Don Montgomery

Don Montgomery was one of the many young men in Southern California who jumped into hot rodding in the 1940s. He participated in street activies, not especially legal, and raced at the dry lakes time trials with the Russetta Timing Assn. Organized drag racing took off in 1950 and Don competed in it. After 6 seasons of dry lakes racing, with his class record in the last 2 seasons, Don moved on to concentrate with drag racing. He raced a fuel coupe in the 1950s and a supercharged gas coupe in the 1960s in addition to arranging drag racing programs. He has been a street rodder since then.

Hot rodding was, and is, Don's hobby. He graduated from the University Of Southern California with an engineering degree. Most of his career was spent in electonics manufacturing of frequency control devices. After selling the business he did some articles about hot rod history in an effort to "tell it like it was". This led to publishing his first book - Hot Rods In The Forties. The book relied on photos from veteran hot rodders photo albums or shoeboxes. After the first book came out more photos were found and more books were published. He has authored eight hot rod history books. The books cover the 1930s to 1950s era or the 1960s drag racing era. The purpose for writing these books is to make available an accurate look at the early days of hot rodding. The author was fortunate to have participated in a great period of hot rodding and to have known many of the pioneers of hot rodding.