Drag Racing Days
In 1958, the prime of Summerour's drag racing career, he purchased "the bullet" from fellow Georgia Racing Hall of Fame member Hoyt Grimes. Grimes had amazingly built the car from a droptank off of a World War II plane.
“While I was at Gober’s I started building drag cars for Jack Black of the Old Hickory House,” Summerour said. “Jack and his family had come to Atlanta from Birmingham. Drag racing had started at Lakewood. They ran from the first turn to the fourth turn. We did that a couple of times. Then we went to an airport near Marietta. Then Ted Edwards bought the airport at Fairburn.
“Skipper Brooks, an old friend of mine and I were having dinner at the Old Hickory House one night and Jack came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘How about building me a motor?’ What kind of motor? ‘I want to go drag racing.’ Okay, you just give me the money and we’ll go drag racing. I had a good relationship with Jack Black. For several years I carried his credit card for gas for the drag racing. I never used it for my own car. He operated out of his left pocket for the drag racing. That was the money he made off of the catering business. And if I needed money for the car I would tell him. Sometimes he would say, ‘Wait a week and I will have the money.’ The next week I would get $500 or $600 to rebuild the engine or whatever. I tried several times to get him to go over the bills with me to show him where the money went. He said, ‘If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t give you the money.’
Jimmy Summerour in his dragster at the Newton County Dragway in Covington, Georgia (which would later become the Atlanta Speed Shop) around 1958-59.
“We started out with a 1956 Chevy station wagon, then a 1958 Corvette. Later Jack bought the famous homemade “Bullet” from Hoyt Grimes. I took the engine out of the Corvette and put it in the Bullet. We ran everywhere we could close to Atlanta. We even went to Daytona in 1958 with the Bullet. We also took it to Chester, South Carolina where they would have a big race ever year.
“To tell you what kind of man Jack Black was and the relationship we had, you have to hear about the ’58 Cadillac El Dorado Jack bought to tow the Bullet with. In early 1958, we were going to Daytona to race the car. The car was in a car show out at Lakewood. I was to go by there and get the car and head to Daytona. I went by and picked up the Caddy and started to Lakewood on the expressway. There was an 18-wheeler wrecked and I couldn’t hardly stop the Caddy. I veered to miss everything but the bumper and continental kit caught the fence in the median. It pulled the bumper right off. I called Jack to tell him the bad news and all he wanted to know was whether I could still tow the Bullet to Daytona. He wasn’t worried about the accident, he wanted to go drag racing.