The Jungle Jim Match-Race Hustle

The Road Paid the Bills

A match-race promoter did not need a national championship. He needed two names large enough to put on a poster and enough paying customers to make the evening worthwhile.

The racers received appearance money, usually agreed upon before anybody staged. They might run several rounds for the crowd, and everybody still wanted to win, but the financial beauty was obvious: the car could get paid simply for showing up.

For a touring Funny Car operation, that changed the arithmetic considerably. Engines cost money. Fuel cost money. Travel cost money. Broken parts remained remarkably unwilling to replace themselves.

So Liberman booked races, then booked more, until the Jungle Jim schedule looked as though somebody had planned it with a calendar, a dartboard and absolutely no interest in geography.

Friday Night Was Inventory

Jungle Pam Hardy later remembered weeks that sent the operation from Budds Creek to Maple Grove and then all the way to Wisconsin. When the trip finally ended, there was barely enough time to get home, repair the car and prepare to leave again.

This was not sightseeing. Every open night represented a racetrack that might have been paying Jungle Jim to appear, and an empty date on the calendar did not buy pistons.

The match-race business rewarded racers willing to travel constantly and keep machinery alive under a schedule that would have made a freight company ask for better routing. Liberman was willing, which is fortunate because the calendar clearly had no intention of becoming reasonable.

The cars raced several nights a week. The trucks covered enormous distances. Engines were freshened between trips, parts were repaired wherever necessary and Monday became mostly the day between Sunday night’s race and whatever somebody had booked next.

Then One Car Wasn’t Enough

By 1968, demand had become good enough to create an unusual business problem. Liberman had more places willing to pay for Jungle Jim than one Funny Car could visit.

The solution was straightforward.

Build another Jungle Jim car.

Clare Sanders became one of the first drivers trusted with the additional machinery. Now Liberman could race at one track while another identically branded Jungle Jim Funny Car earned appearance money somewhere else.

For a racing operation, that was a fairly impressive trick. The same name could now be generating revenue in two places at once. Sanders and Liberman sometimes raced on opposite sides of the country, and on one occasion both won separate Mr. Chevrolet events at different tracks on the same night.

The Jungle Jim operation was beginning to look less like one race team and more like somebody had discovered franchising before remembering to build restaurants.

Except the Customer Had Read the Advertisement

There was one flaw in this excellent piece of business expansion. The promoter who booked Jungle Jim generally expected Jungle Jim.

Over the years, second cars were driven by men including Sanders, Pete Williams, Jake Crimmins, Russell Long and Roy Harris. They could be good drivers in fast cars carrying the correct Jungle Jim paint.

That did not make them Jim Liberman.

A promoter who had advertised Jungle Jim all week was not necessarily delighted when the transporter opened and produced somebody else. The fans had read the poster too, and they were annoyingly capable of recognizing the fellow whose name was printed on it.

That is the danger in building a business around one personality. The machinery can be duplicated with enough money.

The fellow whose name is painted on it is harder to manufacture.

They Tried Adding More Jungle

By the 1970s, Jungle Pam had become such a recognizable part of the operation that the team tried using her to make the second-car arrangement more convincing.

If Jim had one booking and another Jungle Jim car had to cover a second track, Pam could travel with the other car. The promoter would receive the familiar paint, the familiar name and one of the most recognizable people in the act.

It was worth trying. It also did not fool many people.

Pam later recalled that the scheme never worked particularly well. A Jungle Jim car with Jungle Pam was certainly closer to the advertised package, but everybody still knew which part had failed to arrive.

The business had successfully duplicated almost everything except the one item the customer had actually come to see.

Too Many Bookings Was Still Better Than Too Few

None of this convinced Liberman to become more selective with the calendar. Why would it?

A good match race produced appearance money, put the Jungle Jim name in another market and gave the next promoter another reason to advertise him. The more recognizable the name became, the more valuable the next booking was.

It was a wonderfully self-feeding machine. Race often enough to become famous, use the fame to book more races, then use those races to become still more famous. Eventually one car could not keep up, so another one appeared wearing the same name.

Plenty of racers would have enjoyed discovering that their biggest business problem was too many people offering them money.

The National Event Wasn’t the Whole Business

Drag racing history tends to remember championships and national-event victories because they fit neatly into record books. Match-race money is less cooperative.

There was no championship for hauling through the night, putting three rounds in front of a local crowd and collecting an envelope before heading toward another state. Nobody handed out a season trophy for keeping the booking calendar full and the tow rig pointed toward the next payday.

But that was where a lot of professional drag racers made their living. A shiny trophy looked fine on a shelf. It was less useful when the truck needed fuel on Tuesday.

Liberman understood that a national event could make a name famous while the match-race circuit could put that famous name to work.

Jungle Jim did plenty of working.

The Name Became More Valuable Than the Machinery

A race car normally earns its reputation by what it does after the engine starts. Jungle Jim’s cars eventually had value before anybody touched the starter.

A promoter could put the name on a radio commercial or poster and begin selling tickets. That was why the second cars made financial sense and also why they never completely solved the problem.

The customer was not buying an anonymous blue Funny Car.

He was buying Jungle Jim.

Liberman could duplicate the chassis, paint another body, hire another capable driver and send Pam along to make the package even more recognizable. What he could not do was manufacture another Jim Liberman before Friday night.

That was inconvenient when two promoters wanted him at the same time.

It was also proof that the hustle had worked.

That Was the Business

Jungle Jim’s match-race operation was not built around carefully protecting a car for a handful of championship weekends. It was built around keeping the name working and the booking calendar crowded.

Book the track, haul the car, race, collect the appearance money and point the truck toward the next grandstand willing to pay for Jungle Jim. If one car could not cover the dates, build another. If that opened another date, find another driver.

Eventually the operation reached the one problem another Funny Car could not solve.

The promoter wanted Jim.

Plenty of racers spent those years chasing the next tenth of a second.

Jungle Jim spent a good part of his chasing the next paying Friday night.