Nuther One Gone
By noderel:
Chances are you have never heard of Frank Wylie. Retired, but some years back he played a crucial role in the stocker wars on the nation's drag sites. In the battles between Ford and Chevy, he was the spoiler.
Frank Wylie was the head honcho at Dodge public relations. He waved the flag for the Chrysler Products when people still thought of them as old farts in top hats. Frank was, for us in the automotive media, the go-to guy for information and help.
That was especially true of our projects at Hot Rod Magazine. Our front guy with Detroit was Ray Brock. Keep in mind that the late 1950s and much of the '60s were heady times for Detroit performance. All across America, and in nearly every Detroit automotive denizen, the Youth Market was all the rage. That meant drag racing, and in drag racing, that meant the Detroit stockers. Essentially, it meant Ford vs GM.
When I was running the NHRA quarter-mile program, I had instructed my guys on the event microphone to zero-in on any kind of competition that might arise, especially between the Ford and Chevy camps. I didn’t have to encourage any announcer excitement over any of the other makes. Actually, any of the MoPar racers. You see, the Chrysler Corporation guys just kind of sat back in the pits and let the GM/Ford warriors spar it out, to the huge roars of approval from the grandstands. Then, when the dust had cleared, the MoPars would roll out of the staging lanes and mop up on whomever was left. Even so, the Chrysler entourage never really got a huge gaggle of supporters.
Which was where Frank Wylie came in. He was really the champion of the MoPar hemi, in whatever guise. In this he was joined in the West Coast office of Chrysler, Inc., by Jack McFarland. Between them, we in the auto press were never without some kind of Chrysler brand to own or borrow. In fact, for over a decade, I always had something MoPar as a loaner, or a dirt cheap purchase. I think I owned 9 Dodge Darts in the first five years of the '60s. Plus a gaggle of other Detroit iron. All on a pauper’s pay.
Wylie was a good friend with Ray Brock, and if you look into HRM and drag racing history, you will note that Ray was running a Dodge stocker at the big Drags, emblazoned with the HRM logo. And Wylie had thousands of those in vogue vest pins flaunting the fact. Then, in about ’64 or so, Ray was lured to run a Plymouth as the HRM banner dragger. Instantly, Wylie shovelled out thousands of pins with the headline “Beat Brock”. It was all a part of the great inter-agency rivalry between Dodge and the Chrysler engineers called the High And Mighty. So, Chrysler couldn’t lose. So, they didn’t.
Because, it is all about image, and the MoPar image was of top performance. They even had Don Garlits in tow at one point. All because of a public relations guy who actually knew something about his target audience. The guys at Ford caught the vision, GM never did catch up. They are still groping!