Manufacturer, supplier, sponsor

A talented welder as a teenager, Stange started drag racing as a hobby. It wasn't long, though, before friends asked him to do rear end and suspension work on their cars. The machine shop he set up in his mom’s garage led to the founding in 1964 of Strange Engineering, so named after printers “corrected” what they assumed was a typo in his ads. Over the next half-century, Stange and his crew manufactured everything from racing axles, rear ends, spools, suspension units and struts to front and rear disc brakes and billet magnesium blower drives. Many became standards in the industry. At the 1973 Winternationals, 14 of 16 Funny Car qualifiers ran Strange parts. In 1983, Stange formed Team Strange: Chris Karamesines in Top Fuel, Austin Coil and Frank Hawley’s “Chi-Town Hustler” in Funny Car and entries in five other categories. Four of the seven won World Championships. Strange has been named Manufacturer of the Year several times and was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2010.