Charles In Charge

Charles Carpenter may not carry the same spotlight that racers like Fred Hahn, Shannon Jenkins and Scotty Cannon have enjoyed in the history of Pro Modified, but he should always be known as the one person that paved the way for such legends. The 42-year old, automobile repair shop owner will always invoke memories from those diehard aficionados that went bonkers over the fast doorslammers. Basically, there was a legendary Charles Carpenter before there was a Pro Modified.

While some might have always associated a particular make of car with a certain individual, let our record reflect that it wasn't Chevrolet that put the '55 Bel-Air on the map. It was Mr. Carpenter.

It all can be traced back to the early-Eighties when the up-and-coming Carpenter plumbed nitrous oxide into a behemoth, full-sized steel version of the classic hot rod and was proclaimed to be the "World's Fastest '55 Chevrolet" by journalist Dave Bishop. He became a media hit as well an icon in the fast nostalgia doorslammer movement. A sleeker ensuing fiberglass version only enhanced the legend.

Those days were incredible for Carpenter, but unfortunately nothing lasts forever. The diehards know him and remember his plaudits, and while we don't want to portray Carpenter as a baseball player past his prime, we do see a pioneer that was passed over by the monster that he helped to create. That is our regret.

Does Carpenter see it in the same light?

"That's pretty much what happened," explained Carpenter. "I feel like I was there by accident. I think I was one of the major spokes of the wheel. It didn't run off from me because of lack of desire or personality, it was just finances. I think Pro Modified is in such disarray because there are some people spending exorbitant amounts of money and that's really pushing it into unrealistic proportions. There are only a handful of guys that can actually afford to do it."

Carpenter admits that he's far from being content with where he's at today. Honestly, he'll be the first to admit that he's about as close to quitting as he's ever been in his nearly three decades. He cites that the extreme costs as well as the lack of match race venues for his frustrations. Even the match races aren't what they used to be.

"Even if we do get them, we still have a lot of expenses," explained Carpenter. "I can't run a Pro Modified event right now and I know it. It wouldn't qualify and I don't have the latest things and gadgets that everyone else has. I'm not gonna knock off on my car because it will run 6.50s and high 4.20s in the eighth-mile."

So how did such a positive marriage happen between Carpenter and the Bel-Air come to pass? To be honest, it was love at first sight scenario. When Carpenter was a kid, as far back as he can remember, and he speculates about six or seven years old, his older brother raced a '55 Chevy. Young Charlie would accompany Bobby to tracks like Concord, Shuffletown (Charlotte) and Walker Heights in North Carolina as well as many that he cannot recollect. He grew up in the atmosphere of a '55 Chevy.

The Carpenter family owned a trucking business and all of the Carpenter sons pitched in to help as well as nurture their love for drag racing and the boxy style of Chevrolet. It was only fitting that the Bel-Air was their car of choice because this was in the days of Gassers and Modifieds. He always remembered the cars and even took notes along the way. One car that particularly caught his attention was the "Hot Stuff" entry. He admired this car and eventually it would enter his life as quick as it used to cover the quarter-mile.

With all of the automotive influence around him, it was no secret that Carpenter could drive when he was ten years old. At 14, Charles had the opportunity to take over his brother's ride. His sibling was going through some tough times in his personal life and financially couldn't race anymore. The car sat dormant for a while until the aspiring Carpenter convinced all of the parties involved that he could make a go of it all.

It was not like Carpenter was a total novice. He'd become impressively proficient mechanically and felt like he could make the car work. If anything, he could improve it over what it had become. He asked his brother if he could take over the car provided that he could get it to running. When Bobby agreed, Charles began to look, scrounge and borrow what money and parts that he could find. He found what was lacking and had it ready to race in no time.

Charles convinced his dad to tow him to Shuffletown Dragway because he wasn't old enough to hold a North Carolina driver's license. The rest was history from there.

This was in the early-Seventies and Carpenter wasted no time in jumping into class racing and he found his niche in Modified. He found a home in the F/Gas division, which was pretty stout for the young teenager. He was no slouch and made an impact, but as fate would have it, he wrecked the car a year and a half later.

Now we mentioned the "Hot Stuff" ride earlier in the story. Carpenter worked hard and saved his money along with scraping and gathering what he could and by fate came across this car at a good price. The car was a shell of its former self and was seriously out of date for the rapidly progressing sport. He combined the parts that he had left over from his brother's ride as well as some accrued with the new car to get the lumbering machine back up and running.

It wasn't long after that before Modified racing on the local scene gave way to bracket racing. He might have adopted the mindset of bracket racing, but his class racing roots ran deep. He still ran 4-speeds and then 5-speeds coupled with a small block, then added a Lenco and then adopted a big block. Carpenter feels that the large motor put him on the map.

He still remembers plumbing nitrous into his classic Chevrolet for the first time.

"I remember the nitrous oxide well," recalled Carpenter. "I had gotten to the point where the car was just barely making the field. They began to allow us to use nitrous oxide in the early-Eighties and over the winter of one season. I got hooked up with Ron Ratoff of Compucar and I had a 494-cubic inch Chevrolet. We had an old Sonny Leonard motor and it had been in the old Roxy Express car. We did some modifications on it and put the nitrous on it and away we went."

Carpenter continued, "I can vividly remember that first time, it was certainly a kick in the pants. Back then, we didn't know. We only used it at the far end of the run and we began to work our way back up the strip until we were leaving the starting line with it. That's when started making the big gains."

Before Carpenter knew it, he was the talk of the racing world. He never dreamed of the attention that he'd get. Carpenter always envisioned himself as a basic racer that only wanted to go faster. He didn't car that his competition was running sleeker cars. Carpenter enjoyed his own specialized piece of the pie, so to speak. He used to laugh and often referred to his ride as being a high-speed Winnebago. Since the class was open to dragsters, roadsters as well as these quick doorslammers, Carpenter began a hero in the class.

"I never dreamed that we would have attracted that kind of attention to being at the head of the class," explained Carpenter. "I never envisioned all of that. It got plenty of attention."

Don't think for a moment that Carpenter was caught up in the hype. He admits that he was. It led him to run a car at speeds that was not safe for it.

"This car was built in my shop on the floor and it started out as a regular '55 Chevy that was modified," confided Carpenter. "That was along the time that Chris Alston had developed a chassis kit. Nobody made anything for this type of car, but didn't stop us from buying a basic chassis and the front nose of the kit. Ronnie Green and Larry Hand helped me to build it. We kept trying to improve it."

According to Carpenter, the car started out as a four-link and then was converted to a ladder bar before returning to the four-link scheme. The body was taken off of the chassis and things were modified to the chassis and also to the original steel body. The wheel-wells were cut out and they were the original gasser design. They fixed the quarter-panels and put new wheel-wells in it. Carpenter admitted that they were just doing anything to improve on what they had.

"The car was an 11-second car," explained Carpenter. "All of a sudden, we had the thing running 7.90s. The car was never meant to do that. It really got to be a handful. There were times at the finish line that I'd have the steering wheel turned at a half-round or three quarters of center trying to steer this thing. It was pushing it from the chassis flex and everything. It did wheelstands and that made it a handful to drive."

He eventually parked the metal beast for a sleeker fiberglass version in 1987. This new car couldn't have come at a better time. Carpenter had just won a battle against Dave Riolo to become the first 7-second shoebox. That era of time was a real special time for him and he remembers it very well.

"We had been 8.00s more times than I knew what to do," confided Carpenter. "We were just right there and there was a time that we'd even run a 8.000. The car was right there. We had been looking and looking and trying to get this thing to go faster. Ollie Volpe had jumped in there to help us. He worked at Sonny's at the time. We had gotten new cylinder heads and nitrous. We were so prehistoric at the time and that's what made it more remarkable. At that time, the nitrous system didn't even have the ability to be jetted up."

Carpenter admitted that the battle for Shoebox superiority with Riolo went down to one Saturday in Richmond for him and one in Sacramento for his adversary. Charlie was participating in an IHRA points race in Richmond. His first run was an 8.000 and because of that, he made getting into the seven-second zone that day his objective. He came back and adjusted his clutch and with a little help from Mother Nature, went a 7.96. Riolo three hours later went into the same zone with a 7.87.

Looking back on the medieval ways of the classic Chevrolet, does he regret pushing his car to the limits that he did?

"There's a lot of things we look back on now that we are older," explained Carpenter. "How does that saying go? I wouldn't get out the electric chair to get in that car now? I wouldn't. I still have that and although it's not in the same condition that it used to be, it is one crude piece of machinery. Look at all old drag cars. In its day, it was a trick piece. That was a quest for speed and my love for drag racing that led me to that."

Charles retired the car after taking it into the seven-second zone. He then teamed up with Tommy Mauney to build a new generation of '55 Chevy. It was be the one shoebox that would set the precedent for Pro Modified Bel-Airs.

Initially, he was going to have Mauney build him a car, but before he knew it, he was in partners with him on a chassis shop. Carpenter had just added an addition onto his thriving automobile repair business, so the venture suited him perfect. During that era, is when Carpenter says that he attained his first "real" racecar.

This venture was not an easy one by any means. It went down to the wire to get finished before a special match race against him and Riolo sponsored by Super Stock & drag Illustrated at the Texas Motorplex. This was in 1987, when the Top Sportsman doorslammer craze was spreading like wildfire. Carpenter remembers the mad thrash trying to get the car done for that event.

"Everybody kicked in," recalled Carpenter. "If you were in this area, you were helping us. We worked for 24 hours a day for seven days to get this thing done. We had shifts going on. We had guys coming in to do body work when we'd stop working at 12 and 1 o'clock in the morning. There was a huge team effort. We had to drive all night to get to the event, but it was the rivalry that fueled us."

For Carpenter, he was a rival against a racer that he'd never raced before. The media had created the rivalry through their publications. They had never met each other in a personal standoff.

"Here we were going to this race with a car that was untested, unpainted, unlettered and un-everything," recalled Carpenter. "It was a complete brand new car. I did get there one day early and that allowed me to get it right in."

He made two run and believes that one of the runs pulled a little to the right, but was cured with a little preload thanks to call to Mauney. From that point, it ran like it was on a string.

"It was unbelievable to drive such a quality of car compared to what I had raced before," explained Carpenter. "This thing went like a 7.50 right out of the gate and back then, that was flying. To go from that thing that almost needed two people to drive was a dream. This whole deal was a dream that had come true for the Cinderella operation. Every racer knows what it takes to go out to a race without a tested racecar. It's just a testimony for the quality of work that Tommy Mauney does."

Did he feel that his racing career peaked during that era?

"I don't think so," answered Carpenter. "That was a milestone for that time. I won't say my career peaked until 1996. That was still a time that we could do shows, match races and still make an occasional IHRA race. We could still be competitive then. Most of the guys out there like Robbie Vandergriff, Norm Wizner and most of the guys out there racing and running these programs were doing the same thing. We could effectively crossover. A lot of people thought we might have been too good to run the IHRA, that was bull."

He continued, "If you look on the original qualifying sheet from that first event in 1990, I wasn't on the sheets because I wasn't there. It wasn't because I didn't want to be there or couldn't afford to do it. I was booked in to the Super Chevy shows then. I had to go where the money was at and they offered me the best program. A lot of guys had thought that I was too good. I'm not that wealthy, although I make a decent living. I couldn't have afforded to do it without sponsorship. That's why I was where I was at."

Carpenter admitted that he longed for the IHRA involvement, but he'll be quick to point out that the Super Chevy program also contributed to the current status of the class today by bringing in new sponsors as well as new drivers. He also ran a healthy schedule of other events. Carpenter confided that

So where does he go from here?

"I really don't know," mused Carpenter. "I have been lucky to have some good people back me over the years. One sponsor that has been with me for ten years has been Custom Auto Sound. I've had my ups and downs over the years and right now, I have a substantial amount of money due to me by a sponsor that I'm trying to collect. I might have to sell my equipment to regroup some of the expenses, but I hope it doesn't come to that. I couldn't imagine not racing."