Does Keith Black Still Make Engines & Why Is His Name Synonymous With Drag Racing?

Keith Black might not be a household name, but for many fans of drag racing and high-performance engines, he's a legend. Black, or "Uncle Keith," died in 1991. So, if your question is, "Does Keith Black still make engines?" The answer is, sadly, no. However, his legacy lives on through his ground-breaking contributions to the auto industry, and his company still produces racing engines.

While Black's reputation has outlived him, the specifics of his innovations aren't as well-known. For instance, the man associated with drag racing actually got his start in racing boats. His greatest claim to fame was the specialized aluminum engine block, which eventually became the main design for nitro drag racing. Without such advancements, we probably wouldn't have had famous racers like the 1970 Black Ghost Dodge Challenger.

Keith Black was one of a kind. Most people lack the distinction of revolutionizing an industry while remaining true to their love of the pursuit, but Black wasn't most people. As shown by his life history, he was driven not by profit but by passion. His posthumous ascension to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1995 formalized the KB initials as a synonym for drag racing, and it's worth understanding a bit of his legacy.

The origins of a legend often have humble beginnings. Black was born in 1927 in Huntington Park, California, the state where he would mostly remain for the rest of his life. From a young age, he was already tinkering with engines and autos just for the fun of it. His Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee bio quotes him as saying, "When I was about 14, I talked my mother into letting me take the old family car apart. I put rings and bearings in it, and when my dad came home, he about croaked when he saw his car all apart in the driveway."

That amateur tinkering soon led to numerous apprenticeships with big names like Clay Smith. By his early 20s, Black was already a rising star. But at this time, he was focused on boat racing. When he broke a speed record on his second attempt in the Salton Sea, his engines soon became highly sought after. With this accolade under his belt, Black began receiving numerous requests for custom engine builds. It wasn't long until the Keith Black engine company began in his backyard. His biggest innovations, however, were yet to come. 

[Featured image by KBRE via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and edited | CC BY-SA 3.0]

Within a decade, Keith Black's engines had set almost 50 different records in the boat racing scene. It was only a matter of time before drag racers noticed one man in California was pushing the envelope, and in 1959, Keith Black Racing Engines was officially open for business. 

The shift from boat to automobile engines was gradual, but his collaboration with his friend Tommy Greer was a leap forward toward drag-racing fame. Their first racer, the Greer-Black-Prudhomme Top Fueler, obliterated the competition in the early 1960s, although it was up against some of the most iconic racing engines.

Nitro drag racing was revolutionized by Black's revised design of Ed Donovan's 1971 aluminum engine block. Using Chrysler engines as blueprints, the specifications were customized for clients with high-speed appetites. In a few years, Keith Black Racing Engines, with their fast-cooling qualities, were the top dog in the market. The "Big Three" automakers took notice, and Chrysler contracted Black to help with the research and development of its boat-racing exploits. Legend has it that nearly every Top Fuel competitor has used Keith Black gear at some point.

Black is credited with the end of the "rubber burn" of early drag racers, when the start of a race was shrouded in a black cloud of burning tires. Thanks to Black's pioneering work on clutches, burnt rubber is no longer needed to get a drag car going. With such contributions, it's no wonder why Keith Black is considered synonymous with drag racing.

It's been over three decades since Keith Black's death, but his company remains one of the foremost names in drag racing. The Keith Black Racing Engine company still makes engines, and Black's contributions to drag racing remain honored through each production.

In fact, the company continues to produce aluminum engines after Black's original design. These days, it mainly employs an aluminum alloy that's easy to repair and fast to cool down. The material is also especially versatile for custom engines, which is why so many professional racers still turn to KB for their specified builds. Black's original design, based off big-block engines like the Chrysler 426 Hemi, has certainly seen an evolution. Regardless, enthusiasts of fast, high-performance autos still have Keith Black to thank for his innovations, without which we'd likely be moving a lot more slowly around the race track.

[Featured image by Eddie Maloney via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and edited | CC BY-SA 2.0]