: You enjoyed considerable Mopar backing for quite some time, but what do you think of U.S. manufacturers’ support of drag racing now?
Martin: Well, to a degree I’d like to see Ford a bit more involved in the Pro Stock situation, but the thing that probably bothers me as much as anything, and to a very large degree I can understand why they do it, but for the manufacturers to be as heavily involved with Funny Cars as they are, and of course we ran one of those at one time, and I realize they get a lot of exposure and TV time, but to me it’s not a product that they sell.
I can vividly remember at the end of 1966 when Bob Cahill called Dick Landy and myself into Detroit and said, ‘We didn’t sell a single fuel Barracuda this year and we need to do something that represents our business and what we sell.’ That was when we went back to Super Stock and started doing the clinic program. That worked out just fine because that was the year they introduced the car that we started out with and with Ronnie being the driver that he was with a four-speed, well that just fell right into our category.
: Now that it’s reverting to mostly American management do you think someone may be successful in getting Chrysler more involved in drag racing?
Martin: I’m sorry to say that I don’t think they will be more involved and the reason that I say that is that they’re now owned by a private capital group and you and I are both old enough to know that normally when those type of companies invest in something like that they invest to build the bottom line and then sell it for a profit. There have already been some cuts for 2008 that certain people just didn’t expect. Like I said, I hate to see it happen, but I just have a strong feeling that their support won’t be as strong in the future.
: Do you think part of the reason Pro Stock isn’t selling cars like it once did is because the race technology doesn’t mirror what the factories sell?
Martin: I think they need to be fuel injected and I think the bodies need to be more representative of the cars that you can buy. Back when we started with the Super Stock in 1967 we were racing the cars that you could actually buy from Chrysler, right on up though 1970, ’71 and so forth it was still Barracudas and Dusters that were still close enough to stock appearance that they very well represented what the manufacturers were selling.
If you look at the Dodges today, or the Cobalts or the GTOs or whatever, they are just not nearly as representative of what you see when you go to a Dodge or Chevy or Pontiac dealership. I would love to see them get a little bit more representative of today’s cars that you can buy.
Of course with Chrysler coming with the 2008 Challenger and the Chevy Camaro that’s supposed to be coming back in 2009 and the Mustang that’s already out, I’m 100 percent convinced that if you put today’s drivers: Jeg Coughlin, Greg Anderson, Dave Connolly and all those guys in those type cars, they would probably draw just as large if not a larger crowd than the cars that they’re driving right now.
: You were deeply involved with Pro Stock Truck, so you must have thought they answered somewhat to the kind of appeal you’re talking about.
Martin: Oh, absolutely. It was a deal where at that point in time, 50 percent of the manufacturers’ sales were in trucks, so it certainly made sense to have something out there representative of that and I thought there was a large appeal; I thought the spectators liked the trucks.
: So what put an end to the truck program if it was such a good idea?
Martin: Well, I can only speculate, I don’t know for a fact, but I definitely think the Top Fuel and Funny Car guys saw the exposure that the Pro Stock Trucks were starting to get on ESPN and in other areas, as well. I think they put a lot of pressure on NHRA to get rid of the trucks so they could have that TV time. Because they knew, all the sponsors know, what two minutes or whatever of TV time is worth. I can’t prove it, nobody has ever told me that for a fact, but I just think a lot of things point to that.