The Swede Savage story started back in the mid 50s at the Southern California Orange Show where they had quarter midget racing. Nine-year old Swede went down to the Orange Show to see all this and thought it looked like a lot of fun. He convinced his father to have a look and apparently his father thought the same, because on Christmas there was a quarter midget in the garage. "Boy was I jazzed," says Swede. He started his quarter midget career in 1955, racing two or three times a week until by the time he was 12 years old he had done over 300 races and won 142 trophies. Some people tend to play down the quarter midget experience, but Swede does not. He feels the experience he gained then is what is helping him now. He raced current National Midget Champion Jimmy Caruthers for the quarter midget championship when he was 10 and, "I smoked him" Swede recalls.

When he turned 12 he was forced to end his quarter midget career as that is the cut-off age. He then turned to go-karts. "We ran go-karts all over Southern California for about a year and a half. All I knew is that I wanted to be a racer. I wanted to win Indianapolis. I really wanted to win Indy. That's all we ever heard about on the radio, so that's what I wanted to do" He and his father were firmly commited to racing by this time, but were a bit unsure about the next step. Swede had gotten a motorcycle, so he and his father went to Perris, California to watch the motorcycle races, which turned out to be an instant success. "I said to myself, 'That looks like so much fun I can't believe it.' So I took my bike [an old Villiers/James from the 1930s] out there and took it around, but it wasn't fast enough to make any class they had. So I bought a 250 Yamaha. I worked all summer on the stupid orange trees for that and I went out and won my first race." Enter Savage the motorcycle racer.

Swede's first opportunity came in 1962 when a rider named Mel Glaze broke his legs in a crash at Ascot. This was right at the beginning of the season and it left a factory-supported Harley-Davidson without a rider. With the tenacity that would serve him well later, the 15-year-old Savage approached the tuner and asked for the ride. After submitting a resume to the factory, he was given the go-ahead to ride the bike at Ascot in the Friday night show. "That was boss, that was so boss. But I was really in a tough situation. I had just earned all the honors in football at Civic High School and I was going to be a senior next year and if I raced it would ruin my amateur standing. I didn't know what to do so I decided to, ah, race. I couldn't pass it up."

So at 15 Swede embarked on his professional racing career a bit on the surreptitious side. He would say he was going out to the movies or to see a friend and instead go to Ascot for a race. He finished last in his first race, fourth in the second and third, and then started on a winning streak. In the meantime he talked his father into letting him drop the football and go racing. His father went one night to Ascot to see his son's maiden race-actually his sixth. "I said, 'Okay Dad, now I'm going to ride this bike.' So I left him there in the grandstands and I went down. I came out for the heat race and I was on the pole, which is what they do if you're the point leader, and the announcer said, 'Here is Swede Savage, winner of the last two main events...' I was looking right at my Dad and he was shaking his fist at me. I went ahead and won the show so it turned out okay, but I thought he was really going to be mad. Not for doing the thing, but for telling him a tale. But he understood how much I wanted it so he wasn't."

The motorcycle racing continued for the next five years during which time he came in second at Daytona in his first cycle road race. His bike career had it's downs as well as ups, including losing his ride when the factory got mad at his tuner and a crash at Waukeegan, Illinois that broke some ribs and collapsed his lungs, putting him out for a year. In 1967 the opportunity came for him to get back to cars, strangely enough through Gurney. He was working at a motorcycle dealership that Dan owns and heard about a test session being held two weeks before the Motor Trend 500, so he went out to Riverside to try to meet some car people.

At the test session he met Monty Roberts of Lincoln-Mercury, who proved to have a big effect on his career. "For some reason Monty liked me. He was also intrigued with the name I had: Swede Savage. 'Damn, that's got to be a racing name,' Monty told me. And I was only 19 and I had all this racing experience. You know I just grabbed him and I was jawing like a son of a gun. When the test was over, everyone said good-bye and that was the last I heard of it. I went back on the circuit [bike racing] and when it was almost over I had to go to L.A. for the Ascot National at the end of June. When I got there, there was a message to call Dan Gurney's secretary. So I called and she said that there was a plane ticket at the airport and Monty Roberts had called and wanted me to fly to Daytona for the Firecracker 400 to watch the race and be introduced to some people. I couldn't believe it. 'Those are racing people and they want to talk to me?' So I missed the national at Ascot and I flew out there for the weekend. Apparently Monty had told all these guys that he met this kid who was only 19 years old, but he looked like a racer and talked like a racer and he might be worth meeting anyway. Besides he has this weird name. After the race John Holman asked me if I would like to go to Charlotte to see where they build the cars. Man, it was unreal."

At Holman's place Swede was offered a job and he accepted, ending up driving a fork lift truck and doing odd jobs. After he was there for a couple of weeks, John Holman approached him about starting to drive. "John Holman said, 'Well, I'm having to foot the bill for you being here; all these guys think you might be able to drive some, so I guess we better find out if you can and if you can't we we'll get you out of here.' So he sent me down to Bondy Long's place in South Carolina and we picked up one of Dick Hutcherson's two-year-old cars and put a bunch of old sheetmetal on it and made it into a late model sportsman. We took it to Hickory and that was my first race. The word gets around fast back there, everybody trying to get rides, and there is this kid in a Holman & Moody car. I felt uncomfortable. I could feel the tension. And here at this little ding-a-ling race are John Holman and Jacque Pasino, and all these guys are up in the stands watching this little episode. Anyway it turned out pretty well. I qualified okay and was running third with 20 laps to go and the thing pitched. Something broke, the rear end I recall. I thought for sure I was dead as soon as that thing went because I didn't know what cars felt like when they blew up. I said, 'Oh my God! That's it, it's all over.' But of course it wasn't."

The Hickory race apparently impressed the watchers with Swede's ability and it was decided to let him continue to drive, but for economic reasons they wanted him in a Grand National car rather than a Sportsman. Again John Holman came to him to tell him the decision. "So John says, 'Well, hell, you don't need to learn in a late model sportsman; I can't make any money. If we're going to teach you, you're good enough to at least drive a Grand National car.' So we took the sheetmetal off it [the Hickory car] and turned it into a '65 Galaxie-this is when everyone was running '67 Fairlanes. It was outdated and big, but it was something to run. We went back to Hickory for the Grand National and it was the same thing this time except that the engine let go with 20 laps left. I was in fourth, so they were really jazzed. I dont know, it didn't seem that hard really, just racing around, guys banging into you and everything. Then we went to Martinsville, where I finished 6th. I think Petty won it, then Cale and LeeRoy and all them and I was the first semi-independent. Also I won a qualifying race. It was the first time all year that Soapy Castles had been beaten in a qualifying race. I got a big trophy for that and I was all jazzed. I got an eighth at North Wilkesboro and that was it, the season was over. And then Dan called."

"That's how it all started, and it kept going. Now that I look back on it, it's amazing how things like that can happen. A lot of guys say, 'Well, you didn't have to go through all the BS of getting into racing and all-' Well, just let those guys come from the bottom up in the motorcycle racing thing, if they think that is something easy. Riding around and living in pick-up trucks, you make nothing. If you really look at what you make, you lose five grand in a year. It's really tough work and I really appreciate getting a good break." The big break was Gurney.

"Well, Dan called up one night and said that he had heard that I didn't have a "for-sure" thing with Ford next year and would I be interested in coming back to California to go to work for All American Racers and learn to be a road racer. I said yes, that is what I wanted to do. So I came back out with no hard feelings from Holman, we are still the best of friends, and I went to work. Dan gave me a Lola T70 Mk. 2, a 1966 Can-Am car [Bridgehampton winner with Gurney]. It was sitting out in the back with no body or anything. Dan said, 'Okay, now you're going to take that thing and build yourself something to drive.' Naturally I had some help and advice from the guys. But he made me do all the work. When it was finally running, we went out to Riverside and ran it around the rain course (turn 6 to 8 to 7, called the rain course because there are facilities to sprinkle it). Dan felt the car out, balanced the brakes and got it to where he felt it was a safe, goodhandling little car. Then he spent about 25 laps and came up with a lap time, a rabbit so to speak. There I was never having driven anything but stock cars and them only five or six times. So Dan said, 'Watch out it doesn't bite you,' and I started running the car. About 120 laps later I cut almost a half second off his time. Well, it was almost dark, but he went back out. He is the greatest competitor I have ever known. He went back out and smoked my time off by three-tenths of a second. And I conceeded, 'You're the fastest guy, Dan.' But to come within three-tenths of a guy like Dan, I was really tickled and so was Dan."

Swede's performance in the Mk. 2 encouraged Gurney to give him the 1967 Mk. 3 to race in the Riverside USRRC. This was his first automobile road race. He and Dan went on to run five of the six Can-Am events in 1968, Swede getting a fourth at Bridgehampton. Sponsorship fell off after this at AAR, and Swede spent much of 1969 wishing he had a ride. He did some of the USAC road races and aquitted himself well. At the end of the season he went to Sebring for the final Formula A race. He took pole spot from Mario Andretti, but dropped out with mechanical difficulties. He spent most of the year however in John Martin's engine shop back at AAR, helping build the engines Dan was using.

The success that Swede has gotten has a lot to do with his attitude towards what he is doing. He is in the sport because he likes it and is willing to work to achieve success. He admits to having gotten better offers than his slot with AAR, but feels that the Gurney orginization is the better vehicle to the top. He is looking for other things to do in addition to the AAR ride but not to supplant it. His dream is to race Formula 1, and he would like to do some endurance racing to learn the circuits. "My intentions are to try to get a Group 6 endurance ride in some of those long distance races. Doing all that oval racing I'm going to need something to keep me in road race shape. That would be just outstanding. Also I still want to go to Formula 1 one day, and if I could get to two or three of those European circuits it would be to my advantage. You know that you are just history when you go there for the first time so I want to see the circuits. Can you imagine running around Nurburgring for 12 hours? You just have to learn the track some time. Dan said he is going to try to help me get a ride."

What makes Swede Savage so good? It's not an easy question to answer, but a good part of it is his attitude, another is his experience, but perhaps it is because Swede is a sportsman and racing is a great sport. Swede himself credits all of these things and puts another- confidence- at the top of the list. "In quarter midgets I could beat anybody that I raced against, and I built up this tremendous confidence the very first three years I started racing. I've never lost this. There has never been a time when I doubted that I could smoke off anybody sometime. There was a time before I had much experience that I wasn't smart enough to realize that I was lacking in experience, and that was why I was getting beaten, but the trick is to have your self ready when you get your break so you don't blow it. And all the motorcycle stuff, the quarter midgets and go-karts and such, all that racing experience made it possible not to go and set the world on fire, but just to pass the test. The Holman & Moody thing, I got through that. That's the kind of thing where a guy who had never raced before might go out and go pretty fast, but then he might stuff it in the fence. They told me, 'If you crash, that's it. We aren't building you any more cars' This put the pressure on and the experience helped. Finally I guess it is because it is a sport. I always played all the sports I could and racing to me is just a super sport. It's the most competitive sport I've ever been in. If you combine that with all the experience I've had, I guess that's it."

Added to all this is what Swede has learned from Dan, and his explanations cast a lot of light on what Dan has been thinking all these years and not talking about. The things he learns fron Gurney are going to shape his whole career and how successful it is. When asked what was the most important thing he had learned fron Gurney, he replied, "It's more than a word, it's a whole general attitude: an ability to think for yourself. I think one of the biggest things Dan has helped me learn is to try to figure things out for yourself. Try not to rely on other people more than you have to, to know how to do things yourself. And when you work with other people, do it with people who are competent and then maybe you will get somewhere."

"Dan also emphasizes safety, the safety factor. There are two things that stick out the most: The importance of having your car working and how much safer it is when the car is working. Sure, you can carry the car a bit, but the danger factor goes up 100 per cent when you are trying to carry the car on your back, when it's not doing the work it should be. Those are the things that stick out. It doesn't sound like much, but gaining these kinds of things from a guy like Dan is pretty fabulous."