was the crew chief of the Brut "Test Drive" Dodge Charger R/T for Don Schumacher Racing that is driven by Ron Capps.
The Brut fragrances-sponsored Dodge Charger is currently leading the Funny Car points standings toward the Championship at the end of the year and has been all season long. The Pacific Raceways event in Kent was the 14th round of 23.
McCulloch and his wife, Linda, have three children, Jason, Chip and Kelly. They live in Avon, Ind.
McCulloch earned the nickname "Ace" years ago when Bill Doner, the former owner of SIR, hung it on him. Jerry "The King" Ruth was the dominant drag racer in the Northwest when McCulloch began racing, and the only card higher than a king is an ace. The moniker stuck.
Ace holds a winning record that is envied by most people involved in drag racing. As a driver he has 18 Funny Car National wins, including six at the prestigious U.S. Nationals, and four National wins in Top Fuel. As a crew chief, McCulloch has racked up 22 National wins.
In 2000, he was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame and listed 19th among the NHRA's top 50 drivers in its first 50 years.
"The first time I went down a drag strip," McCulloch told me, "was back in 1957; I didn't even have a driver's license. I was only 15 and living on the family farm in Visalia, Calif., and I took my Dad's 1955 Buick Century out to the local strip and spent a couple of hours running up and down.
"My dad messed around with boats back then, and he had one with a blown Caddy in it. H.L. Shahan, who later became a quite famous engine tuner, lived in Visalia too, and he had an old rail that I bought. Dad's boat engine went into the rail, and that was my first race car."
The husky, graying master tuner progressed quite a bit from those beginning days of drag-strip experimentation. In 1962 McCulloch moved to Forest Grove, Ore., just outside of Portland, and really got serious about running a race car.
He had been running a series of blown Chevy dragsters around the Northwest until he partnered with Jim Albrich and they built the Northwind Top Fuel dragster in 1965. The Northwind utilized a state-of-the-art Kent Fuller chassis design that allowed the torque of the engine to drive the rear wheels into the ground, giving the car better traction. The car was the twin of the Winkle & Trapp "Magicar" that was very successful in Southern California, the hotbed of fuel dragsters back then.
"The first car people remember me from," said McCulloch with a smile, "was the Northwind; we ran that car up here quite a bit. It's just been restored by Jack Coonrod and is here today."
The sleek gold metal flake, antique front-engined dragster was on display nearby. In June 1965, the car earned Drag News' coveted Number One Spot and the National title when McCulloch beat "Sneaky Pete" Robinson from Georgia in a best-of-three series at Woodburn Drag strip, 30 miles south of Portland.
"Then, in 1969," McCulloch went on, "I partnered with Art Whipple and we went Funny Car racing. He had both a Funny Car and a Fuel Dragster, and I used to drive both of them. In 1970, we sold everything we had and bought our first Chrysler engine from Keith Black; that went in the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda we were running then."
Back then, Funny Car racers were sort of the wild cowboy gunslingers of racing, traveling to as many as three different drag strips a week for match races against other racers. It was through match racing that they made any money, sometimes $300 or $400 per race, and established their national reputations.
"At the tail end of 1971 we got the sponsorship of the Revell model company and began running the 'Revellution' Duster Funny Car." This car and then two or three others that Ace drove were then made into plastic model kits and sold throughout the country.
When I asked why he stopped driving and turned his attention to the mechanical side of the operation, he gave me the answer that is reaching us all: "Nobody wanted to hire a 50-year-old driver."
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