Media Matters: Search is on for long lost hot rod
Phillip Gary Smith, go2geiger Media Columnist
Tuesday, 06 July 2010
From the best auto racing book of the summer -- Miller's Time, A Lifetime at Speed -- comes a challenge: find Don Miller’s long lost drag car, Big Noise II, a 1962 Chevy II Nova. The search begins now, and the finder earns fame and a growing prize package.
What does a man who has every conceivable toy, experienced unbelievable thrills, and seen both the ugly and good of life still yearn for? What pumps his adrenaline and transports him to a time before a horrifying race accident nearly severed him in half?
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Simply, that he might possess Big Noise II once again, his beloved hot rod 1962 Chevy II Nova. That car alone can whisk author Miller to a period before he struck success and a long, bountiful business friendship with racing marvel Roger Penske.
Here is how you can find and collect the bountiful prizes for Big Noise II, and in the process become a key addendum in racing history: The first person to e-mail me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with this race car’s location (or fate) with complete contact information will win. If you suspect you know the car, you should enter. Your step may prove to be the one that results in the find. There can only be one winner of the award package so be sure to include your personal contact information and put "Bounty for Big Noise II" in the subject line. Even if you don’t win the award, Miller will reward you with a copy of his book if you provide an important detail recovering Big Noise II. If his health allows, he will no doubt personalize it for you.
It’s only an old racecar, some might say. However, racing fans know how a car can be so much more. To Miller, this is a treasure of his youth, sold long ago as hot rods are, to buy a newer one. It is the thing from his past still tugging at his core. Everyone reading this can recognize a place in our personal lives where we long to go back and revive a time when the world was possible, when we were new and expectations were all in front of us.
The bounty includes a ticket package with goodies to your favorite NHRA Full Throttle Drag Race and an inside, weekend invitation to the Lucas Hospitality Center featuring Top Fuel stars Morgan Lucas and Shawn Langdon. A larger prize, the bigger trophy, is becoming a part of this great man’s history, bringing him the last piece of a puzzle, completing the racing masterpiece.
"Phillip," Miller told me, "I heard Big Noise II is in Minnesota; I want to find it."
He wants to lay his hands on the prize of his past, customized with a 1965 grill "to make it look more current," shod with Keystone chrome wheels, and originally raced with a 509ci Carolina Mountain Motor. The motor, sold out of the car, later powered a dragster when "Mr. Chevrolet," Dickie Harrell, perished in a racing incident.
Miller’s plea hit with more energy than a nitro dragster’s G-force: get this legend his car. For all Miller has accomplished, the world of racing can do this. Read of his life painstakingly chronicled in his riveting book. The heavily photographed, 300 pages read quickly, flowing like the most exciting summer novel you’ll ever find.
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The seasonal peak in drag racing in the Midwest culminates with the 29th annual Lucas Oil Nationals, August 12-15, in Brainerd, Minn. The plan is to have Big Noise II located by then, re-purchased by Mr. Miller or his representatives, and displayed at the race. The Minnesota link to Big Noise II is more than 25 years old, so the car may be anywhere. Pay attention, adventurers, look in your state, you may find Big Noise II. Just by trying, the detective in you becomes part of this once-in-a-lifetime drag racing treasure hunt.
This car is a part of the history of drag racing, one of the early runners in the United Drag Racers Association (UDRA), the Chicago-based pioneer in the unthinkable notion in the 1960s of paying cash to drag racers. That was "a notion that caused a lot of people to laugh back then," Miller explained. His earliest business partner, Ed Rachanski, organized the idea, astutely adding Miller as a circuit director. Rachanski writes, "UDRA was very successful, and a porcupine under Wally Parks’ butt at NHRA. We ran nitro Funny Cars…when the NHRA wasn’t even running nitro in Funny Cars."
Look around at national drag events today. Notice what resulted from the UDRA with its uncertain start -- you enjoy those 300 mph passes at the races. Drivers now are doing what they want, scratching an adrenaline itch for sure, but they are paid and handsomely so, supporting their families and racing organization because of this original spark of brilliant inspiration from the UDRA.
Penske discovered Miller as a rising self-starter and initiated him as a business partner for his early empire -- not bad for a guy who almost missed his own church wedding because he was drag racing. Miller led the Penske racing organization through its major growth including Penske Performance Products, Penske Racing South, engines, tires, drivers, even pioneering the whole idea of modern day souvenir trailers. He participated at every level of success and tragedy. The life had its rewards: "I’m comfortable financially. I was able to raise a terrific family and provide for all their needs."
He uses a bridge as a metaphor for the connection from a blue-collar upbringing to the pinnacle of racing championships with partner Penske: "Like a lot of bridges, before you can get across that one, you’ve got to pay a toll. I went to a race one time and when I got home from it, I was missing a leg. I very nearly bled to death right in front of Roger. That bridge collected its toll from me."
 Miller and longtime partner Penske talk racing. |
In every life that embraces passions, there are tragedies entangling success, squeezing it, trying to kill it like a mongoose hungrily after an ambitious snake -- the real life kind, not drag racing legends. Auto racing often calls its debts in body parts or human life. One cannot read "Miller’s Time" without encountering the black-cloaked demon collecting souls like a slot machine sucking tokens. This is one reason the history of motorsports remains fascinating.
It is not a lurid allure with suffering and death but rather the desire to learn from those who live on the edge of ultimate risk. Applying lessons learned from their extreme situations and happenstances to the circumstances we find in the crossroads of ordinary life, perhaps we can uncover clues that will assist us in growing, creating, living, surviving; looking to a life forward, not in reverse.
Those beliefs are reasons the history and emblems of racing representing those days are vital and hopeful. Racecars of every type have a story to tell. They become an important parable in the continuing biblical account of racing. Big Noise II is one of those. Who can really know where every entry ranks, where Big Noise II fits in the scheme of things, how its early existence affected the course of drag racing history? Who is to know for sure the thread of development emanating from just one dragster and the following course of events?
What we do recognize is one of the gentlemen of racing, a founder of the modern sport, is Miller. Penske credits him as "an innovator and clever thinker. I think it is a result of his drag racing background where you had to be creative to win." Further, Penske notes, "He was in the forefront of the change to a more engineering orientation in racing. Don, like all good racers, is always looking for the edge."
You will discover this legend’s resourcefulness in a tale of an ambitious Chicago paperboy flying to the stars of success in a yellow Penske rocket ship, all the while developing the best in others, giving of himself in a spiritual and tragic physical way. For his life efforts, his recognition came with the 2007 NASCAR Humanitarian of the Year award. Now in 2010, it is the sport of drag racing’s opportunity to commemorate him through a prize he covets, the return of Big Noise II to its creator.
If you enjoy racing on television, radio, and the internet or better still, in the stands at an event, you can contest the tracks of life with the passion of Miller from his book acting as your crew chief. Buying his book, "I wanted it to read like a novel," he explained, "(it) will inspire you in ways you won’t recognize beforehand."
You don’t have to buy the book to join the bounty hunters searching for Big Noise II. However, you may just uncover, buried in those pages, fresh clues left unturned, and win the honor of presenting him Big Noise II.
E-mail your knowledge of the whereabouts of Big Noise II, a 1962 Chevy II Nova dragster, with your contact information and the subject "Bounty for Big Noise II" to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Buy the book now at: http://www.coastal181.com/ or toll free at 877-907-8181.
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