Suisun family well-versed in racing engines

Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, Ken Schrader, Bill Elliott, Derrick Cope.

They all have their place in stock car racing history and they all have a connection to a little garage in Suisun City.

With his head buried under the hood of a car, Tony Oddo doesn't look like a man who helped inspire a revolution in auto engineering, but, then again, where else would he be?

"Ford had me fly to Detroit and work on a new engine for their team that ended up being the engine most cars raced in 1980.

Ernie Elliott and I designed racing heads and worked on these engines together. Eventually, we got a two-year engine deal with Ford.

Oddo, working with son Tony Jr., doesn't haunt the garages in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series these days, though he has done some work for drivers on the NASCAR Grand National West Division Series this year. That includes Jason Jefferson, who finished 15th at Fontana's California Speedway with the TOE Performance logo on his car May 1.

One driver with whom he has worked is Vacaville's Jim Inglebright, who competed on the West circuit last year and scheduled to race both the Southwest Series Snap-On Tools 200 Saturday and the Nextel Cup Dodge/SaveMart 350 Sunday at Infineon Raceway.

"Tony and I had a pretty good run for a little while with the Craftsman Trucks and Southwest car," Inglebright said.

TOE Performance sponsored Inglebright for one West race this year. 

Oddo, like his son, showed a natural predilection toward mechanical engineering at an early age. "I was always interested in mechanical stuff," he recalled. "I'd take stuff apart as a kid. My mother couldn't keep clocks and things around because I'd take them apart."

Oddo's path to auto racing took a strange twist when he was called to service in U.S. ARMY, where he was a heavy weapons specialist. He was in the 101st Airborne Division.

"One day they needed a driver for our battle group commander to do some surveying. They gave me the job for one day," Oddo said. "I spent a lot of time waiting around for him while he was in meetings. I just worked on the jeep all day long, then I'd take him somewhere."

Leaving Oddo alone with a jeep is like leaving a child alone in a candy store. Still, the jeep probably ran better when he was done with it. Certainly his commanding officer was pleased. "After a while, he had me transferred to him full time."

The military gave Oddo a ticket to Southern California as he was being rotated home back to Cleveland. For a young man, not yet 21, the glitz, the glamour and the cars were too much to resist.

As soon as he could, Oddo left his Midwest home to pursue his dreams in California ... not the typical dream of movie stardom or wealth, but dreams of a racing career.

The 62-year-old Oddo began racing in 1966 in a local series at San Fernando Valley. Every weekend, he'd line up at the track with one of his own engines under the hood. Oddo had a lot of friends and contacts in the pits and word spread about his wizardry with a wrench - in fact, he might have been better skilled under the hood than behind the wheel.

Working as a machinist for North American Aviations, he refined his skills with engines. Still, the glory days of NASCAR were years away and Oddo was just a blue-collar worker. He took a job as a machinist with Anheuser-Busch in Los Angeles in 1969, then transferred to Northern California with the opening of the Fairfield brewery in 1975. In fact, he says with some pride, Oddo was the second person Busch hired at that plant. After 10 years he was a general Forman in the machine shop.

In 1979 Tony Sr. started doing engine development for Marcie Petty, Richard Petty's brother. They would fly him back to Daytona every year.

Just four years later, though, Oddo made his sideline work with engines his primary focus with the opening of his Suisun city shop.

Into that shop in 1982 stepped Lafayette driver Tom Gloy, who formed a successful partnership with Oddo.

"I wanted to get back into racing and I was approached with this offer to build an engine for Tom Gloy," Oddo recalled.

Oddo had some revolutionary ideas that forever changed the sport of auto racing.

With Oddo's engine under his hood for the Trans-Am Tour 100, Gloy raced to the winner's circle at then-Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma in 1982.

That helped launch Oddo back into the world of professional racing and he soon became a prominent figure on the NASCAR Grand National West Division Series.

Could Oddo have moved to North Carolina, closer to NASCAR's roots? Maybe, but Solano County was closer to his family's roots.

"My son started working with me when he was 14. I taught him the business," Oddo said. "Basically, the business is his. I'll retire soon and it will be all his. He's my partner. It's nice to have somebody in the family involved with it."

Racing, and engines, seem to be in the blood. Tony Jr., when not hard at work building or restoring engines, can be found racing Go-Karts at Argyll Park in Dixon.

Like father, like son.