LEONARD ABBOTT BIO 

Leonard moved to San Diego, CA from Arkansas shortly after he graduated from high school and, where he was joined shortly by his brother Norris. Upon his arrival in San Diego, Leonard went to work in a small machine shop where he learned to master the machines that would later allow him to bring his dreams to reality. Also not long after his arrival in San Diego, he became the proud owner of his first dragster, powered by an injected Chevy engine and driven by his brother Norris. When Norris wasn’t available to drive, another San Diego local, Leroy Goldstein, would take over the driving chores. The two brothers soon built their lives around the drag racing world and Leonard began designing and building parts for racing. In 1958, Norris was killed in a racing accident at Paradise Mesa Race Track which led Leonard to turn more and more to the business side of the sport. While he spent a lot of time working on improving the performance portion of the sport, he was particularly interested in improving the safety of the sport.

In 1966 Leonard, by now working out of a rented space in the back of a small automotive engine building shop, B&L Auto Parts, founded Lenco Racing Transmissions and began designing his first product aimed strictly at the drag racing market, an overdrive transmission. Unlike some of the equipment available at that time, this was not a rebuilt factory unit but a purpose-built piece designed for dragsters, funny cars and comp. cars. In 1965 Leonard put together a Top Fuel dragster which he ran locally and which became the test car for his products. That same year Leonard built a Dodge Charger Funny car that Joe Lee drove for him. Like the dragster, the funny car was also a combination test car and a very competitive race car. By 1969 he was producing and selling his overdrive unit and before long racers such as Gene Snow and Don Prudhomme were showing the racing world what a great product this was.

While he raced mostly at the local Southern California tracks, Leonard did attempt the touring circuit for a short time with both the AA/Fuel dragster and the AA/Fuel Funny car but decided it interfered with the business end of Lenco and also his developing of new products and gave it up to concentrate on building the business.   

In 1971 with the help of Jack Jones, Leonard developed and began marketing an under-drive transmission that was well received but never became as popular as the over-drive unit. The next project Jack and Leonard developed was the "air shifter", a pneumatically operated clutch unit that soon altered how the drive train of a great many race cars was set up. Leonard went on to develop many other products including an over-drive fitted fuel pump for the fuel-burning classes that was an instant success along with several variations of his clutch systems. Leonard was the first people to introduce port nozzles on his fuel dragster but a small miss-calculation on the way he set them up pretty much destroyed his engine. Later on, Stu Hilborn asked Leonard if he was going to continue developing this system and when Leonard said no, he and Hilborn worked together to develop their use further and before long Hilborn was successfully marketing the units. In addition to the land based racing products, Leonard also developed a number of products for the marine and oval track arenas of racing.  

Leonard succumbed to cancer in 1984 at the age of 53 but left his legacy in the form of his company, Lenco Racing Transmissions that is still one of the most popular and reliable sources of products for both racing and street performance enthusiasts.