Their Mattel sponsorship, which gave way to "Snake" and "Mongoose" Hot Wheels toys, and backing from big names like Coca-Cola and Carefree sugarless gum were of major significance, but McEwen was a drag racer first.
Long before he first tangled with "the Snake," McEwen had accrued a ton of experience in a variety of rides. McEwen made the natural progression to gas coupes, altereds, and eventually gas and fuel dragsters, including Gene Adams' Albertson Olds. On Sept. McEwen beat Prudhomme, who was driving the famed Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster, in two straight sets, inspiring what may be the most famous match-race pairing in the history of drag racing. Because their first get-together had stirred so much interest, two more races between "the Snake" and "the Mongoose" were staged at Lions Dragstrip in McEwen wheeled the Yeakel Plymouth dragster past Prudhomme and his new ride, the Roland Leong-owned Hawaiian, two rounds to one in the first, then lost in two straight sets in the second.
Because McEwen confined his racing to the West Coast, he and the touring Prudhomme raced each other only once in , at the Winternationals, site of their first national event meeting. They would not meet again for the rest of the decade. He also recorded the lowest elapsed time ever, a blistering 6. What kind of budget I had to spend. I think that the nostalgia racing would be fun, to build a couple of Hot Wheel cars like we had or the Corvettes or whatever, the Dusters or whatever we had, and go out and just run five seconds at miles an hour and smoke the tires on it.
That would be fun to go to Bakersfield a couple of times a year and run those kind of races. Just to see how it felt to pull that hard and to go that fast because the fastest I ever ran was a 4. The easiest car is the Top Fuel dragster. I like watching those because you have the cubic inches, the supercharger, and the turbos or the nitrous and you have a mix of different cars and they all look different and sound different. I think it would make a better show.
So no, it was just a great time. We came along at the right time. Everything just went pitch black and what made it worse, I was racing somebody. Fortunately we were both able to keep the cars straight and managed to not hit anything.
But the worst thing I had happen to me, one of the ones that I think back on sometimes, was I was racing the old track at Bristol, Tennessee. In the old days down at the shut off you had to turn right down there because there were trees and a mountainside in the way.
So at the shut off down there everybody had to move over and go to the right around the trees. Mongoose: I retired from driving in ; it was just time for me. I never did have the desire to own a team like Prudhomme did. But I walked away. The drivers I had I knew could get another ride, and the crew chiefs—shit, man, they were already jumping off like rats leaving a sinking ship, just trying to get on another one. But after a while, I just said screw it and it really and truly was the best decision I ever made.
I take it serious and my editor, Pete Ward; he takes it serious, too. And with our writers and our stories we really work at making it a nice book with nice pictures and stories. We feature the pros as well as the little guys that work in the garage with their dad and go out to Fontana on a Saturday night, and the bracket racers. I think Drag Racer magazine should cover everything and I try to do that, from top to bottom.
And make everybody have fun and be proud of doing it, too. Snake: Basically I had to build a new life. They spend their dough; they go out and go broke again because they spend all their money. But sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and build a new life. Do I miss it? Yeah, I miss it a certain amount. So now I just do all kinds of stuff. I just bought a new Polaris, a dune buggy kind of thing. And I go to functions and stuff and kind of just do what I want to do.
The sky is bluer; the trees are greener, and I kind of wish I knew more about this type of lifestyle when I was racing. Hot Wheels were muscle cars for little kids. And the Snake and Mongoose were the racers kids loved most. For those of us growing up at the time, Snake and Mongoose were the gateway to a lifetime of automotive obsession.
After the Mattel deal ran out, the Snake and Mongoose battles would continue. But it was Prudhomme who did most of the winning. Prudhomme would win four NHRA Funny Car season championships and 49 events over his year driving career and then go on to win many more as an owner. But one of those wins, the Funny Car title at the U.
Nationals, would come after a final-round victory over Prudhomme. A victory that came just days after the death of his young son Jamie from leukemia. The California native also won the Big Bud Shootout in and topped the Top Fuel category at the Summernationals to become one of a short list of drivers who have won events in both NHRA nitro classes.
Just landed and got this news that Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen has passed away. One of a kind and gonna miss those frequent phone calls, especially the ones with him chewing my rearend Sad day in drag racing when you lose a legend like the "Mongoose".
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