Many of our readers and millions of other drag racing fans of all ages know this car well, while many others don’t, but what you’re looking at is the car that, for all intents and purposes, signaled the beginning of the end of the front-engined, slingshot dragster era and forever changed the face of the sport of drag racing.

In 1969, after damage incurred to Swamp Rat 12-B during a match race, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and his longtime sidekick TC Lemons hightailed it back to their shop in Seffner, Fla. to throw a new car together in time for the NHRA Springnationals in Dallas. With the legendary Connie Swingle tending to other matters, Garlits and Lemons undertook the project themselves, thus resulting in Swamp Rat 13.

“Big” won the ’69 Smokers US Fuel and Gas Championship at New York National Speedway, at which point he and Lemons decided to try a two-speed transmission. Garlits and Lemons won a number of races with the new combination, but no one – not even Garlits – could foretell what was soon to come.

At 5:25 PM on March 8, 1970, at the 1970 AHRA Grand American at the Lions Dragstrip in Long Beach, Calif., Garlits and Swamp Rat 13 were lined up alongside Richard Tharpe in the final round of Top Fuel Eliminator, with thousands of fans on their feet, crowded closely around the pair of cars preparing to blast down the famous quarter mile.

As the Christmas tree flashed green, the transmission in Swamp Rat 13 exploded in a horrifying scene that will live infamy through the film and photographs of the sport’s early journalists. In an instant, the famed ‘Wynnscharger’ slingshot sheared off right aft of the motor, splitting the car in two and severing a portion of “Big’s” foot as the drivers compartment folded over forward and broke apart from the forward half of the chassis.

In the ensuing melee, one young fan on the opposite side of the track in the spectator area suffered life-threatening injuries from an errant drum that first struck a pole in front of starter Larry Sutton before skipping into the grandstands, while countless others near the starting line were sprayed with fluids and other small pieces of debris. Interestingly, Tharpe had foul started, but parts exploding away from the Swamp Rat contacted the timing system components on the starting line and deactivated the red light.

It was at this point that Garlits began formulating and drawing up his plans for what would change drag racing forever – the successful rear engine Swamp Rat 14 – while recuperating in the Pacific Hospital in California.

Garlits sold the remains of the Swamp Rat 13 to Lemons and Swingle, who repaired it back to racing shape. Then, in June of 1970, at the AHRA Spring Nationals at the Bristol Dragway, Tennessee, Garlits, stil on crutches and wearing a cast, rejoined his posse and stepped behind the wheel of the car that nearly cost him his life once again. As it had before the crash, Swamp Rat 13 set top speed and low ET in Bristol, and Garlits continued to drive the car for the rest of the 1970 season. Behind closed doors back in Florida, however, a revolution in drag racing was being created.

With it's light weight and long wheelbase, Swampt Rat 13 won races and set records in near-ominating fashion.

During the fall of 1970, Lemons sold the car to Art Malone, which was later sold to a bracket racer. Garlits tracked the car down a number of years later, purchased it back, and set about restoring it (with Lemons help, of course) to its exact condition the day of the accident at Lions in 1970, which is what you see on display here at the PRI Show and can be seen in Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Fla. year-round.