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Racing Heroes – Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins

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Bill Jenkins
Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins. Photos courtesy Jenkins Competition.

Bill Jenkins only won 13 NHRA national events as a driver, yet it would be difficult to name someone who had a more lasting influence on Super Stock and Pro Stock drag racing. The man who embraced the nickname of “Grumpy,” given to him by a summer intern for his all-work-and-no-play attitude, was voted the eighth-best driver in the NHRA’s Top 50 list, because in the organization’s words, “no other individual has contributed more to the advancement of normally aspirated engines for quarter-mile competition.”

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in December 1930, Jenkins got his start turning wrenches on a neighbor’s tractor after the family had relocated to the more bucolic environment of Downingtown, Pennsylvania. By his high school years, Jenkins was running the occasional drag race at the local strip, but the sport was more pastime than passion. After graduating from high school, Jenkins attended college at Cornell University, where he studied mechanical engineering. By his own admission, Jenkins wasn’t much of a student, and when his father died, Jenkins dropped out after completing three years of a four-year program.

Though Jenkins may have lacked an aptitude for taking tests, it was clear that he’d learned quite a bit during his time at Cornell. When the small-block Chevy V-8 debuted in 1955, it didn’t take Jenkins long to realize that the engine had serious potential for drag racing, and by the early 1960s, he’d developed something of a cult following among East Coast racers, who knew that a Jenkins-built car and a Jenkins-built engine significantly increased one’s odds of winning races.

Grumpy's Toy XI
Grumpy’s Toy XI.

His talents weren’t unnoticed by General Motors, either, and in 1963, Jenkins and partner Dave Strickler received the first factory lightweight Z-11 427-cu.in. Chevrolet Impala. Carrying the same Old Reliable nickname worn by the team’s earlier Ammon Smith Auto Company-sponsored Chevrolets, the Jenkins-tuned Impala helped to deliver a victory in Little Eliminator at the 1963 Nationals. The team’s relationship with GM likely would have resulted in more race wins for Chevrolet, but the 1963 corporate ban on motorsports ended what had promised to be a very bright future for all parties involved.

With GM out of the picture for 1964, Jenkins and Strickler turned to Dodge, delivering the brand a win at the 1964 National in the A/FX class. Jenkins backed this up with an S/SA win of his own at the 1965 Winternationals behind the wheel of the Black Arrow, a 1965 Dodge that marked Jenkins’s transition from tuner to driver. When Jenkins approached Chrysler to put together a deal for the 1966 season, the two parties couldn’t come to terms, so Jenkins returned to racing a Chevrolet (specifically, a Chevy II) for the 1966 season.

GM still wasn’t sanctioning motorsports, so Jenkins funded much of the effort on his own, via whatever sponsorships he could arrange. The car was the first to carry the Grumpy’s Toy moniker, and it wasn’t long before Jenkins’s efforts came to the attention of Chevrolet’s Vince Piggins, then the head of Chevrolet’s performance efforts. Racing was forbidden, but nothing in the corporate rulebook prohibited Piggens from assisting Jenkins financially in the name of “Product Promotions Engineering.”

The Chevy II was a four-speed car, forcing Jenkins to turn his engineering skill to improving shifts and getting the power to the ground. As he explained in his NHRA Top 50 induction, “We applied a lot of slick-shift technology to the transmissions and made good use of the slapper bar style of traction device originally used by Stahl and Frank Sanders. By the end of the year, I could dump the clutch at 6,000 RPM when most of the other guys had to feather the throttle on the seven-inch tires that we were restricted to.”

Such innovation became a hallmark of Jenkins-built cars and engines, and it was often said that he was happier winning races as a constructor and tuner than he was as a driver. By the late 1960s Jenkins was active on both fronts, fielding as many as four team cars while driving a car of his own (usually a Camaro), and heads-up match races against drivers like Ronnie Sox and Don Nicholson proved so popular with spectators that the NHRA created the Pro Stock category for the 1970 season. Out of the gate, Jenkins posted wins over Sox at the Winternationals and Gatornationals, but Chrysler quickly closed the performance gap and became the brand to beat in the quarter-mile.

When rule changes for the 1972 season allowed cars with small-block wedge engines to run at lower weights than before, Jenkins built his first Pro Stock Chevrolet Vega, which quickly proved the car to beat. By the end of the season, Jenkins had won six of eight NHRA national events. Factoring in race winnings and sponsorships, Jenkins grossed $250,000 in income that season, then rivaled in the sporting world only by basketball superstar Wilt Chamberlain. The feat was good enough to earn Jenkins coverage in Time magazine, and suddenly the sport of drag racing had gone mainstream.

Jenkins’s 1974 car, another Vega, dubbed Grumpy’s Toy XI, wouldn’t enjoy the same success as his 1972 Vega, but would go on to have a far more lasting impression on the sport. Featuring Pro Stock innovations like a full tube chassis, a dry sump oiling system, rack and pinion steering and a MacPherson-strut front suspension that aided weight transfer to the rear tires, the Vega became the template for Pro Stock cars to follow.

Accepting that he gained greater satisfaction as a constructor than as a driver, Jenkins hung up his Nomex in 1976 to focus on research and development. He remained a team owner through the 1983 season, but then shifted his attention to his Jenkins Competition business full-time, where he and his crew built engines for motorsports ranging from drag racing through stock car racing. Even into his mid-70s, Jenkins was said to be active building engines, undoubtedly running younger employees ragged with his focus and determination to address every detail, no matter how small. Eventually, even Jenkins’s tank ran dry, and he died of heart failure in March 2012 at the age of 81.


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