Ronnie Sox. Photo courtesy NHRA Motorsports Museum.
Like many who eventually gravitate towards a career in motorsports, Ronnie Sox grew up around cars, raised in the shadow of the family’s Sox Sinclair service station. As soon as he was old enough to drive, Sox began competing in drag races sponsored by the Police Club of Burlington, North Carolina, and run at a nearby air park. In the early days, Sox didn’t even have a car of his own, instead running his father’s 1949 Oldsmobile, likely without prior parental approval. From these humble beginnings, Sox would go on to become what many describe as the greatest four-speed driver that ever lived, and from the mid-1960s though the mid-1970s, the team of Sox and Martin were usually the ones to beat in Super Stock or Pro Stock competition.
Buddy Martin first ran against Sox in the early 1960s, and was frustrated by his inability to beat him in a comparable 409-cu.in. powered Chevrolet. No matter what Martin did, Sox always seemed to have a better reaction time and a faster trip through the quarter mile, and it didn’t take long before Martin made Sox an offer he couldn’t refuse: With a 1963 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe on order, equipped with the 427-cu.in. Z-11 V-8, Martin asked Sox to step in as his full-time driver.
Sox and Martin Hemi ‘Cuda. Photo courtesy NHRA Motorsport Museum.
On the pair’s very first outing, Sox took home the win in Martin’s car. As Martin explains in Sox’s NHRA Hall of Fame biography, “Ronnie’s skills as a driver were a gift. He was very coordinated with the hand and foot. In addition to his shifting, his reaction times were outstanding. Everybody drove four-speed cars at that time, and other drivers would miss gears left and right. That never happened with Ronnie. Everybody had an excuse, but Ronnie could get into anyone else’s car and have no problems whatsoever.”
Just as Sox and Martin began building their reputation for dominance, in February of 1963 sponsor Chevrolet announced its withdrawal from all motorsport activities. Despite the absence of factory support, the team soldiered on through the 1963 season campaigning Martin’s Chevrolet. For 1964, the duo negotiated a deal with Mercury to run a Comet fitted with the then-new A/FX 427-cu.in. V-8, and season highlights included a victory at the NHRA Winternationals and selection to a U.S. Racing Team, organized by the NHRA, that barnstormed drag strips in England.
Sox and Martin Plymouth Belvedere, circa 1965. Image courtesy of RonnieSox.org.
The relationship with Mercury would last just a single year, and for 1965 the team switched to an altered-wheelbase Plymouth Belvedere with backing from Chrysler. With the front and rear axles moved forward and the wheelbase shortened, the car certainly didn’t look like an ordinary Belvedere, and altered racers soon gave rise to the term “funny car,” a name that would later go on to be associated with tube frame, fiberglass-bodied cars. The modified Plymouth didn’t perform like a production Belvedere, either, and with the help of a new fuel-injection system (developed for Chrysler by Hilborn), Sox recorded the first nine-second pass in a normally aspirated, production-bodied car.
Sox and Martin switched to a Barracuda for the 1966 season, but the production-based car proved less than competitive against a new series of tube-framed, fiberglass-bodied cars. Tired of losing to rival Don Nicholson (driving a Mercury Comet), Sox tried a switch to an automatic transmission, which temporarily leveled the playing field. By season’s end, Nicholson was again consistently faster, forcing a change in strategy from Chrysler; instead of focusing on “funny cars,” the automaker would concentrate its drag racing efforts on the Super Stock class.
The news was a mixed bag for Sox: On the one hand, Super Stock cars were considerably slower than funny cars, but on the other hand, Super Stock cars (at the time) generally ran a four-speed transmission. With the decision ultimately made for the team by Chrysler, Sox returned to his winning ways in 1967, capturing the Super Stock Eliminator class win at the 1967 NHRA Springnationals and at the 1967 U.S. Nationals.
From 1968 through 1971, the Sox and Martin team utterly dominated the sport of Super Stock (and, from 1970 onwards, Pro Stock) drag racing, taking the NHRA World Championship in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971, and capturing the AHRA World Championship in 1969. By the 1972 season, Chrysler had become too dominant in Pro Stock competition, so the NHRA revised the rules to allow a lighter weight for Fords and Chevrolets run in the series. That left the Sox and Martin team struggling for victories, and Sox’s sole win for the season came at the IHRA U.S. Open in Rockingham, North Carolina.
In 1973, the Lenco planetary transmission leveled the playing field for other teams by allowing clutchless, full-throttle shifting. No longer able to benefit from his superior ability to work the gears on a conventional four-speed transmission, Sox found himself without any major wins in the 1973 and 1974 seasons, and even a move from Pro Stock to Factory Experimental couldn’t right the ship. In 1975, Sox and Martin shuttered their racing operations, but Sox’s career was still a long way from over.
Sox and Martin Plymouth Duster. Image courtesy of RonnieSox.org.
Now on his own, Sox took the runner-up spot in Pro Stock at the 1979 NHRA Gatornationals. In 1981, Sox took IHRA wins at the Winston World Nationals, the Northern Nationals, the Summer Nationals and the U.S. Open Nationals, giving him the IHRA World Championship in the Pro Stock class. He’d capture victories (but not championships) in 1982, 1985 and 1990 as well, and in 1995, Ronnie Sox once again partnered with Buddy Martin to run a Ford Probe in IHRA competition. A crash destroyed the car and nearly ended Sox’s driving career, but once recovered, Sox climbed right back in the cockpit, content to row the gears in vintage drag racing events.
When the NHRA debuted the Pro Stock Truck class in 1998, Sox and Martin partnered once again to campaign a Dodge Dakota pickup, but the team was never competitive in the short-lived series. As late as 2005, Sox made appearances at key vintage drag racing events, but by that time the driver ranked number 15 on the NHRA’s all-time list of greats was battling prostate cancer, a fight he’d ultimately lose in 2006.
