Ray Price unspools his life in a voice and manner that call little attention to what he's accomplished. The voice is friendly; his stories are matter-of-fact, quiet, and humble; and his memory of the events and minutiae of his career is encyclopedic, as well as just plain fun to listen to.
At the tender age of 68 he's already been inducted into both the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the Harley-Davidson Hall of Fame. (Ironically, he was inducted into the Harley Hall the same day as Willie G.) He has 37 years of drag-racing experience, including the AHDRA nitro-fuel record of 6.36 seconds at 224.21mph. He holds a number of U.S. patents, was one of the creators of the wheelie bar, and developed the omnipresent two-speed racing transmission. He's the "father of the Funny Bike." And he was the only drag racer chosen to perform at the Motor Company's 100th-anniversary event. He also owns one of the country's largest H-D dealerships, Ray Price Harley-Davidson in Raleigh, NC, which is laid out like a dragstrip-complete with black burnout tracks on the floor, signed by the racers who put them there.
HB: What a long, strange trip it's been, wouldn't you say?RP: Well, yeah [laughing], I guess it is. I started racing professionally on August 30, 1967. I was the bright-eyed kid, didn't know where I was. OK, I was 30 years old-I wasn't that much of a kid. I was just new to the sport. I got runner-up in that event-and they protested my bike. They said they knew I was illegal because a lot of the other guys were supposed to be running faster than me, and they had larger motors. I ran through, I think, five eliminations and qualified for the Super Eliminator title, where all the classes would run against each other: the A-modifieds, B-modifieds, [and so on]. My bike's a C-modified, and it turns out I was having to spot them time because my bike's so much faster. So the track protested me and the bike. They tore down the bike three times, and following the third time they said, "Sorry, guys. There's nothing wrong with this motor. It's perfectly legal. So you're just gonna have to accept the fact that this is a fast-runnin' motorcycle.
HB: What bike was it?RP: That was a '66 Harley Sportster running in the C-modified class.
HB: You built the motor?RP: I built the motor, set up the chassis, and changed things around to make the motorcycle handle better and be able to sit on better. Changed the gears to give it a longer low gear so I had more time to get my feet on the pegs to be able to shift. Changed the footpegs. Changed the shift pattern-even changed the handlebars around. We replaced the shocks and rear struts. It was my street bike, but I modified it quite a bit, and then it wasn't comfortable to ride on the street anymore! So I turned it into strictly a drag racer.
HB: So how and where did all this begin? Why bikes?RP: Well, I was a little kid, maybe eight or nine years old. A friend of mine, his uncle had a bike that year, a Harley-Davidson. I saw that thing, and it was about the prettiest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And that dream always stuck. Unfortunately, we were raised on a farm and didn't have a whole lot of money. So I never had the opportunity to get one. Then I went into the Air Force, got married, and knew some guys there who had bikes, and I just tried it.
I got out of the Air Force, got a job, worked for a few years, and got to where I could buy a bike. I think 1963 was the first time I bought one. Just started riding on the street. My wife's two older brothers had bikes, and we would ride together. Then one thing turned into another, and we started kind of competing against one another on the road. The excitement just started [growing] more, so I started modifying my bike so I could outrun them. Finally I decided, well, the best thing to do was to go to the dragstrip, get off the highway, get off the roads.
So I motored over to the [local] dragstrips. Just went and had fun. We'd take the whole family, have an outing, have a picnic. Sometimes there'd be other motorcycles there, sometimes I'd wind up running by myself, learning and getting better, making the bike quicker. At that time I was doing bike work in the basement of my house, modifying different bikes and stuff, doing repair and high-performance work, and I was pretty successful at it. My stuff ran better than most everybody else's.