By the time everybody was asking "Who is Swede Savage?" Swede was settled in his new role as team driver for Gurney's All American Racers team. And that is where he still is as the 1970 racing season begins. An anxious-in some cases, skeptical-racing crowd waits to see how good he really is.

Never mind whether or not Swede Savage is qualified to be where he is today. If one uses the number of competition miles he has driven as the only yardstick, then he is way over his head. Yet the point is that Swede is there, the how and the why are superfluous. It is disconcerting to him ("Sometimes I can't believe it myself"), revealing ("Being a race driver is awful hard work, no matter what people think"), but he manages to maintain his self-confidence amongst the big names he is racing with ("The big guys take it out on a rookie at first. They bump him, they want to see if he can take it. I don't mind").

And the reason Swede broke into may be solely because Ford's Jacque Passino liked the lilting toughness of the name Swede Savage....

Perhaps, too, Passino liked the way Swede began his career at such a tender age; He was nine years old when he first started flinging tiny quarter-midgets around the rock-pocked bullrings of Southern California. At 13 he was driving go-karts, and was in fact, sponsored by one of the manufacturers. A factory sponsored driver at 13! Perhaps Savage's sudden arrival in big-time racing is not so startling after all.

By the time he was 19 he had aquired a wife, an infant daughter, and was a four year veteran of motorcyle racing. Today Swede will tell you there are better ways to earn one's living. Warming up his racer on the street, he clobbered a car that ran a red light, and collapsed both his lungs.

While recuperating he worked as a parts man for Kim Kimball, the distributor for the Spanish-built Montessa motorcycles in Los Angeles. Kimball's vice-president in the company happened to be Dan Gurney, motorcycle enthusiast and race driver of fair repute. Savage, when he wasn't working behind the parts counter, and loathing it, raced a Montessa. Gurney, watching him, was impressed.

One day in late 1967 Gurney was going test-driving at Riverside for Ford and brought Swede along. He introduced him to a Ford public relations man named Monty Roberts and during the afternoon Swede mentioned to Roberts that he was anxious to drive race cars some day-

Some months later, long after Swede had forgotten the entire conversation, there was a phone call. A one-way ticket to Daytona Beach was waiting for him at Los Angeles International Airport. The Ford racing brass, including Jacque Passino, wanted to meet him at the Firecracker 400 NASCAR race that weekend.

Swede was on the midnight plane. He arrived in Daytona, watched the race-his first late model race ever-then renewed aquaintances with Roberts, who had set up the whole thing. He met Passino, John Holman and others in the Ford racing hiearchy. "So you're the motorcycle racer whose name is really Swede Savage," Passino remarked in wonder.

Swede could have blown the whole thing right there. His real name is David, he is not Swedish, and he has no idea where he picked up the nick-name. Rather than explain all of this, he answered with a straight forward "Yes."

Then John Holman asked him if he still wanted to drive race cars for a living.

"You better believe it."

"Well, then come with me and I'll show you my plant where we build the stockers in Charlotte."

Following a quick tour of the North Carolina facility Holman offered him a job putting racecars together. Of course Swede accepted. In his spare time Holman helped him build a Sportsman class racer out of used discarded pieces.

Swede drove in his first Sportsman race at Hickory, N.C., his first car race of any kind, and was running third when the engine broke. Holman told him afterwards: "You're too good to be running the bush leagues. I'll get you a late model car for the next race."

There was one problem, Swede was only 20. NASCAR rules require a Grand National driver to be atleast 21. Bending the rules, Swede said he was 21. And drove. And broke a crankshaft in the race 30 laps from the end while running fourth.

A sixth place finish followed at Martinsville, an eighth place at North Wilkesboro. The rookie was learning as he went on. His inherent ability was not lost on Dan Gurneywho, though 3,000 miles away in California, was keeping tabs on his progress. In December of 1967 he invited Swede to join All American Racers as a driver.

Since then Savage has driven a Group Seven car, an Eagle Indy car, a Trans-Am Mustang. He had never driven a piece of junk in his life, probably never will.

But getting "acclimatized" to the big, fast super-speedways has not been without penalty. At the '69 Daytona 500, for example, he had to learn to drive at speeds of three-miles-a-minute in one week's time. He didn't quite make it. Late in the race he found himself wedged between A.J. Foyt and Bobby Allison and when the trio slammed into the first turn at 180-mph, wind gusts smashed his Mercury against the wall, totalling it. At Kent, Wash., in the rain, he spun out his Eagle-Ford three times while learning wet-weather driving.

Can Swede really drive, or has he just been lucky so far? At Lime Rock, Conn., he finished second in a Trans-Am Mustang, later took fifth at Brainerd, Minn. Indy car contest, beating George Follmer, Mark Donohue, and A.J. Foyt among others.

He prefers road racing to anything else, but doesn't mind oval tracks, and says he will drive anything, even a sprint car (Car Life, December), if given the chance. Obviously he lives to race.

"I always wanted to drive race cars," he says. "Motorcycles were just stepping stones along the way."

An intense, handsome, broadshouldered 6-1, 200 pounder with a beautifully expressive face, Swede Savage rushes into the 1970 season alert and ready. And that name!