The Top Fuel and Funny Car nitro wars, Prudhomme amassed a career four Mongoose came up to me and said, ‘Hey, can I ride with you?’ And I said, ‘No kid, you’ve gotta ask Ivo.Drag racing has enjoyed some colorful personalities over the decadesīut few can rival the aura of Don “the Snake” Prudhomme. “Ivo had a roadster to push his dragster to the starting line and I drove the roadster. “I was in a car club called the Road Kings of Burbank, and in the club there was a guy named Tommy Ivo (known in drag racing circles as “TV Tommy Ivo” because he was also an actor), who was quite a racer. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Prudhomme said with a chuckle. Prudhomme first met McEwen in 1958 at Lions Dragstrip in Long Beach, California. While Prudhomme won multiple championships and races in both his NHRA Funny Car and Top Fuel careers, McEwen won just five NHRA national events, the biggest being Mongoose’s upset win over the Snake in the 1978 U.S. The rest became drag racing and toy history. It was McEwen who, along with Prudhomme, approached Mattel in 1969, trying to convince the company to back their racing efforts. Mattel had a marketing bonanza on its hand that still continues today with the same Hot Wheels brand. While they were friends for six decades and on-track rivals for more than 30 years, McEwen and Prudhomme were perhaps best known for their sponsorship by Hot Wheels from Mattel Toys in the early-to-mid 1970s. “He was more concerned about how someone else was doing than how he was doing. “Tom, as much as I loved him and as much as he looked after other people including me, he didn’t look after himself very well,” Prudhomme said. Sadly, though, that loyalty to everyone else came at a cost. McEwen not only had a great mind for marketing and promotion within the sport, he also had a big heart, helping countless drivers throughout his career and life. “Basically, he died from complications of the operation.” “They operated and got the cancer out, but he had complications after that,” Prudhomme said.
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