Builder / Owner
AHRHL 28 Chevy II pre-wheelie bar

Driver/builder/owner:    Who is Doug Thorley?
 To quote the Petronics website (new owners of Doug’s Headers) on the page “About Doug’s Headers” it states, “Recently elected to five different drag racing halls of fame, Doug is truly one of the pioneers in the manufacturing of high performance exhaust systems!”
HRHL 25 NDragRHall Fameedited
AHRHL 16 Plac at museum 1
AHRHL 18 Museum frnt
AHRHL 17 Plac museum 2

When the NHRA museum first opened Doug and his wife Dorothy did volunteer work for 10 years. During that time they were able to help create a historical record of many aspects of racing history from drag racing to Bonneville. The Thorley’s, like many of us from our generation, are doing all they can to establish historicity of racing for future generations!

In 1997 Doug was inducted into the Hot Rod Magazine Hall of Fame
AHRHL 37 hall fame list HRM
AHRHL 23 orig shop

   Though the header business has now been sold who can forget the early days when it seemed like everyone was running a pair of custom made headers made by Doug. In fact when you visit the Wally Park’s NHRA museum notice how many historic cars were running his headers in those days.
AHRHL 15 HPs car
AHRHL 13 adv d headers
AHRHL 14 KS car
AHRHL 19 DT poster
AHRHL 32 Early header ad
AHRHL 33 Early header ad 2

   In an Interview Doug remembers “I was at the gate when Lion’s Drag Strip opened and raced there until the strip was closed. One of my first cars was a tooled 1938 Buick which accomplished many trophy runs at Lions. Another early car was called “the world’s fastest Corvette in 1962 at 134.54 in ¼ mile eventually holding the NHRA B/MSP record and 213 mph at Bonneville.” “My most popular car the Corvair deemed the ‘world’s fastest funny car in 1967 with a top speed of 202.2 and a 7.60 et winning the Indy U.S., Nationals. Newer drag racers will remember my Javelin which was one of the first rear engine cars with a blown Hemi in a AMC. By the time I was running the Chevy II we had built and raced 25 cars at various strips around the country.” He later added, “The racing atmosphere was a perfect place to perfect racing parts and develop new innovate engineering ideas. We continually improved headers, heads, blowers and various injection systems, chassis and safety items. It was wonderful.”
AHRHL 27 World fastest corvette
HRHL 22 38 Abuick 1st trophy car at Lions drags
HRAHL 24 34 ford unbeatable for year AHRHL 26 Javelin funny car
AHRHL 36 race w Gas Ronda
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