 Not your average shop setting, and not your average bike shop. Carl, Diane and Doug Morrow bring a family touch to the business of Harley-Davidson performance. Carl and his son Doug have combined to put more than 160 entries into the record books.  t Bike Week 2008 Drag Specialties had a new home. The event trucks, the displays and all those FatBook bikes were at the brand-new Carl’s Speed Shop on Nova Road in Ormond Beach. It proved to be an inspired choice. Carl Morrow is a Drag Specialties dealer, he’s been in the Harley-Davidson performance business longer than some of today’s pro builders have been alive and that brand-new shop offered quite a setting. With spectacular landscaping, waterfalls and ponds outside and a full machine shop, service shop, race shop, retail store and even a Big Dog dealership inside this is hardly your ordinary bike shop. Everything’s crisp, clean, highly organized and ready for anything. Kind of like the owner of the place himself, Carl Morrow.You don’t collect more than 160 National and World racing records by being sloppy or leaving things to chance. There are plaques and trophies all over this place attesting to Carl Morrow’s attention to detail–and its result. Mixed in with those Big Dogs and the Harleys in for service there are plenty of the Carl’s Speed Shop race bikes here, too, some of those record setters hanging from the ceiling, prized mementos of “getting it right.” A family operation in every way, Carl, his wife Diane and son Doug eat, live and breathe V-twin performance. And they’re more than happy to share that obsession. “We concentrate pretty hard on making a Harley-Davidson, and the Big Dogs now, too, run faster,” Carl says, stating the obvious. “But specifically it’s those Harley-Davidsons,” he’s quick to add. “We’re still dancing with the girl we brought to this party.” That “party” started way back in 1965. Although the first Carl’s Speed Shop opened in November of 1969 (Carl sharing a Maywood, California, building with none other than Ed “Big Daddy” Roth) he started building fast Harleys four years earlier, right after he bought the ‘65 Sportster he still owns. “I raced a friend and lost,” Carl says. “I didn’t like that.” Thus began a lifelong quest to make V-twin motorcycles that didn’t lose. That Sportster eventually became an 80-incher. Always a street bike, it would dip into the 10s at the drag strips. It went to Bonneville and, on tour with the musician Wayne Cochran and The C.C. Riders (a gig set up by “Big Daddy” Roth) it might well have been the first paid street racer, Carl taking on all comers for $100 a race. Carl worked constantly on his bikes back then, “Doing all the wrong things,” he says, “but learning so I could finally get something right and go fast.” Which he did. How about a Sportster getting down to a 10.87 ET at 127.11 mph? “When you work hard to get those numbers,” he says, “you never forget them.” Wayne Cochran, an avid motorcyclist himself, did more than instigate street races for Carl Morrow; he sent him to Bonneville telling him to see if he could get a bike up to 200 mph, which would only add to the crowds on those national tours. Carl put his 80-inch Sportster engine into Leo Payne’s bike, the Turnip Eater, and went 202.379 in 1970. By now he’d quit his trucking job to concentrate full-time on performance Harleys. “Big Daddy” Roth would do his Rat Fink thing out back while Carl was up front building performance Harley-Davidsons. It didn’t take long for word to get out, either. Harley riders wanting to beat their friends beat a trail to the new Carl’s Speed Shop. About a year and a half later that speed shop moved to Whittier, another town in the sprawling L.A. megaplex. “The Harley dealer there wanted me right next-door,” Carl says. “I signed a five-year lease, but by then I had a real business going, and by that I mean I had customers willing to pay me more than a 12-pack of beer and then drink half of it as they watched me work on their bike.” Carl says he never built the biggest engines, and still doesn’t. “But I was always able to get more out of a cubic inch than pretty much anyone else around.” The next move was to Santa Fe Springs where Carl’s Speed Shop would become a California fixture for the next 20 years. The Santa Fe Springs shop was full-service, too, the specialty, of course, always performance Harley-Davidsons. There was a retail store, as well, doing a brisk business in the reworked SU carburetor conversions first perfected on that ‘65 Sportster and then with Carl’s own “Typhoon” CV-style carburetors. He had his own special-grind cams and engine kits, as well. And, of course, there was plenty of racing going on. “We never became total junkies with that racing, though,” Carl says. “We’d set a goal, an objective, then go out and accomplish it and set our record. Then we’d back off a little and take care of our customers.” Carl stopped riding the race bikes himself in ‘73, realizing he could be more effective doing the tuning and engine building. A good move, as it turned out. Over the years Carl’s Speed Shop has set records at Bonneville, the Maxton Mile and, of course, in drag racing. There was a period during the 1970s when Carl’s Speed Shop held the A/Fuel record for four-years running, beating out tough competitors like American Turbo Pack, Russ Collins and MTC. Carl’s son Doug started working in the business–and piloting those race bikes–19 years ago. Sixty of the shop’s 166 records were set with Doug in the saddle. “Even as a teenager,” Carl says, “it was obvious he had natural skills. He set his first record when he was just 16 years old, running 11.57 and 114.92 MPH. Like I said, when you work hard for a number you don’t forget it!” More than just a skilled racer, Doug Morrow has become one of the best tuners in the business, too. Riders from all over the country bring their street bikes to Carl’s Speed Shop just to have Doug re-map the EFI. By the mid-1990s Carl Morrow was ready to expand the business yet again and that meant buying a new building somewhere else. That somewhere else became Daytona Beach, Florida, and in January of ‘96 a new Carl’s Speed Shop opened up on Beach Street. It took some work to get things humming at this new location, clear on the other side of the country, but before long Beach Street became a regular Mecca during Bike Week and Biketoberfest. Carl helped it along by setting up consumer trade shows during the events, inviting in industry heavyweights like S&S, Andrews, Barnett, James Gaskets, K&N and all the others. “We had the facilities,” he says, “and we used it to turn Beach Street into something. I guess it all became kind of a ‘destination’ before there was a ‘Destination Daytona.’” Two years ago proposed redevelopment in the area propelled yet another move, this time to that Nova Road location in nearby Ormond Beach, the site Drag Specialties picked for Bike Week ‘08. “And we’re looking to really move forward with Drag Specialties, too,” Carl says. A longtime dealer, he says that in all his years in the business he’s never worked with a more professional operation. “I can see our relationship really growing,” he says. Maybe even to the point of Carl’s Speed Shop becoming a vendor, supplying some of those proven performance parts to the FatBook. “We’ll see,” Carl says. “They haven’t asked, and I haven’t offered. Not yet.” In the meantime everyone at Carl’s is busy refining that new building even further, working to making lots of Harleys lots faster, tending to what’s become a booming Big Dog dealership, taking the Carl’s Speed Shop mobile dyno service shop on the road to select events–and thinking about a little more racing. “We haven’t gone racing in a while,” Carl says, sounding almost wistful. “A little later this year we’ll have a race program put together, though. We haven’t settled on exactly what the goal is this time, but we will. And we’ll keep it quiet, too. We don’t like to let anyone know what we’re up to until we show up at the gate, prepped and ready to run. It’s fun to pull into the pits and see the faces drop. Everyone knows we mean business. We’ve done our R&D and testing and we’re there to win.” Back at the Nova Road shop everyone’s also working toward seriously expanding the parts and accessories department. In fact, the search is on right now for a top-notch parts man, maybe even someone who could cross-train into the performance shop. Interested? Give a call. Carl’s Speed Shop, and Florida, isn’t a bad place to go to work. But whoever eventually fills that new slot there’s no question where all the parts and accessories for that expanded department will come from. “We’re with Drag Specialties to stay,” Carl says. There’s another good move… 
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