"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." So says Matthew 5:5 in The Good Book. Gary Eaker may not have plans to rule the earth, but he does believe there is something to say for reining in the old ego. That's why you won't catch him bragging about his role in one of the most surprising successes since a certain Spam-sponsored car took the checkers in the Daytona 500. (That would be Derrike Cope's win in 1990, for all you younger fans.)
Eaker (pronounced Aker), you see, has built and successfully operates a wind tunnel-an arena normally reserved for conglomerates and multinationals such as Lockheed Martin and General Motors. Until Eaker came on the scene, wind tunnels simply weren't considered feasible unless you enjoyed the luxury of a national-defense contract in your hip pocket or a working budget the size of a small country's gross domestic product. But Eaker, a long-time aero engineer for both GM and Hendrick Motorsports, made a successful go at building a tunnel in the heart of stock car country by liberally substituting ingenuity in place of stacks of cash.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Eaker calls himself a car nut by the grace of geography (Flint's borders virtually butt against Detroit's) and an engineer by birth. "You don't go to college to become an engineer," he says. "In my opinion, you go to college to become a better engineer. I think you can spot a future engineer as a child because he'd rather take things apart and put them back together again than mess with crayons and glue. That's what I did."
As a university student, Eaker says he was attracted to the avenues of engineering where you could see your work. Electrical engineering, for example, didn't interest him because, as he says, you have to have faith that there is actually electricity flowing through the chips and boards you have designed. Engines became his specialty because of the visceral feedback of fuel burning and hard metal moving. When he graduated in 1976, he went to work for GM on an experimental engine project.
Unfortunately, that program came to an end shortly after Eaker signed on, and he soon found himself about to be reassigned. Management gave him a handful of projects as options where he might like to work next, and interestingly, one was at the company's wind tunnel. At the time, there were hundreds of engineers specializing in engines at GM and less than a dozen working full time in aerodynamics. It was in the emerging science of aerodynamics that Eaker felt he might have the greatest influence. "So here I go," he laughs, "into a branch of engineering that requires even more faith than electrical engineering! You can't see air, and its effect can be even more difficult to measure than electricity. At first it seemed totally opposite of what I enjoyed."
But that was only the first of several moves that would ultimately lead Eaker into his role of one of stock car racing's preeminent aero engineers. About the same time he joined the wind tunnel team in 1977, GM decided it would be best if its engineers specialized in one area of the company's product line. "Of course, all the red-blooded males got in line for the Corvette, Camaro, and Firebird lines," Eaker says. "Others went for the compacts because they were the most flexible with the designs and the most interesting aerodynamically. The most boring cars were the family cars-the Caprices and the LeSabers. I considered myself a team player, and I decided to let the other guys fight over those programs. The family cars are GM's bread and butter, and that's where I thought I could have the greatest effect, so I volunteered for it. Of course, since nobody else wanted it, that's what I got."