Carol, outside of car, talking to Peggy Hart in her car at Santa Ana drag strip.

Steve says at this time the telephone at his house rang all the time, late into the night. His dad would get home from work and people were always calling and asking Lloyd to help them with their transmissions. His dad came to the realization that he could make a living working on cars in the high performance market. So, after ten years he quit his engineering job and opened a shop.

In 1961 Lloyd went to work for Mickey Thompson for a couple of years. At that time Mickey was also the track manager at the famous Lions Drag Strip. A perk of working with Mickey was that anytime Lloyd or Carol worked on their car they had carte blanche to test at Lions.

That same year Lloyd and Carol towed their Pontiac to Indianapolis for the U.S. Nationals. Carol was shocked and angered when the NHRA wouldn’t let her race. Period. No women could race in the NHRA.

Disappointed and still angry, Carol returned home and started a one-woman publicity campaign. She contacted all of the newspapers and radio stations and told her story. She contacted her congressman and enlisted his support. At this point in time, Carol had been racing in various non-NHRA sanctioning bodies for ten years.

Carol had been here before. In 1959 or 1960 (Steve isn’t sure of the exact year) the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), which runs the meets at El Mirage to this day, told Carol she couldn’t race her car there, she was a woman. So Carol borrowed Lloyd’s coveralls and tucked her long, flaming red hair into her helmet and made a run. She blew a tire at 102 mph -- the car must have been quite a handful to keep in control -- and came to a stop on the course.