One tough customer, indeed.
Yesterday, Prime Video premiered the first two episodes of their four-part series Earnhardt, which focuses on the life and legacy of the late, great Dale Earnhardt. Featuring interviews from Dale’s friends, family, and obviously his son, Dale Jr., the documentary also features never-before-seen footage of Dale during his racing career from both his personal and professional life.
Dale Earnhardt grew up in small town Kannapolis, North Carolina, and his father, Ralph, was a legend in the dirt track scene. From a young age, Dale wanted to be just like his dad, though sadly, his father passed away from a heart attack before he had ever really made any progress in his own racing career.
They had a somewhat strained relationship, and in the first episode, Dale’s sisters talk about how badly he wanted the validation from his father, but it never really happened in the way Dale wanted it. Nevertheless, his father remained a guiding force for him, and in an interview after he won one of the championships, Dale talked about how his dad had been with him all along, and credited him for their good racing that season.
Dale won his first NASCAR championship in 1980, which was his sophomore season. He became the first driver to have ever won it the year after winning Rookie of the Year, which he had done a year prior in 1979. He came into the Winston Cup Series hot, and put everyone on alert that he was not only there to race with the big boys, but beat them.
David Allen, a Wrangler executive, is also featured in the documentary, and of course, Dale was sponsored by Wrangler in those early years, from 1981 to 1988, driving the classic #3, as the number was a tribute to his father.
During that incredible second season, Dale signed an unheard of (for the time) $1 million deal with Wrangler, and quickly became the face of the North Carolina-based brand. Of course, Wrangler is primarily known as a Western workwear brand, but it actually has East Coast roots. David Allen explained that Wrangler was marketing their brand under the slogan:
“Here comes Wrangler, one tough customer.”
They had flown in some LA model to play a cowboy and wear a fake mustache for their ads, and Allen thought it was all really dumb and insincere, especially considering they had the toughest man around, an extremely authentic bad***, right in front of them:
“I had just been hired by Wrangler, and their marketing campaign was, ‘Here comes Wrangler, one tough customer.’ They had a model from LA coming out here, puts on a fake mustache and pretends he’s a cowboy.
It’s like, what are we doing? Here comes Dale like John Wayne in a race car. It doesn’t get any tougher. It was all built around Dale, he was our image, point of sales, he was our everything.”
I mean, it seems obvious looking back, but it was a brilliant move, and the vintage ’80s Wrangler ads with Dale, which they show in the doc, are still some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. They’re classic in every sense, and the visuals from that time are just next-level.
While Wrangler and Dale really were a perfect pairing in every aspect, in the seasons follow his 1980 championship, he experienced some troubles and had a hard time winning. Dale started blowing out engines, wrecking more than normal, and certainly wasn’t winning like he had in the first couple of years.
Dale was afraid he’d lose his sponsorship with Wrangler as his place in the Cup Series started slipping, and made a point to visit Allen and promise him he would turn it around. Well, around that time, his reputation for his aggressive driving style grew, and he was desperate to win and be back on top. During a famous race at Richmond Raceway on February 23, 1986, Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip wrecked on the final laps of the race, with Earnhardt making contact with Waltrip’s car. Many were upset because they felt he had purposefully wrecked him out so he couldn’t finish the race, which Waltrip was going to win, and it was a key moment in Dale developing that iconic “Intimidator” nickname.
See for yourself here:
You loved him, you hated him, or if you drove against him, you feared him, though Dale was once again worried about Wrangler’s reaction to all the negative press.
But he had nothing to worry about… when he once again met with Allen and asked what Wrangler wanted him to do about the ordeal, they told him to do it again. Yes, it’s always been true that there’s no such thing as bad press, and Allen understood that Dale Earnhardt and the brand he was creating would only help, even if it wasn’t always incredibly positive from a media standpoint.
Willie Nelson & Dale Earnhardt Join Forces For Wrangler
The relationship lasted for years, and in the 80’s, Willie Nelson and Dale joined NASCAR team owner Richard Childress (who Dale Sr. drove for) to participate in an advertising campaign promoting Wrangler jeans. Funny enough, Dale and Willie actually share a birthday (April 29th), and I’ve always thought that was no coincidence, but I digress…
They shot the ad in San Francisco, and a few years back at a Wrangler event in Greensboro, North Carolina, Richard told Fox Sports the story of how it all went down. It’s one of my favorites
And it pretty much happened exactly the way you’d imagine, and is quite possibly the best story I’ve ever heard:
“I came in from hunting in British Columbia and Dale and I ate at one of those really neat seafood restaurants there (in San Francisco). We got up early the next morning for the photo shoot.
Dale and I were sitting there waiting, I was expecting Willie to come out with a cowboy hat and everything.”
He actually showed up in a Members Only jacket, which is just hilarious (and awesome):
“He came out with a baseball hat on and wearing a black Members Only jacket. That was his disguise back in the day.
So he jumps in the limo and we shake hands. That was the first time I had met him. I’m not sure if it was for Dale.”
Though Willie didn’t show up in full-on Texas cowboy garb, he did have his signature accessory on hand:
“But he sat over there and fired up a joint, and started smoking on his joint. He leaned over (as if to offer it to his fellow passengers) and Dale said, ‘No, we’re going to drink some whiskey later.’
But that’s the story behind that photo shoot right there. That’s why he’s smiling.”
And I’m not someone who really does that either, but if Willie Nelson offered… I don’t really see how you can turn that down? Though, the visual of Willie lighting one up and Dale and Richard downing the whiskey on set with Wrangler is pretty iconic, too. I cannot think of a more on-brand scenario for all parties involved here, and I only wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall during this whole day.
Of course, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was so young at the time that he didn’t think of his dad as a celebrity, and was mainly just excited their family was collaborating with Willie Nelson for such a cool project, which also featured some more advertising to help promote Willie’s tour at the time:
“Dad had ‘One tough customer’ on the back of the car and they were cross-promoting that with Willie’s tour. So it was a pretty neat deal for me at that age.
I didn’t look at dad as famous or any sort of celebrity… We were all pretty giddy that Willie Nelson was involved in anything we were doing.”
The slogan for the whole Wrangler photo campaign was “Winners wear Wranglers,” and with that and all the iconic photos that came from it, I’d say they pretty much nailed it.
I haven’t seen a better one since…
The following video features tons of cool video from Dale’s early years with Wrangler, and it aired in 1981 as a television production that Wrangler distributed. It was a 23-minute special, slotted to run in a 30-minute time slot to the top television stations around the country free of charge.
Some of this footage is also in the Earnhardt documentary, but it’s incredibly cool and I can’t recommend highly enough watch the entire four-episode series. It’s really incredible, and the first two episodes are streaming now on Prime Video.
