Wayne King loved life.
And drag racing.
For him, the two went hand in hand.
He fell in love with racing as a youngster growing up in Bakersfield and in the 1960s was among a stout group of Bakersfield dragster drivers that included James Warren, Jack Williams, Rick Stewart and Tony Waters.
King, an original member of the Smokers Car Club, which started the famed March Meet drag races at Famoso Drag Strip in 1959 died at 81 in Washington on Wednesday.
“He was a longtime competitor, he drove a lot of cars,” said Steve Gibbs, former vice-president of competition for the NHRA. “A die-hard racer. The Bakersfield fuel guys are all gone - Wayne was the last of them.”
King is survived by his wife, Peggy King, and daughter Renee King Timms, both of Washington, and daughter Denise Johnson of Bakersfield.
“He likes to say we met at the track, but that’s not true,” said his wife of 50 years, Peggy King. “I was with some friends who wanted to visit someone and he was in his garage working on his car - it was about March Meet time. I knew nothing about dragsters, nor did I care.”
While not, at least at first, enamored with drag racing, Peggy King saw beyond the grease stains.
“I found out what a wonderful guy he was,” she said. “He was so much fun. As for his racing, I just knew he was really good at it.”
The two were married in 1970, moved to Southern California when King went to work for Ed Donovan. They moved to Kent, Wash. in 1972 (which had a drag strip), eventually landing in Gardiner on Discovery Bay where Wayne King lived as a child before moving to Bakersfield with his family in the 1950s.
King drove a variety of fuel-powered dragsters at Famoso and the multitude of Southern California drag strips in the 1960s and early 1970s. After moving to Washington, he remained active as a driver, but this time in alcohol-powered dragsters on strips in the Northwest and Canada.
He also started his own business, King Hydraulics, which he ran until health issues slowed him down the past couple of years. King also found time to serve on the Jefferson County Public Utility Commission for 18 years, retiring in 2018.
In 1965 Ed Donovan hired him to drive and they won the 1965 PDA Championship at Lions in a field that featured more than 130 Top Fuel dragsters. It was about then that King was given the moniker “the Peregrine” by race photographer Ralph Guldahl and it stuck.
But King’s pride and joy was the Clayton, Doss and King fuel car he drove in the early 1960s for about two years.
He was hired by Chuck Doss and Del Clayton of Santa Maria to drive the former Ed’s Muffler dragster in 1963 and went on to win numerous races in Southern California.
That car was sold in 1964, had a couple of different owners but was hardly raced, and King bought it in 1986.
It stayed in his shop until the first California Hot Rod Reunion in 1992.
“This is the original car,” King told The Californian during an interview at the CHRR in 2016. “I found it about 30 years ago. I brought it here for the first reunion and it was just a dummy (engine). Then guys started starting them up and I thought I better do it so I started digging up parts. It’s amazing how many parts I have.”
King first fired the car up at the 2002 California Hot Rod Reunion and participated in numerous CHRR “cacklefests” where restored and recreated dragsters were push started in front of the grandstands and then idled on the drag strip.
He only missed a handful of California Hot Rod Reunions since the inaugural one and made several trips to the March Meet with his car as well.
“This is where I grew up. This is where I got the sickness of nitromethane and Top Fuel,” King said in 2016. “Martin’s Market and Tony Waters and Bill Crosley, Roger (Coburn) and James (Warren). That’s why I come back here.”
