A Lawyer’s Passion
| 30 November 2006
Mustang lore has thousands of chapters. Here’s another one from the first generation.
Fresh out of law school in 1955, Elton Eckstrand was hired by Chrysler Corporation as a lawyer in their new Organization Department. Within a year he had advanced to General Manager of the fledgling department, a position that required regular contact with all levels of management, including the highest levels of corporate management. But beginning in 1957, the young manager developed a dark secretive side when he became involved in drag racing his new 318 Plymouth Fury at New Baltimore Drag Strip north of Detroit. The car wasn’t a winner but Eckstrand was hooked because his competitive nature demanded an answer the question, “Why am I getting beat?” Since drag racing was still regarded as a semi-underground activity reserved for the weirdo fringe, Eckstrand had to exercise caution as he sought an answer to his question.
His broad spectrum of contacts at Chrysler lead him to the engineering department where he received help with the Plymouth. He started to win after a 3.55 rear gear was fitted. Now he was really hooked because winning turned out to be an adrenalin rush far exceeding the competitive motivation originally fostered by his need to know why he was losing.
The gear heads at Chrysler understood why racing was important to Eckstrand but his family didn’t understand and his fellow lawyers were horrified at the thought. It became obvious that to preserve his credibility as a lawyer, he needed to separate his professional life from his racing activities. It was a somewhat schizophrenic solution but the path that Eckstrand chose was to change his first name for the racing part of his life. He would continue to be known as Elton Eckstrand in his professional lawyer life but he would use his middle name when he was racing. Thus was born Al Eckstrand, the drag racer.
In 1961 Eckstrand left Chrysler to form his own law practice under the name Elton Eckstrand. Having his own practice gave him the freedom to allocate more time to drag racing using the name Al Eckstrand. And with that freedom, he was better positioned to take advantage of a partnership that had been formed a year before he left Chrysler. Byron Nichols, Chrysler’s Corporate Vice President of Sales had met with Eckstrand to discuss what he perceived as a sales tool;i.e., racing on Sunday and selling on Monday. Nichols decided to back Eckstrand out of his personal expense account and the backing continued after Eckstrand left the corporation.
Nichols wasn’t so much interested in winning as he was in show-casing his product before the automobile loving public. It was a perfect fit. Nichols provided the money and gained satisfaction on the Sales side of the ledger while Eckstrand used the money to build winning equipment. To take full advantage of the partnership, a tour of the southeast was undertaken in 1962. The car was a 330 Dodge Business Coupe with a 413 engine. Eckstrand ran it under the name “Res Ipsa Loquitur” which is Latin for “It Speaks For Itself.” Of course, there weren’t many people who could translate the Latin phrase so Nichols stepped in and told Eckstrand he needed to change the name to something more recognizable; he suggested “Lawman.” Eckstrand responded that they would probably get sued if they used “Lawman” because there was a television program called “The Lawman.” That was all Nichols needed to hear; he loved the idea of a potential law suit. If one developed, there would be “free” public exposure for Chrysler and Plymouth when the media covered the story.
There was no law suit but nevertheless, “Lawman” and Al Eckstrand became household names within the racing community and beyond. “Lawman,” “Ramchargers,” “Golden Commandos,” and the “American Commando Drag Team” were all well known segments of his life up through 1969.
From 1966 through 1969, Al’s primary focus was a series of European tours with the “American Commando Drag Team” using the Chrysler products. Connie Kalitta (pilot and famous drag racer) and others joined Al during that period. The “American Commando Drag Team” was instrumental in introducing drag racing to Europe as it put on its shows at military bases throughout the region.
In 1970, Al formed the “Lawman Performance Team” and took his tour to military bases in South Viet Nam, Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines as well as bases in England and mainland Europe. But there was an important difference. Beginning that year and continuing through 1972, the tours no longer used Chrysler products. Instead, the race cars came from Ford. For the first two years, the marque was Mustang. In 1972, the maques were Pinto and Maverick. Another famous individual from the drag racing world joined Al in 1971: Wally Parks, the founder of NHRA.
In 1973, Elton (Al) Eckstrand stopped racing and returned to his law practice, a practice that he maintained as a successful business even during the years he raced.
Lawman Mustangs
The Lawman tours were (obviously) designed to provide entertainment but training was also an important focus. Soldiers at many of the bases had started to buy muscle cars and race them. Unfortunately, some of the racing was conducted in an unsafe manner and there were personal injuries resulting from disastrous accidents. An unavoidable byproduct of the accidents was bad press for the sport of drag racing. So in addition to entertainment, Al used the Lawman tours to train people in the fine points of race car preparation and then described and demonstrate how to safely race them.
Beginning in 1970, sponsorship for the tours came from Ford and Mustangs replaced the Chrysler products, specifically, the Boss 429 and the 428CJ Mach I. Two Boss 9s were prepared along with 11 (some say 12) Machs. The two Boss cars were not scheduled to be completed at the same time so when the first one was finished, it was shipped to Viet Nam on a private container ship, along with some of the Machs.
Eckstrand flew to the training site, arriving three days before the cars were due. As he related the story several years later, he was having dinner with the commanding general one evening when he received a telegram telling him that one of the cars had been damaged beyond recovery when a container was dropped on it. With Murphy’s Law in full effect, it was the Boss that suffered the fatal wounds.
The general, who was looking forward to the training session because he had been promised a ride in the 9, offered Eckstrand a military plane to fly back to the states to get the second Boss. Al explained that the second Boss wouldn’t be ready for five weeks but the general saw it differently. He gave Eckstrand 72 hours to finish the car and bring it to Viet Nam, a time line that was somehow met and the general got his ride.
It was common practice to also give a few lucky enlisted personnel rides in the cars. One such ride was documented by sailor Larry James :
“I was on the Coral Sea CVA 43 when the Lawman Tour came to Japan. They put the Big Boss on the flight deck and fired it up. No burnouts on the nonskid. Even so it was loud and made me think of home town racing though not with any thing like this. Well I did get to drive one of the CJ Mustangs. I got on it a little too hard going into a corner and went off the designated course. They forgot to tell me that these things did not have power steering and they are front heavy with that 428. Besides the driving of one of these monsters at 19 years of age, what I remember is the paint jobs. Pearls inches deep. Beautiful. I have seen the pictures and they do not do justice to the workmanship that went into these artistic expressions. The motors were fine and the sound of it rumbling made my heart race, but the overall experience has stayed with me long after the engine stopped and the small of the fuel drifted out to sea. It stayed with me so much that I now have a 1970 Mach I of my own. . . . . . . . . If there was a way to thank Al Eckstrand for what he did not only for me but the thousands of others who he helped keep sane in the midst of hell and chaos, I would want to do that.”
Giving military personnel, especially those in the Viet Nam/Far East theater, an opportunity to push military duty to the back of their minds, at least for a couple of hours, was as important as the safety training, as you can see by the account from James.
All in all, it was estimated that the Lawman Mustangs were seen by nearly 250,000 people. While Eckstrand entertained all of these people, he also planted the safety seed. And with Ford products in front of a quarter million members of the service, Ford certainly got its sponsorship money’s worth.
The second Boss survived two years of touring with only 720 miles accumulated on the odometer, albeit hard drag racing miles. Unrestored, it survives today in the hands of a collector, after changing hands several times. The car cost $23,000 to build in 1970. It had Hilborn fuel injection, a Hampton 6-71 supercharger, and was advertised as having 1200 hp on methanol, a figure that was later revised when the dyno read 780 hp. It had an automatic transmission and a bunch of other stuff that nobody, to this day, will divulge. The VIN number is 0F02Z110-429 KK 2155 which decodes as: 1970, Dearborn Assembly, Fastback, 429 cid, 4-bbl V-8, (Boss).