10/09/2026
Two shirtless guys in cut-off shorts, an open front end, and a car with PRO 1 painted on the glass.
That number is not decoration. It is the plate the reigning champion carries, and Bob Glidden carried it more than anyone in the history of the class.
Eighty five national event wins. Ten Pro Stock championships. Five of them consecutively from 1985. In 1979 he won nine national races in a row, which is the kind of run that makes other teams stop entering.
He started by selling two Super Stock Mustangs in 1972, buying a Pro Stock Pinto from Wayne Gapp and Jack Roush, and quitting his job at a Ford dealership to do it full time.
Underneath was the 351 Cleveland, and here is the part worth sitting with.
Ford stopped building the Cleveland in the United States in 1974. Glidden kept developing it and kept winning with it for years afterwards, which meant he was advancing an engine the manufacturer had already walked away from. The canted valve heads were the best thing Ford made in that era and almost nobody at Ford was still interested.
The operation that did this was not a corporation.
His wife Etta ran the team as crew chief for years. Their sons Rusty and Billy grew up in the pit area. The whole thing was a family out of Indiana, turning its own parts, building its own engines, and beating teams with far more money behind them.
Buddy Morrison later said that Glidden was the reason Reher-Morrison got serious in the first place. That is what it takes to be measured by your rivals.
Glidden died in December 2017.
A homebuilt Ford, a dead engine family, and a wife calling the shots, and it worked for twenty five years.
