Fast Eddie Miller Really Was
Note:
If anyone thinks I should also post this elsewhere on the site — in FF, FSV, current or vintage, or Indy car — I can.
A detail lost in American racing history, Edward H. "Eddie" Miller was the first driver to re-invent the ladder system to Indy cars; starting in karts, into Formula Ford, to winged formulae, and on to Indianapolis. The training for nearly seventy years prior was almost entirely oval-based, the established route being Sprint, Midget, and stock cars on dirt and pavement — and even wooden board tracks in the very early days.
Starting with Miller going to Indy, in a rapid, five-year succession came Tom Bagley, Bill Alsup, Bob Lazier, Herm Johnson, Tim Richmond, Geoff Brabham, Kevin Cogan, and several others. The old-school path was largely eliminated, and forever changed. One common thread in this evolution was both the SCCA road course and oval USAC Mini-Indy versions of pro Formula Super Vee, a stepping stone for many drivers of household names since.
"Fast Eddie" Miller was far more than just a dear friend of this writer, and it's taken me a full year to be able to pen this. Eddie was beyond just fast, he was as nice a guy as has ever been in the sport.
Born on January 17, 1945 and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Eddie's first races were at 10, on roller speed skates at the nearby Rocket Skating Rink. But he quickly wanted more speed, and at age 16 he and his dad Horace started kart racing. Their first mount was a Bug chassis with a 100cc McCulloch 6 engine, with Horace tuning and Eddie driving. Success came to the pair in rapid pace, and they raced in both Sprint and Enduro karts from 1961 through 1965, earning a top finish in the 1962 IKF Sprint Grand Nationals in Pueblo, Colorado. Sadly, Horace was killed shortly after, in an accident while trying to help a fellow employee.
Karting soon brought four lifelong friends to Eddie; Gary Reimer, Jimmy Pyle, Kent Maxwell, and Lyle Schwedland, and a support network rapidly came together for the amiable young Oklahoman. With the first three and Miller, Team RPMM was born. Eddie served in the Air Force reserve after high school, moved into stock cars while finding only boredom in a brief college term, and instead cut his teeth on both quarter- and half-mile dirt tracks at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds.
By this time, Eddie was working for a builder and developer named Clyde Riggs in Oklahoma City; first as a framer, and eventually moving into a supervisory role. He and his friend Lyle lived in a lakeside cabin until graduating college, then Eddie moved west to Vail, Colorado in 1969. There he joined forces with friend and fellow race driver Bob Lazier, who with his wife Diane gave Eddie a job and a place to stay in their Tivoli Lodge. Later the Laziers graciously loaned Miller part of the funds he needed to build his first rental property and — perhaps more importantly — an income stream to support his racing aspirations. This kind starter from Bob and Diane never went forgotten.
But it was Kent Maxwell's belief in Eddie's obvious driving talent that made him a car owner, the missing piece to propel Miller forward.
Next up was road racing, and what Eddie had wanted all along. The Formula Ford class originated in England in 1968, soon crossing shores to the States in 1969. The new formula rapidly became the stepping stone, with the right package and extraordinary car counts to build open wheel futures from. The inaugural running of FF at the American Road Race of Champions, known today as the SCCA National Championship Runoffs, was held at Daytona International Speedway. Miller easily qualified for the event by winning the Midwest Division title, and then earning the first FF Pole in national championship history, but problems intervened and by the checker he was classified in 13th.
In those days, only the first four (or a total of four of the top six points scorers) in each of SCCA's seven geographic divisions earned an entry for the ARRC, and in 1966 it became the defining single event that determined SCCA's National Champions.
The ARRC adopted a brand-new course in 1970, the 2.52-mile Road Atlanta near Gainesville, Georgia. The track proved the perfect home for this event, with a very long back straight, several challenging sweeps, and at least one downright-harrowing hilltop corner — Turn 10, the famed "Bridge turn" — where mistakes and brazen passing attempts commonly ended against clay banks. The circuit repeatedly brought out the Greats over the next twenty-four years it hosted the national championships, before a long stint at Mid-Ohio and subsequently many venue changes, these days rotating tracks every two years.
Miller again won the Midwest Division in his Merlyn Mk11a in 1970, this time over compatriot Bob Lazier, but he did not finish. In the 1971 ARRC, an engine assembly issue meant Eddie did not even start the race, but it all came good for him in 1972. His second year of running a Hawke DL2B, and starting back in 8th, Miller bested pro F5000 driver Ron Dykes and later-pro F-Atlantic Tom Pumpelly, to win his first National Championship and by just 0.4 sec. That race was the first time I knew of Eddie, and the first of eighteen Runoffs events that I've attended at five tracks to date. But even at 12, I'd been trackside long enough to know I'd witnessed someone very special.
With the Formula Ford national championship, Eddie won the prestigious Bert Hawthorne Trophy, a coveted British award given to honor the year's best Formula Ford driver. Very important people in racing were starting to take serious notice of America's Eddie Miller.
1973 saw a huge jump in direction for Team RPMM, starting with his relocating from Vail to Lakewood, Colorado just outside of Denver. A year-old Lola T300 Formula 5000 car was purchased from Gus Hutchinson, with prep and engines to come from John Barker's Performance Development & Racing in Denver (PDR). On a shoestring budget, in a pro series that matched Indy car and Formula One speeds, Miller qualified 18th of 40 in the outdated car at the season opener in Riverside. With almost zero time and nearly five times the power of Formula Ford — and his first time in any winged racing car — Eddie was the highest-placed qualifier of all but the new cars, and the fastest of the seven Lola T300s entered.
A flawed moment by an exhuberant rival just before the Riverside esses destroyed the T300, which was then replaced with a current-spec Lola T330. Funds were even tighter now, yet Eddie immediately responded with a fine 8th-place finish at the next race at Laguna Seca. Unfortunately, with dwindling money in a stellar year for F5000, Miller's early potential had no chance of coming to full fruition. Future Formula One World Champion Jody Scheckter barely won this 1973 L&M Continental Series over Brian Redman.
So it was back to Formula Ford for 1974. The magnanimous Lola importer Carl Haas sponsored Eddie with a fresh mount, a Barker-engined Lola T340 that was again very effectively prepped by PDR in Denver.
Renamed the Champion Spark Plug Road Racing Classic, Eddie responded by taking his second Formula Ford championship in a row, by just a tenth of a second. Despite starting in 9th, he only first led at the very last passing opportunity, as is proper racecraft, earning him a factory ride from Carl Haas in the 1975 Formula Super Vee pro series. All of the first eight behind Eddie in the FF championship race went on to build further pro careers, including Marty Loft in pro Atlantic, and Dennis Firestone in Super Vee and then Indy cars.
With a new Lola T324 expertly prepped by Ove Olsson, and motors from Bertil Sollenskog, the team missed the first race at Daytona, likely while awaiting the new car since no T324s even showed. Freddy Kottulinsky of Sweden drove the maiden outing in the Lola at the next event in Sebring, comically using the assumed name "Red O'Connor" en route to a 2nd-place finish. The name was a cross between the Lola's color and fellow-Swede Ove Olsson's friend, Formula Atlantic driver Bill O'Connor of Chicago. The Florida circuit was not a FIA track but Freddy held a FIA license, making him ineligible to compete there.
The creative gag's last chance for discovery was averted when Freddy pretended to run out of fuel, just to keep anyone and everyone from seeing this mysterious "O'Connor" chap on the podium. The Swede expertly faked an engine stumble past the pits so all could see Olsson scrambling for a gas can, let Howdy Holmes on by for a surprised last-lap win, then pulled off "out of gas" on the cool-off lap, as far from the pits as he could get. Subsequent history still shows Red O'Connor in some references, now some 47 years on. Surely Holmes was tickled in at least two ways, and one must wonder if any autographs were scripted by Kottulinsky — with helmet on and visor down, of course.
Fast Eddie utterly dominated the remaining races of the 1975 Bosch VW Gold Cup; winning the first three races he finished at Road Atlanta, Riverside, and Lime Rock, scoring two more wins at Road America and Mosport, and getting a second by just 0.002 sec. to Tom Bagley in the primary support race of the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. About three inches separated Eddie from a sixth win that day, beating Keke Rosberg and Bobby Rahal in the process, with his only other finish being a mechanically-challenged 8th in the July round at the Glen.
Suddenly, images, ads, and articles regarding Miller seemed to pop up everywhere, in Sports Car, Formula, and Autoweek magazines for three, and even beyond the Atlantic. Anyone searching for the brightest star knew he was a driver to shine with.
That August, this writer first became friends with Eddie at the Road America Super Vee race. I'd recently turned 15, had a real, live camera around my neck for only the second time, and mentioned to him the rarity of his braking and downshifting method. He seemed intrigued by the observation, and laughing, took off my cap and muffed up my hair like I was Beaver Cleaver. The joyous look on his face will eternally stay with me, and I very soon and forever became the son he never had.
I truly was fascinated by his deceleration style at Turn 5, at least in that first observation from myself, where he didn't downshift like everyone else. Instead he stomped the brakes like a kart, very, very late, did just one downchange to the gear he wanted, pitched the thing sideways to avoid missing the corner entirely, and shot through the apex like a man escaping a Tsunami. I'd never seen anything like it, and am not sure I have since — save for onboard footage of the same, single-downshift trick done by Alain Prost in the Turbo Renault F1 car from the epic Lap of the Gods onboard video collection. Eddie just flavored that style up a bit, with onrushing corner entry slides that a certain Canadian named Villeneuve was soon to make famous.
Carl Haas was in the business of selling racing and exotic cars, and didn't often lend much support to up-and-comers. But with Eddie, Carl made at least three major exceptions — and it's fair to say Miller was a first here, too with Haas offering him a full, Lola factory-backed ride in the Formula Atlantic series for 1976.
Formula 5000 perennials Brian Redman and team owner Haas had taken notice of the rapid rise of Eddie Miller, leading to a chance to put him into a second Haas F5000 car alongside Redman. Both Carl Haas and Ove Olsson just about begged Eddie to await a better Indy offer that would surely come in time. They implored him to instead run Atlantic first, and if all went as everyone predicted, Miller would gravitate straight into the second Haas 5000 car. Heady stuff indeed.
I now wish I'd been an adult then, to fully grasp the excitement my friend must have felt. To me as a kid, he came off like it was no big deal. But Eddie was a man in a hurry, and thought he had waited long enough already. Sometimes being positive can be a negative, and here the enticement of the Brickyard was simply too powerful to overcome.
That 1976 Formula Atlantic season held competition from Gilles Villeneuve, Bobby Rahal, Howdy Holmes, Bertil Roos, Price Cobb, Kevin Cogan, Marty Loft, Gordon Smiley, Bill Brack, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Hector Rebaque, Freddie Phillips, Bob Lazier, Tom Klausler, Chip Mead, Tom Gloy, Bobby Brown, Johnny Gerber, even Dave Walker who briefly drove in F1 for Lotus, and many others.
There were ten current or future F1 drivers at the season-ending Trois Rivieres race alone. Just who exactly wasn't running in this Series in 1976? There is no doubt that Eddie would have held his own in this toughest year of formula car training in North American history.
But alas it was simply, and sadly, just not to be.
Eddie turned 31 in early 1976, and very much felt the clock ticking. His life goal was Champ cars, so when a deal came along to run the Indy 500 alongside Gary Bettenhausen in a second Fred Gerhardt Eagle, he jumped on it.
He breezed through the first phases of Rookie testing. In a later test on May 11, he ran a 167.380 mph lap and was just starting to get comfortable. He'd been wearing contacts at the Brickyard thus far, as he always had when driving, then was suddenly told he had to wear glasses in case of fire. A hasty appointment with the IMS optical provider was arranged, and this session was his first with brand-new glasses he just wasn't up to speed with. Good word from several trusted associates say the prescription was off, but would any of us try to make the best of it, or delay and risk an alternate outcome?
Eddie was never one to find or verbalize excuses, and this is new information to me today — as is a second detail just relayed by his former engineer. In Rookie testing back then, drivers were required to run a single line around the Brickyard — low, middle, or high — and then sans any witnessed errors be allowed to use the full, regular racing line at whatever speed they could muster. With the intensity of the whole scene, and errant glasses, while swirling in a pressure-cooker and picking a turn-in point at over 180 mph, sometimes the gremlins turn better than the car. Murphy hasn't many friends, and Christmas must be damned lonely for that guy.
Eddie never said a thing about either of these factors over the forty-five years we discussed the ensuing incident. Maybe that's partly why he rarely seemed to want to talk about it at all. It had to feel like Fate absolutely hated him.
He came into Turn 1 in very harsh and shadowy light, probably ran a hair late on turn-in but kept it off the outside wall, quarter-spun towards the infield, violently crushed into the berm, and cartwheeled towards the golf course. It's amazing the car didn't fold in half like a taco shell.
Clearly dejected, even to my young ears, Eddie told me on the phone a week or so later that he was upside-down in the car, trapped, absolutely covered in methanol, and saw some guy smoking nearby. He knew he was hurt, but didn't know exactly how bad the injuries were. He had sustained two fractures to his neck, but thankfully with no paralysis. The car was a complete write-off, with only two pieces remaining that are now in an Eagle car collection. Someday, I hope to buy those bits.
End of Indy attempt.
Who could possibly smile the day after a lifelong dream stopped? Not many, but Eddie did just that. He said "I'll be back," but the 500 goal was over for him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HXbk2efsr4
Miller recovered physically through 1976, but came back to Super Vee in 1977 and ran an aborted schedule that included getting a 4th at Road America. Carl Haas helped a little as he wanted the dream to live, and to be fair Eddie had some very good races.
Then in 1978 and still with air-cooled power, Eddie netted a 6th at the Super Vee opener at Phoenix. He scored well above the other outdated engines in the field, but hadn't the funds to upgrade to the new water-cooled formulae, nor back a full season. He comments here, starting at about 14.5 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EqU2oklm2U
So in reverse gear to Formula Ford he again went. Everyone in racing knows it doesn't feel great to return to the start of it all, especially twice, but again with PDR he for one took a win at the Pro Formula Ford race at Road America, on the day I took my new girlfriend to her first race. Eddie went back to the Runoffs in Formula Ford and finished 5th, and I married that girl.
Eddie took 1979 off to build a mini-storage facility in Denver, and a car wash shortly after, but racing wasn't done with him yet — nor he with it. Carl Haas again helped, this time with a new Lola T540 Formula Ford.
Sandy and I moved from Wisconsin to Denver the day after Valentine's Day of 1980, moving eight blocks from our only friend in town… Fast Eddie. He immediately took us into his heart, had us over for many meals, introduced me to John Barker, and I lettered and pinstriped every car to come from that shop over the next ten years Barker owned it — starting with Eddie's stark white Lola. I also lettered a Midget car for him that he ran with regional success in the Rocky Mountain and Great Plain areas.
The Lola T540 was not the best car in 1980. Regardless, Eddie drove the pants off it to an 8th at the Runoffs, just out of touch from the lead group of seven, and clearly thwarted by another driver wanting to race him instead of drafting forward together. Then came a long period of driving retirement, other than scoring a fine 3rd at the 20th Formula Ford Reunion after a decade away, tuned by old friend Steve Wulff. Steve had just bought PDR from Barker, and was later the General Manager of the RuSport Champ Car team for AJ Allmendinger, Justin Wilson, and Cristiano da Matta.
With that inspired rebirth in a Formula Ford, Eddie called in 1991 to ask me to decorate another helmet, and letter and gold leaf a Lola Indy car he was to run in the American Indycar Series. He had some very good races, but we all knew that time and the fire had mostly left — though certainly not without a trace. That Lola was not only the last race car his friend Lyle Schwedland ever painted, it was also the last of over 500 race cars I hand-lettered, appropriately. He scored a 4th at Colorado National Speedway, though admittedly had barely any time in the car to show what we all knew he still had, despite his already being 46 years old.
Eddie and I lost track for a short spell after, as happens in life and in racing sometimes. I went to lunch with him in 1999, to gift him a hardcover book I'd thanked him in. He welled up with pride, emotions clear in that Cherry Creek restaurant, as he was always one to share others' successes like they, or them, were his very own. The next day, he mailed me a favorite book, The Richest Man in Babylon, which is one of only two books we carry on our travels.
We stayed with Eddie for three lovely weeks in 2015, in his adoptive town of Taos, New Mexico, and again in 2017. He gifted us his only stopwatch from racing, the Heuer like a Dad's pocket watch to us. In the August between, I jokingly ragged on another friend Bill Alsup, a former Super Vee rival of Eddie's and later a Team Penske Indy car driver. Bill was to go see friends near Taos, and partly from my prodding, visit Eddie for the first time in decades. I called Bill on the day and asked if he was on the road yet. He said "We're going tomorrow, I have some more grading to do on my new gal's reclaimed mining property." I said some berating thing because that's how we always talked together, and carried on to a backpack in Washington with my wife.
I came out to news from a friend that poor Bill Alsup died a few hours after we'd spoken, near his home of Silverton, Colorado, when his earthmover rolled over onto him. Then 78, Bill hadn't been to a race forever, but wanted to meet us at Mid-Ohio for the Runoffs. Later that year, Herm Johnson — a mutual friend of Bill, Bob Lazier, and myself, and past competitor of Eddie's — also died, and tragically Hermie was still quite young at that.
On our 2017 visit with Eddie, after only a day or two of weeks planned together, a childhood friend's Mom died in Cheyenne. We left Eddie's with much reluctance and trepidation, but he said "Go be there with your friend, he probably needs you right now." We got in endless hugs all around, said we loved each other as always, and vowed we'd get together soon. But life gets in the way, and it's a mistake we all make.
In 2020, we delayed a Spring trip to Taos after Eddie called to say covid had claimed our beloved friend Bob Lazier, only two months into the Pandemic. Hard to swallow but easy to understand, Bob was a gracious host who personally greeted each and every patron at the Tivoli. We were both crushed, especially Eddie probably, but that talk had us all vowing an extended visit when he finished a winter of sailing in April of 2021. I felt like a clock was again ticking away, as with Bill and Hermie and now Bob, and we'd both had too many recent examples to ignore. Yet, timing and circumstances had us do just that.
Eddie had been inviting us down to sail out of San Carlos, Mexico all that winter, something I've never done nor Sandy either, even offering to drive up to grab us in Tucson should we want to store our bus there. But being our rolling condo, it seemed better to meet him in Taos by late April, and get in one fine month in the glory of Spring. Our plan was for me to finally repro-dupe all his racing photos, as we'd intended in 2017, plus his files, records, trophies, articles, ads, everything I needed to finally and fully document his shortened career.
He would always say "Ahhh, nobody remembers me anyway," expecting me to cuss in disagreement like I often did, just so we could laugh about it like little kids. I'd often reply, in my tragically-flawed but pseudo-Macho Spanish lilt, "But who could possibly forget Rapido… Eduarrrrrrdo…?"
That worked its magic every time. Fact is, a lot of people around the world remember Fast Eddie Miller.
Then I couldn't get a hold of him for about three weeks. I thoughtlessly joked with Sandy "I wonder if he dropped his cell phone into the ocean." Finally the worry overtook me and I called his friend in Taos, and asked if that had indeed happened.
She said my suspicions were right but that she'd gotten him a new phone, and he was waiting to call me until after some engine trouble in his truck was fixed. I told her I'd been getting worried, and she hesitated a few long moments before saying "Oh Eric, he drowned in Mexico yesterday." Turns out I'd called about twelve hours too late.
That was almost exactly one year to the hour before this writing. It's been harder than I'd thought, even now a year down life's pathway.
I want to set the record clearer about his last moments. It's been recorded that he "drowned while sailing," but he was a fine and safe Captain who'd crossed the Atlantic many times. Eddie had recently adopted a dog in San Carlos, and with typical Miller heart, took it in to live on the boat. The dog almost never barked, but a mooring neighbor heard barking for a few minutes and went to investigate. Eddie had loaded the dog into the sailboat from the dinghy, and likely the smaller boat pushed away as he lifted the dog high up. There were no known witnesses, but all signs show that Eddie had probably slipped, hit his head on the deckside of the sailboat, and drowned between the two craft.
I add all this because it's Classic Eddie, giving his all to someone or something else, and paying a high price. I sleep well knowing he'd never have it any other way. He died exactly where he wanted to be, on April 24, 2021. I'd like to think it was during a beautiful sunset.
On a personal note, only through long friendships with Eddie Miller, Bob Lazier, Gary Passon, Bill Alsup, Bob Schader, and Herm Johnson, my painting career mentor, and from a prior kid reporter like me, Gordon Smiley, have I realized so many life connections to Volkswagens in racing, and in life. Five Super Vee buddies ran my Eric's Race Reports & Autocomp decal for free at pro S/V races in 1976. The following year, the first race car I ever lettered, painted, and/or pinstriped was a Lola T324 Super Vee like Eddie's, when I was 16, and the second a Caldwell D13 Formula Vee of longtime friend Scott Rubenzer.
Ironically or otherwise connected is that my family went to 44 states before I was 10, in two VW split-window buses. And if a friend with seven V-dubs in the family hadn't invited me to a Wisconsin county park one night, I'd have never met Sandy. And now we travel in a VW Westfalia.
Thanks for always being there, Big Brother, and for long showing what grace, determination, respect, and a well-played life look like.
Race and Sail on, Fast Eddie Miller. #1. We Love You.
©Eric Wunrow
(EW@EricWunrow.com)
Acknowledgments:
Some of the historical details within came from Eddie's lifetime friend and former car owner Kent Maxwell, and their mutual friend Lyle Schwedland, whom this writer profusely thanks. Thanks also to "Cee" Bearden, Ove Olsson, Steve Wulff, Gary Passon, Chris Siedentop, Tim Murray, and others offering bits and memories. Any other forthcoming records will be edited for historical posterity, please email me if you can help, and I will update this tribute for future historical research of Eddie Miller.
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