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Mickey Thompson Remembered

by Doug Stokes

Monday, February 15th, 2010

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This past Thursday night, the combined efforts of the NHRA Museum staff, the Thompson family, and Gale Banks Engineering … A lot of people got their first chance to exhale in almost twenty-two years.

I’m one of them.

Working for Mickey and Trudy was a true adventure. Filling up large indoor and outdoor venues with thousands upon thousands of people there to enjoy a couple of hours of off-road racing action on what Mickey called “A Chunk of the Baja” was fun and work.

Like many young enthusiasts I had followed Mickey’s career for decades and the chance to work for him was something very special. My deal was pulling him aside, getting him to tell me some of the stories behind the cars, and engines, and staggering piles of parts in the multi-car garage/warehouse on the lower level of his property where our offices were located. There was genius lurking in every corner; raw innovation stacked up like cordwood, hand-built shocks, engines drawn, quartered and compressed-air “charged”, front drive and rear steer chassis’s (some of which were singed and melted in the great Bradbury/Fish Canyon blaze in the early eighties).

And there was the Challenger … the magnificent 4-motored machine that sat so regally in the NHRA Museum’s entrance hall on Thursday evening. The same machine that sat in a trailer out behind our offices and where the stray/feral cats that kept the vermin at bay in the canyon birthed more than one litter while we were working there.

When we rolled the Challenger out of its clamshell trailer for the first time in 20-some years, I noticed a weathered hole in the plywood floor of the trailer, it looked like battery acid had leaked and eaten a hole in the two inch thick floor. I mentioned my observation to Mick, and, even as I was saying the words, “…Look like the battery must have split Mickey.” I caught myself and remembered that this beast had no need of on-board batteries, each engine having its own magneto to spin up the spark power needed for 400 mile-per-hour forays into the record books.

The fire that had consumed so many homes, killed livestock, and scorched the hills of Bradbury had caught the Challenger’s wooden floor afire, but gone out … Somehow it wasn’t the Challenger’s day.

A few years later, when tragedy struck so violently on the upper driveway of that home we were all marked with an indelible scar. Our inside staff joke, “Trudy told me to tell you that Mickey said …” rang hollow. The funeral was a sad armed camp, with no relief no solace.

So, on Thursday night, and after 20 years of reliving that day and the horrible heartbreak that followed, as we said, some of us finally got to exhale and remember what Mickey Thompson meant to motorsports. And (maybe a bit more privately) a bit of what Trudy Thompson meant to Mick and to us.

It was a good night. Those folks and institutions mentioned in the first paragraph are to be warmly thanked for making it so. Gale Banks himself said it best, the effort was: “Long overdue.” Right.

Now everybody get back to work and, as Mick always closed any staff occasion by saying: “STAND ON THE GAS!”
-Doug Stokes 02.12.10

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0 - 50 Years in 63 1/2 Feet…

by Doug Stokes

Friday, March 27th, 2009

Azusa, California - - No, it’s not the Bayeux Tapestry, but perhaps it might be considered as the American motorsports equivalent of it.

It’s the colorful 63 and-a-half-foot long, five foot tall, timeline-history of Gale Banks Engineering that stretches a full 50 years and features over 400 illustrations that go all the way back to 1958!

In September of 2008 the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum announced the booking of a special exhibit entitled: “Banks Power … The First 50 Years”. The intent was to honor the pioneer high performance company and its founder/president with an exhibition of accomplishments in both the marine and automotive worlds.

The Banks organization has always prided itself on its heritage and legacy, in fact its promotional materials have often featured a basic timeline that traced the company’s strong history. For the 3,500 square foot Museum exhibit, it was decided to expand and expound on that concept in order to show more of the story behind the company.

The plan involved the use of one of the 60+ foot long cabinet walls in the Museum to start at the beginning and follow the progress of the Banks success story in strict chronological order.

And follow it, it does. From a one-man garage/shop in Lynnwood, California (set up to pay Bank’s college tuition at Cal Poly) to today’s multi-acre design, testing, and manufacturing campus facility in Azusa, California, which employs 200 people, and on to the honor of being named one of only five people in the industry to receive the prestigious Distinguished Service Award from the Automotive Hall of Fame for 2009*. Banks is the first person from the automotive aftermarket side ever so honored in the award’s 68-year history.

The end result must really be seen live and in person to truly be enjoyed. As the “fun” title of this release says it truly is: “0-50 Years in 63 ½ feet”. The story of a lifetime in pursuit of performance perfection in a little over 21 running yards of exhibition space.

Watching Museum visitors look back through the 50 years is nothing short of fascinating. They recall what they were doing, where they were, their own significant personal dates and places as they note the various points of interest along the timeline.

In addition to a beautifully illustrated timeline, the exhibit floor is “well-stocked” with 17 very significant, very real, complete engines, each representing a different phase in Banks’ seemingly endless quest for efficiency. Along with the gleaming engines are a number of significant race record holding vehicles that carry the Banks colors as well. Fastest, quickest, first, winningest … You name it, doubtless one the racing machines on the floor will have done it!

The Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (except Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day) and is located right at Gate 1 of the Los Angeles County Fairplex grounds in Pomona, California.

For more information log on www.museum.nhra.com.

*The actual Distinguished Service Citation award is a crystal obelisk that’s on display at the “Parks” as part of this exhibit. It has taken a special place of honor at the beginning of the timeline right next to the only trophy that has ever sat on Gale Banks’ desk, a modest little award for an eclectically-controlled robot that got 1^st place in the 1958 Lakewood High School Science Fair. The idea was to sort of “bookend” the first 50 years of Banks Power and point toward the future at the same time.