Hill grew up in Texas and showed an early talent for speed, winning the Tri-State Motor Scooter Flat Track championship at age eleven in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1947. He graduated from Longview High School and earned an industrial technology degree from Texas A&M University in 1957. His first drag race came in 1955 at the Flying Fish Lodge in Karnack, Texas, where he drove a home-built hot rod with a Model T frame and Oldsmobile V8 engine to victory.
Hill quickly established himself as a technical innovator as well as a fast driver. In 1958 he became the first driver to use smaller front tires on a dragster, and in 1960 he became the first driver to heat his rear tires using a burnout — a technique now universal in the sport. That same year he set the NHRA record for the largest improvement in elapsed time, running the quarter mile in 8.84 seconds to erase the previous 9.40-second mark.
In 1961 he constructed the Double Dragon, a twin-engine dragster with each powerplant running its own ring gear, pinion, clutch, and driveshaft. The machine debuted at the 1961 NHRA Nationals at Indianapolis. In 1962 Hill posted a 202.70 mph pass, making him among the very first dragster drivers to exceed 200 mph. He built his first dedicated Top Fuel dragster in 1963 and continued racing until an engine fire at Green Valley Race City in 1966 depleted both his finances and his resolve, prompting a temporary retirement from the sport.
After stepping away from drag racing, Hill opened a motorcycle dealership in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1966 — a Honda and Kawasaki franchise that remained in operation into the 2000s as the oldest of its kind in the state. He subsequently began racing motorcycles across multiple disciplines: cross country, drag racing, hare scramble, motocross, road racing, and short track. He won more than 100 trophies during this phase of his career, including the Texas state road racing championship in 1972.
Hill attended his first drag boat event in 1974 at Austin, Texas, and within weeks had abandoned motorcycle racing entirely to pursue water drag racing — despite the fact that he could not swim. Racing on nitromethane from 1976 onward, he amassed championships across all four major drag boat sanctioning bodies: the Southern Drag Boat Association (SDBA), the National Drag Boat Association (NDBA), the American Drag Boat Association (ADBA), and the International Hot Boat Association (IHBA). He became the only racer ever to hold speed records in all four associations simultaneously, achieving that feat in 1982.
In 1982 his Top Fuel hydroplane ran 229.00 mph at Chowchilla, California, setting a world quarter-mile water drag record that was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and stood for ten years. Before retiring from boat racing he recorded a 5.16-second elapsed time in the wet quarter mile — quicker than Gary Beck's 5.39-second NHRA Top Fuel land record, the first instance in which the water elapsed time record fell below the land record.
His boat racing career ended in October 1984 after a 217 mph crash at Firebird Lake in Chandler, Arizona, where the boat became airborne on touchdown. The accident left Hill with seven broken bones, a concussion, and eye injuries, requiring five days of hospitalization and nearly a full year of recovery.
Hill returned to land drag racing in 1985, purchasing Dan Pastorini's Top Fuel car and salvaging the engine from the wrecked boat. Operating one of the sport's most underfunded teams, he struggled through the 1985 and early 1986 seasons before tuning advice from a competitor helped turn his program around. At the 1987 Chief Auto Parts Nationals he set an NHRA speed record of 285.98 mph, simultaneously holding both the land and water quarter-mile speed records — a distinction no other driver had achieved.
Hill won his first NHRA national event at the 1988 Mac Tools Gatornationals, defeating Joe Amato in the final. The two met in four finals that season, with Hill winning three. On April 9, 1988, at the IHRA Texas Nationals in Ennis, Texas, Hill recorded the first four-second elapsed time in drag racing history: a 4.990-second pass completed on only seven cylinders, with the onboard computer showing the number-seven cylinder had failed at launch. Six months later he ran 4.936 seconds at the NHRA SuperNationals in Houston to reinforce the record.
Hill won twelve national-level season point championships across his land and water careers. His 1993 NHRA Top Fuel championship — claimed at age 57 — made him the oldest champion in the category's history. In 1996 he won the NHRA Mile High Nationals at age 60, setting the record for the oldest Top Fuel event winner. He retired from professional NHRA competition in 1999 having won 13 NHRA national events and logged Top 10 finishes in Top Fuel points for all but one season between 1987 and 1995.
Among his technical contributions, Hill introduced the aerodynamic front wing to dragsters and championed the use of charcoal masks for driver safety. A rule change known informally as the "Eddie Hill Rule" followed a 1997 incident at Sonoma: when his primary car was destroyed in a post-finish-line crash while he had set the fastest qualifying time, the NHRA's existing regulations prevented him from using a backup car on race day; the rule was amended after the event to permit substitution under such circumstances.
Hill was ranked 14th on the NHRA's list of its Top 50 drivers in 2001. He was inducted into the NHRA Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1978, Don Garlits' International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2000, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2002, and the Texas Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. In 1988 he was named Person of the Year by Car Craft magazine, Hot Rod Magazine, and the International Hot Rod Association. He continued racing competitively in open-wheel cars at Hallet Motor Racing Circuit in Oklahoma as of 2022, at age 86.
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