Ed Pink, today, with Mopar midget motors. Yes, this shop still builds aluminum Chryslers, albeit with half the cylinders and one-third the displacement (165 c.i.) of the "Pink Elephants" that ruled Funny Car Eliminator in the 1970s. Ed Pink’s four-bangers dominate modern midget racing.

Granted, there have been good periods since 1948; even a few too-good-to-be-true eras — one of which, I’d like to believe, was 1977-1980, when yours truly toiled under successive-editors John Dianna and Lee Kelley. This just might be another golden age. As evidence, I submit the September 2005 edition. Although I haven’t seen it yet, I suspect that editors David Freiburger and Rob Kinnan will win back some of you skeptics with its major feature on Ed Pink, authored by yours truly. It’s been a long time since Hot Rod called and asked for a story about a 74-year-old guy whose glory days in drag racing ended, by his own admission, a quarter-century ago.

Why not run out right now and buy TWO copies? Bring one to that buddy who canceled his subscription when editor Terry Cook fell in love with "love vans," or when Dianna put a giant roll of Lifesavers candy on the cover — alongside a Volkswagen Rabbit. Of course, your old buddy will assume you’ve contracted dementia since your last visit, so open his issue to the Ed Pink piece quick-like, before he dials 9-1-1 and summons the guys with the white suits and butterfly nets.

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

I mention all of this only because my recent series of interviews with Pink produced far more material than would properly fit the space and audience profile. Some of Ed’s unpublished words of wisdom address the highs and lows of the racing-engine business. Here they are, rescued from my cutting-room floor; Hot Rod’s loss is CompetitionPlus.com’s gain! I think you’ll enjoy reading these quotes as much as I did recording and replaying them. After all, it’s not every day that a dumb writer is granted an audience with a living legend who’s built more than 5000 racing engines of all kinds ("all custom," reminds Pink) since 1948, from the "Pink Elephants" that powered Don Prudhomme’s mid-1970s’ domination to the Cosworth that won the 1983 Indy 500 and the four-bangers that rule modern midget racing.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s listen to "the Old Master":

"Racing is a tough business. One way you know it’s tough is when you see a team win a race, and you see them jumping up and down, and hugging each other, and the high fives, and slapping each other on the back, and bangin’ heads. That’s because wins are so hard to come by that when you do win — even if you win every weekend — it’s a big, big deal. That’s why you see the emotion that you do, because for every emotion you see, there’s probably 10 times the other way." — E.P.

"They’re all tough to lose, but the worst, the toughest, is drag racing, because it’s over so quick. You don’t get another chance to go back out there. The toughest part for me was, I’d go to a race and have, say, 10 cars. Well, they’re all not gonna win. Two cars race; somebody loses. Maybe that one that lost is a car with one of my engines. So I gotta go over there and see what happened. And I’m part of that deal. Y’know, when you’re building those engines, you’re part of the family. They just got beat. Now you gotta get yourself up mentally. Now you gotta go over to your other customer that’s still in the race and help him, and not look dejected, and not look down, and get him ready to go to the next round. And then you may leave him, and the guy that got beat, he’s pissed off. You gotta go over there and massage his head and not lose him as a customer. Then the race goes on, and maybe your guy goes to the next round. And maybe your guy is racing another one of your guys, so only one of ’em’s gonna win. Week after week, that was a tough deal." — E.P.

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

"Through the drag-racing era, I wasn’t — and I’m still not — the best businessman. I made a lot of mistakes. We were probably more expensive than anybody else, but I made less money than anybody else. Maybe it’s because I spent too much time doing it and didn’t really charge enough for the amount of time that was spent." — E.P.

"[To somebody who wants to be an engine builder,] first thing I’d ask him is, What is it that you want to do? If the person said, ‘I just like engines; I wanna build engines,’ I’d find out how good he wanted to be. I’d get into his inner soul, inner working, and find out exactly what he wanted to do. And if he just wanted to do engines, then I’d know that he probably wouldn’t be around long doing them; that the best thing he could do would be to get a job someplace and go to work. Now, if engines were his life, and this is what he wanted to do, and he really wanted to be the best, then the best thing he could do is try to get a job at one of the better engine companies, and do whatever he’s gotta do, and be the biggest sponge he could be, and learn as much as he could. And then, when he gets to the point where he thinks he’s learned about all he’s gonna learn there, then find the next place to go to work." — E.P.

"The engine business, I found out, is a great business. But it’s a tough business, because an engine never wins a race; they only lose ’em. When you build an engine and it runs good, well, it’s supposed to; that’s why they bought it! And if it breaks or blows up, they wanna know why, because it’s not supposed to; that isn’t what they bought. It’s a tough, tough business. It’s almost as tough a business as a surgeon’s, because you don’t get a lot of chances. When your patient dies, you made a bad move." —E.P.