The teams set up shop in sponsoring dealerships’ showrooms and addressed everything from engine buildup to chassis setting, from tune-up suggestions to driver coaching to how to run down nuns.
Okay, not really on the nuns.
But films and slides were often used to show “doorslammer” racing in action and photos of the team’s various cars were autographed for anyone who asked. Both Chrysler and Bob Cahill, the man in charge of the Performance Clinic Program, as it was formally known, were pleased with its results, especially considering the headaches it brought them from some of the dealers.
To be fair, Chrysler was asking a lot of their otherwise eager dealerships; to get a piece of the lab action the owner had to agree to put up with all of the advance marketing materials that needed to be assembled and displayed by a specified date. Since those materials rotated among the dealerships, they needed to be periodically swapped out for newly arrived posters, banners, and brochures. There was also the matter of paying for the visiting team’s expenses, which dealers were required to do even in the absence of a precise idea of what those expenses would be. Lastly, dealership owners had to clear out the prized real estate of their showroom floors for however long it took clinic teams to set up their literature, mechanic’s tools, slide projectors, film reels, autograph tables, etc., and of course for the cars themselves to be pushed in, positioned, and polished. Naturally, the dealers understood that they had to invest in order to expect a return, but the hurdles loomed large for most dealerships at the start of the program and few opted to jump in with both feet.
That changed fast after reports of 1,000+ attendees began coming in and of sales figures for new and used cars being purchased by these clinic visitors, not to mention the amplified gawker traffic before, during and after the show. The two teams had a progressively easier time booking dates until the point where only having two teams significantly limited the number of dealerships that could participate in the program.
As best they could, Chrysler and Cahill resolved the scarcity issue by hiring additional racing teams from around the country, seeking racers who used Chrysler parts, enthusiastically promoted Mopar, and who had proven abilities and wins. These drivers would cover an area or region familiar to them, which meant they also likely had a ready-made fan base that came along with them. Still more drivers were hired to roam as the original teams did. At the non-Sox/Martin/Landy clinics, the additional teams and drivers showed films of Ronnie Sox, Buddy Martin and Dick Landy conducting their by then well-known “labs” while adding their own expertise/style before and after the showroom lights were dimmed.
Before the 1968 season was over, there were more than fifteen additional regional Performance Clinic teams. The first had been chosen from Oklahoma City, where dealers jumped at the chance to host an event. Even more dealers got in line throughout the country once they discovered that hosting regional teams would mean less travel and so would cut out a lot of unspecified “expenses.”
In time, the regional clinics became so popular that Ford and Chevy started sniffin’ around--after the fact, of course, just as they had more or less throughout the late sixties and early seventies. But in early ’68 Ford had suffered a stroke, ‘er, I mean a strike, and their efforts to mimic the clinic idea were delayed as their budget for the program was cut and the plan shelved. Ford fans were left with nothing more than rumors that the program would be revived the very day the strike ended. GM just let out a sad little wheeze. At the time, GM had a strict non-racing policy, so instead of clinics on how to race, its performance engineers turned to alcohol and…
Okay, not really on the booze.
Still, Chrysler’s own Performance Clinic Program was an unparalleled success that was immensely popular throughout the United States of Drag Racing. By late ’68, dealership owners’ sole complaint was of having to wait in line. Chrysler was thrilled, of course, describing all of the money spent developing and maintaining the program as the “most sensible and effective” of all their forays into racing. The clinics gave the company a “Direct Connection” to the customer, and Chrysler dealers were right there to nab the sale.
Chrysler owes a lot to Dick Landy, Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin. All three were well spoken and expressive, professional in their respective team uniforms. Their clothes and cars were flashy, but they had the scores and roars to back all that up. They were the experts who shared their fun with drag race enthusiasts at a time when everybody wanted the hobby to stay a hobby, where “the little guy” could show up and maybe even compete. Sox & Martin and Dick Landy, with his signature cigars and George Patton-like carriage, never strayed from those principles -- even while working for a big fat car company.
Before he passed away in 2007, Landy had repeated in interviews that he loved those clinics and had described them as the best time of his life. Ronnie Sox, who died of cancer in 2006, was no doubt equally fond of the Mopar Performance Clinics and the success credited to them and to drag racing in general.
As for Buddy Martin, the only living member of the original lab team, check out Ian Tocher’s interview with him in the January issue of MoparMax.com!
J. “Harmsworth” Nelson