Drag racing’s first Funny Cars weren’t called “Funny Cars.” They were factory experimental (FX) cars—stripped down two-door coupes fitted with lightweight parts and big engines. In 1964, give or take a year, these special hot rods were given to the favored race teams of a few Detroit manufacturers. Other racers cobbled together their own versions of an FX racer. There were Fords, Mercurys, Chevys, Pontiacs, Dodges, and Plymouths of the most recent vintage. The racers who campaigned them in match races hopped them up, first with fuel injection and later adding superchargers and, ultimately, nitromethane fuel. Seen as the bad-boy class of drag racing, the most heavily modified FX cars—and the supercharged S/FX cars—weren’t welcome at the events of drag racing’s sanctioning bodies. But they were embraced by track owners who just wanted to offer a show that would put butts in seats. And put butts in seats they did, with loud, rocking radio ads that promised Ford vs. Chevy, Dodge vs. Pontiac, and David vs. Goliath, at speeds Detroit’s passenger cars were never meant to achieve.

“I’m gonna put that Pontiac-driving farmer right back on his tractor,” screamed a voice on the radio that was supposedly Gary Dyer, driver of Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge S/FX car. And the fans came out in droves to see Arnie Beswick—an Illinois farmer—and his Pontiac take on Dyer and his Dodge.

“Factory experimental” was somewhat of a misnomer in that only a few of the cars on the match race circuit were genuine factory efforts. Among the factory-supported cars, however, were Mercury Comets along with Dodges and Plymouths with Chrysler’s new 426 Hemi V-8 engine. Chevy didn’t officially sponsor cars, but it has been said that trucks left the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, loaded with blocks, crankshafts, and cylinder heads for that maker’s big-block engine, before dropping off said iron at the garages of racers. So too, Pontiac, which covertly supported a few favored racers.

Chrysler Corporation invested in FX racing by producing short-wheelbase, lightweight clones of its street cars for select racers. Because the altered wheelbase made them appear odd, they were disparagingly dubbed “funny cars” by GM and Ford racers. The name eventually stuck.

And it was a battle royale, as no maker wanted to be left in the dust. Dodge took advantage of stock-body drag racing’s popularity early on with a pair of blown and injected cars running on gasoline that raced each other at various tracks in 1964. Ford got serious about FX and provided modified Mercury Comets to numerous racers, including Jack Chrisman, a former top fuel dragster racer. Chrisman was not impressed with the performance of the normally aspirated Comet, and he built a second Comet with a nitro-burning, supercharged engine. 

In 1965, Ford upped the ante and installed its newly developed single-overhead-cam (SOHC) V-8 in several Comet FX cars. The engine had originally been developed for NASCAR and was meant to run carbureted on gasoline. When NASCAR banned it, Ford turned to drag racing, giving it to select FX racers and top fuel dragster teams.

At first, the SOHC Ford-powered cars dominated, and Ford performance management responded by asking a local builder of dragsters, Logghe Stamping Company, to build tube chassis underpinnings for its best Mercury Comet race teams. Another maker produced a fiberglass replica of the Comet body, and the first “modern” Funny Car was born. The SOHC Ford engine made good power on moderate loads of nitromethane, and the “flip-top” Comets were kings of the quarter mile. But durability would eventually become a problem.

Ed Pink, who developed Ford SOHC engines for top fuel teams, struggled with the engine. In a 2015 Motor Trend article he said, “This engine was meant to handle maybe 750 horsepower, and we were getting 2500 horsepower out of it. We would be lucky to get four runs for qualifying and four for eliminations from a block. If we did, the crank would be laying in the bottom of a broken-up block.”

By mid ’65, a number of Dodge and Plymouth racers were matching the Ford upgrades piece for piece, bolting on blowers and tipping the nitromethane can. Gary Dyer, who had raced one of the factory Comets in ’64, teamed up with Norm Krause of Chicago’s Grand Spaulding Dodge to build a supercharged Dodge Funny Car on a mildly modified standard-issue two-door sedan body and chassis. At first, he ran high-9-second ETs on gasoline, but midway through the season he switched to nitromethane fuel and was soon equaling the numbers of the Mercury cars. 

Toward the end of the ’65 season, Dyer and Norm purchased a lightweight altered-wheelbase car that Chrysler had built for Dodge racer Roger Lindamood. Dyer installed his engine in the Lindamood car, which had been normally aspirated, then he bolstered the unibody chassis, pushed the nitro percentage up a bit, and was soon running eights. At the end of the season, Dyer towed the car out to California for a big Funny Car show at Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach. While most match race teams were stuck in the nines and tens, he put down an 8.653-second, 163-mph pass in the modified steel-body Coronet.

The gauntlet had been thrown down, and to be competitive in Funny Car match racing you had to make big power. Arnie Beswick and his Pontiacs were staying close to Dyer, occasionally beating him in their frequent match-race appearances. Numerous Ford and Chevy racers were running big numbers, too, and a Ford vs. Chevy match race guaranteed a big draw for the track owner and, more often than not, a lot of oil and chunks of aluminum on the dragstrip

As the 1967 season got underway, it became obvious that a modified steel-bodied production car wouldn’t cut it on the match-race circuit. Soon, fiberglass-bodied, tube-chassid Funny cars were sprouting like weeds. By late ’67, the best cars had broken the 8-second quarter-mile barrier, and competition became heated. Mopar racers in their Dodge and Plymouth cars were faring well, making plenty of power with Chrysler’s Hemi. Those with good mechanical skills could do so without a lot of carnage. For example, the “Chi-Town Hustler” team of Farkonas, Coil, and Minick ran the same engine for all of ’67 and ‘68 in their ’67 Barracuda Funny Car, recording mid-7-second ETs, setting track records, and winning consistently on the match race circuit.

“Jungle” Jim Liberman campaigned a ’67 Chevy II with a big-block engine and had to settle for 8-second ETs to avoid expensive engine failures. The Chevy engines were stout enough and were very good powerplants in normally aspirated form, but they didn’t like big loads of nitro and a supercharger. Austin Coil, who is considered one of the best supercharged nitro-fuel engine tuners of all time, explained why. 

Like most V-8 engines, he told me, the Chevys have ports that are offset from the valves and curve a bit on their way to the combustion chamber. So when fuel enters the chamber it swirls around the circumference. Fuel mixture swirl is generally an advantage in a normally aspirated engine because it enhances combustion. But in a supercharged nitro-burner, it’s a distinct minus because fuel is forced down to the ring lands as the piston comes up on compression. With lots of cylinder pressure and a high percentage and volume of nitromethane, the resulting violent explosion lifts the ring lands, effectively destroying the piston. Make another run without swapping in a new piston, and the damaged part could escape through the side of the block, igniting a fire as oil hits the exhaust pipes.

As fierce competition led to racers pushing their engines harder, the Chevys destroyed pistons regularly. The same was largely true of Pontiac engines, but they were also plagued with head gasket problems. Pontiacs had only 10 head bolts per bank, while the Mopars had 17, and the big-block Chevies had 14. All builders of supercharged nitro-fuel engines augmented the seal of the head gaskets with copper-wire O-rings in a groove around each cylinder. Because of the bore spacing on the Pontiacs, it was impossible to install separate O-rings for each cylinder. Instead, racers “siamesed” the O-ring grooves between cylinders. Installing the wire perfectly was difficult to say the least, and even when installed correctly that fix wasn’t as effective as two distinct O-rings. So head gasket failures were common on the supercharged fuel-burning Ponchos. A failure usually meant a destroyed engine block as combustion heat and pressure burned away the block deck.

Some racers were able to make Chevy fuelers work well into the 1970s by limiting fuel loads and exercising extreme caution with boost and other tuning variables. Most notable was Dick Bourgeois, who drove and tuned the Doug’s Headers car. Bourgeois was running 6.60-second ETs as late as the mid-70s. But long term, running a Chevy engine supercharged on nitromethane was a losing battle.

Although the Ford SOHC engines weren’t designed to tolerate supercharging and big loads of nitromethane, they ultimately disappeared from lack of support. Ford stopped manufacturing the engine because it couldn’t use it in NASCAR and probably deemed it too expensive to produce for passenger cars, as Chrysler had done with its 426 Hemi. But Ford had another engine waiting in the wings: the Boss 429 “Shotgun” motor.

In 1971, Mickey Thompson, with support from Ford, built a Pinto Funny Car with a titanium chassis and a Ford Boss 429 engine, supercharged and on nitromethane. After running very well at times with Dale Pulde in the driver’s seat but also encountering breakage and numerous fires, the team eventually switched to a Chrysler 426 Hemi. Asked why they gave up on the Ford 429, Pulde said, “The aluminum heads fell apart, the valvetrain was weak. The deck was short, which made for a less-than-ideal connecting rod angle. We built 1-inch spacers and sleeved the engine all the way through the spacers to enable longer connecting rods, but it was a losing battle. There was great parts availability for the Chrysler Hemi, so we eventually made the switch.”

Most other Funny Car racers who were running engines that matched the brand of their car’s GM or Ford fiberglass body eventually gave up on the maker’s powerplant as well. Arnie Beswick, for example, who had gained a large following with his Pontiac-powered GTOs, Firebirds, and Tempests, finally threw in the towel and switched to a Chrysler 426 Hemi in 1972. 

If there was competition to become the dominant engine in Funny Car racing, Chrysler won going away. But the 426 Hemi wasn’t bulletproof. When competition and the resulting horsepower race led to more fuel volume, more supercharger boost, and increased displacement, cracked main webbings became a significant problem for the cast-iron Chryslers. High-strength aluminum aftermarket blocks addressed that issue, with Ed Donovan introducing a block based on the 1958 Chrysler 392 Hemi and Keith Black producing a stout aluminum version of the ’64–’71 426 Hemi. 

The Keith Black 426 clones proved far more popular than the Donovans, likely because most racers were already running cast-iron versions of the later-model Hemi. By this time, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) had welcomed Funny Cars and the crowds they drew into the national event ranks. To standardize specifications for professional Funny Car and Top Fuel racing, NHRA developed engine specifications based on the Chrysler 426 that would dictate the design of aftermarket manufactured engines. 

Those specs still define the basic design of the 11,000-plus horsepower fuel motors that thrill fans today. Several companies make cast aluminum or aluminum billet versions of the Hemi drag racing engine, but they’re all made to the same specifications, and the aluminum two-valve cylinder heads atop them are nearly indistinguishable from those used in the late ’60s 426 Chrysler Hemis. If you walk through the pits at a national NHRA event you’ll see Hemi valve covers emblazoned with Dodge, Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota logos, to match the branding of the race car’s fiberglass body. But deep down inside, they’re all direct descendants of Chrysler’s 426. 

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If you’re a fan of high-powered street cars or Pro Mod drag racing, then you’ve probably heard of Steve Morris Engines. If not, you might be surprised at the kind of horsepower that Morris and his team can coax out of a boosted big-block Chevy while still making it reliable for thousands of miles on the road. His latest YouTube video takes a look back at some of the channel’s dyno tests, and it’s interesting to see the power levels grow from 1500-hp centrifugal-supercharged 540s to 3000-hp twin-turbo Pro Mod setups and beyond. What’s even more fascinating is seeing that kind of power level making its way to street-driven cars that compete in drag-and-drive events across the country.

One of our favorite engines is the 3000-hp SMX V-8 Morris built for Tom Bailey for Drag Week. Morris designed and machined a billet block with water jackets to provide cooling on the 1000-mile street drive portion of the five-day event. It debuted in 2016 and had teething issues, but it powered Bailey to overall wins in the event in 2018 and 2019, where Bailey was also the first driver in Drag Week history to run a 5-second elapsed time. Morris shows an early version of the engine and then revisits it to explain its three-injectors-per-cylinder fuel system.

Morris also developed the V-16 for the Devel 16 hypercar. The car project might be dead in the water, but the quad-turbo V-16, which Morris developed based on Chevy LS architecture, was the real deal. You can see it in action churning out just over 5000 hp.

Although there are lots of little bits of engine info to pull from this compilation video, it’s mostly just a showcase of brutally powerful engines doing their thing on the dyno. If you’re a fan of high-horsepower V-8s—and one very impressive Lamborghini V-10—you’re going to enjoy it. Be warned, though, you may have the urge to throw some turbos on your project car when you see the flat torque curves and ridiculous power output from these Morris engines.

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Thomas West and the crew at Renegade Racing made a valiant effort to win the Stick Shift/Banger class at LS Fest West, qualifying at the top of the field while rowing through a T-56 six-speed manual. Their racing plans were derailed, however, when a rogue rod decided it was done with racing and caused some serious carnage in their Honda S2000’s 427 LS V-8. Only slightly deterred, the team decided to press on and see if they could get the car ready for Saturday’s race.

LS engines have been swapped into an array of cars, trucks, boats, and even aircraft. They are certainly doing well carrying the mantle of the original small-block Chevy. Despite its stellar reputation for compact, lightweight performance, you still might be surprised to see an LS under the hood of an S2000, a car renowned for its spirited, high-revving four-cylinder and balanced chassis. However, if you plan to hit the dragstrip, then a twin-turbo 427-cubic-inch LS engine makes sense.

During a quarter-mile pass on Saturday, the engine’s aftermarket block cracked and the wayward #8 rod broke, battering the fabricated aluminum oil pan and sending shrapnel through the engine. It managed to take out the timing chain, allowing the remainder of the rods to send pistons into the open valves, causing further havoc. Rather than pack up for the weekend, the Renegade Racing crew pulled the shattered engine and put out an APB for a replacement bottom end. They found a 408 short block locally and spent Saturday night and into the early morning on Sunday tearing the old engine down and buttoning up the new 408 with the same twin-turbocharged induction as their shattered 427.

We got to see some of the carnage first-hand, and the team was still in good spirits as connecting rod shrapnel was cleaned up and the long wrenching session loomed. We can’t say for sure if the team’s attitude remained jovial, as we had other plans (sleep), but when we returned early on Sunday, the car was up and running with its new engine and ready to take on the competition.

Although the all-nighter got the car ready for Sunday’s Stick Shift/Banger class racing, West got a bad launch and the engine bogged down, allowing his opponent to earn the win. Speaking with West on Sunday, he was proud of his team’s accomplishment, noting that despite the massive setback they got the car to the line and lost the race “fair and square.” It sure beats giving up a forfeit.

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Holley’s LS Fest West is open to any vehicle powered by a Gen III, Gen IV, or Gen V GM small-block V-8. That covers a pretty broad array: For starters, all of the aluminum-block V-8s like the LS1, LS2, LS3, LS4, LS6, and LS7 are welcome. It also includes the iron- and aluminum-block truck engines, aftermarket engines using the same architectures, and the current, direct-injected counterparts like the LT1, LT2, and LT4. While you’d expect such an event to include Corvettes, Firebirds, GTOs, and Camaros, the popularity of the compact pushrod V-8 makes it the go-to swap for drifters and drag racers alike. We saw Volvo, BMW, Porsche, and Nissan cars with LS swaps, not to mention some seriously fast Fox-body Mustangs.

One of the most popular events at LS Fest is always the Grand Champion competition, a street car shootout that combines track driving and drag strip passes. It brought out 200 competitors to vie for the title in three classes: Truck, Vintage, and Late Model. All vehicles must use DOT-approved tires and record times on an autocross, the dragstrip, and a tight 3-S challenge course that timed cars through a horseshoe-shaped track that ended in a braking box. With two of the three events involving road handling and braking, the cars were certainly biased toward the track rather than the strip. Many of the entrants are Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational regulars, and while a couple of the entrants will be familiar to Hagerty readers, many of them were not familiar with a drag strip.

Considering these vehicles tended to be set up more for stopping and turning than outright acceleration, we didn’t expect hard launches. Still, many of these cars and trucks pack serious power and the drivers got the hang of the Christmas tree in no time. We wouldn’t be surprised if many of them are plotting new LS-powered dragstrip projects to add to their stable. Here are just some of our favorites.

Rick Lammi took the Vintage class win in his amethyst 1977 Nissan 280Z. Its LS3 is topped by an LSA supercharger that helps it put down 640hp to the wheels through a Ford 8.8-inch independent suspension.

David Carrol won the Truck classic in his 1973 K5 Blazer. The soft-top SUV was stripped down and ditched its four-wheel-drive and solid from axle in favor of No Limit Engineering front suspension. It’s powered by a twin-turbo powered by a Gen IV 5.3-liter.

After meeting him at SEMA, we featured Garrett Randall’s 1970 Corvette and got a closer look at the flared Stingray.

Cameron Bishop’s radical C10 was another Grand Champion we first spotted at SEMA. He competed here last year as well.

If you missed LS Fest West, Holley has two more this year so there’s still time to stake your claim for Grand Champion glory.

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Steve Morris knows his way around V-8 drag race engines, especially those with forced induction. He’s developed his own engine blocks and heads for the fastest drag-and-drive cars in the world. His company’s big-block-Chevy-based engines can produce more than 3,000 hp and survive events like Hot Rod Drag Week and Sick Week that involve hundreds of miles on the road and a dozen passes down the strip. It’s safe to say he’s spent lots of dyno time developing engines for his customers. In his 25-year career as an engine builder, he’s never seen a mechanical failure as bad as the one he just had. The video he posted to YouTube highlights the carnage.

Steve and his customer, former NBA first-round draft pick and FIBA gold medalist Tom Hammonds, have been working on an LS-based engine to take on the NMCA Xtreme Street class. After his NBA career, Hammonds made a name for himself as an NRHA Pro Stock driver before moving to his current car, a beautiful 1969 Camaro with a Jerry Bickel chassis powered by an 8,000-rpm, 6.0L LS V-8. His car runs more than 150 mph in the eighth mile, which requires a delicate balance due to the class’s small tires.

Morris and Hammonds were at the dyno console testing the nearly 2,000hp engine when a mechanical failure caused its centrifugal supercharger to explode and send bits of cast and billet aluminum flying through the dyno room. A chunk of the centrifugal supercharger flew almost straight forward and blew through the polycarbonate window, heading right between Morris and Hammonds, neither of whom was seriously harmed during the violent event.

We think of aluminum as a light material, but only because of its strength compared to heavier metals. In truth, it’s denser than concrete. Imagine the energy behind those sharp pieces of aluminum shrapnel, and you quickly understand why engine builders clear the room when dyno testing powerful engines to their limit.

The aluminum pierced the drywall, the engine’s fabricated aluminum intake tube, and the dyno’s oil and fuel tanks. Aside from the piece that flew between Morris and Hammonds, other chunks flew straight through the ceiling and the door to the dyno room. It wasn’t just the engine, the dyno machinery itself took a lot of damage.

Morris tried to uncover the cause of the destruction, which seems to have stemmed from the engine shearing the flywheel bolts. The engine, running at full-throttle and suddenly finding itself with no load holding it back, immediately revved to 11,800 rpm. That led to the supercharger, rated to run at a max rpm of 65,000rpm, to exceed 105,000 rpm. It’s no wonder the thing came apart.

The engine teardown showed that the valvetrain remained intact, with the rockers where they’re supposed to be. Unfortunately, there were pieces of supercharger where they definitely weren’t supposed to be, including inside the intake ports and the cylinders. It appears that the block and heads will survive to race another day, but plenty of parts will need to be replaced just to be safe.

We’re sure Morris and his team will have his dyno up and running again shortly, and Hammonds will soon be back with an angry LS V-8 that churns out nearly 2,000 hp. This video reminds us that it’s not easy to run on the bleeding edge of performance and that horsepower can turn ugly when it escapes in sudden and violent ways. Stay safe out there.

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Last summer, Mr. Beamer emailed me the following tale. By the second line, I was hooked by his direct but plain language that so eloquently communicated not just the who, what, and where but also the emotions behind the facts—rare, even among professional writers. We endeavor to present Member Stories as they were sent to us, editing only for clarity, length, and style, but we loved Beamer’s original prose so much that we’re presenting it in its entirety. Let me know what you think. — Larry

My father bought this ’38 Chevy when I was one year old. I would call it mine but in my mind it will always be his.

He left the Virginia farm at 17, in 1956, for the Army. When he was discharged in 1959, he had saved enough money to marry my Momma and buy a new Impala. 348 with three deuces, three-speed, and Posi-Traction.

He told me he knew so little about cars, the first time he tried to change the oil, he screwed out the drain plug in the transmission. Pisser. Over the next few years, he sure educated himself. Soon the Impala had a 409 with two fours, a four-speed, and 4.56 gears. Drag racing was his thing. He had a ’59 El Camino he used to tow Impala to the track. Transmission came out of the El Camino one night coming up Fancy Gap Mountain, so he fired the Impala up and with the help of Roby Felts steering pushed it home.

He used to ride around on weekends looking for parts he could use or make a dollar on. Junkyards and garages. One weekend, he saw this ’38 Chevy sitting at Lucky Carson’s garage with no motor. He knew the car from drag strips, probably Farmington or East Bend. Lucky priced it to Daddy for $225. Sounds cheap today, but the man only made a dollar an hour at a local knitting plant that closed about 40 years ago. The car still had its original paint.

He and Momma went back the next week with his money, and some he had borrowed from friends. Lucky said he’d changed his mind and wasn’t interested in selling the car. Daddy said he was there for the car and Lucky was a man of his word so he started writing a receipt. Daddy said he had $200 in what we used to call a trucker’s wallet, which was attached to him with a chain, and the other $25 in a money clip. He gave Lucky the $200 and was reaching for the $25 when he saw Lucky write the price of $200 on the ticket, so he kept the other $25 in his pocket. Money has always been hard to come by. My dad was an honest man, but that’s how he bought the car. He and Lucky were friends and I know had a few laughs about it later.

They towed the coupe home and soon it was hitting the tracks with a 409 and two fours. It evolved to have a 375-hp 396. I was riding shotgun on a warm-up pass when the big block dropped a valve.

That ended its racing career. Daddy had plans and bought a mid-’60s Vette to build a better dragster. The coupe was not ignored. He thought it too nice of a car to ruin on a drag strip, so he went to work making it what I guess we now call a street rod. New 370-hp 350 LT-1 with angle-plug heads, Crane roller valvetrain, and tunnel ram. Interior benefited from the remains of a ’67 SS Chevelle. In its day, for our part of the world, it was showworthy. Then it mostly sat.

I always claimed it as my car. During and after high school, I had some pretty good hot rods, but in the mid-’80s I was lured away by the speed of motorcycles and stayed there for about 20 years. Fast forward and commitments keep me from killing myself having fun, and Daddy thinks what I really have always thought about as my car needs to move. I told him knowing what it might be worth I couldn’t afford to buy it.

One day in the mid-2000s, I was working on the farm and I saw his rollback coming down the road with the coupe riding along. It needed some work and it took a while, but I got it up to spec. He was proud of it. When I had it about right, a few years ago, we went riding around on Father’s Day.

I don’t have my father anymore but I sure understand how he felt as a younger man, and his need for speed.

I need to wipe away a few tears now. I’d been thinking about sending you this but didn’t know how to send you the pictures I wanted you to have. I had an accident and have been broke down for a couple of months.

I’m rolling the dice and hitting send before I sober up.

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Most forms of auto racing have seen only limited participation from Black Americans. Drag racing in my hometown of Chicago, on the other hand, is a whole different story. The toddlin’ town has bred many Black racers who competed on both strip and street. Black History Month is a good time to share fascinating chapters of this history, especially those that people still living today can recall.

Raylo Riley, a successful Black drag racer and the unofficial historian of the Chicago scene, speaks with reverence about the early days. “Frank King was among the first black drag racers that I know of,” Riley told Hagerty. “In 1962, King’s Chevy-powered Henry J was the car to beat at street races late at night. So when a race promotor named Bill Schade organized an indoor drag race at Chicago’s International Amphitheater, Frank was there. Clyde Hopper was there too. He was a Black drag racer who ran some badass Mopars on the street and at the track. I’m not sure if there were other Black racers at the Amphitheater drags,” Riley continued, “but Messino might know.”

Dick Messino is an octogenarian Chicago drag racer who was featured on the Hagerty site last year. He’s a white guy who did business with Black drag racers for many years and has a near-photographic memory. He told me that Hopper and King weren’t the only Black racers at that first indoor drag event. “There were at least half a dozen Black guys,” Messino said, “and most of them were fast and making big-dollar side bets.” According to Messino, Hopper died in a long-ago street race on South Chicago Avenue—a lightly traveled artery that was the scene of many races back in the day.

Messino recalls another successful Black racer known to him simply as “John Junior.” In the late ’60s, Junior put together a ’67 Camaro race car with an engine from Simonsen’s Auto Parts, a speed shop on the South Side that built motors for pro drag racers. The Camaro sported a 427 Chevy with high-compression pistons, a racing camshaft, and other goodies, all backed by a Clutchflite transmission—a then-popular mating of a Chrysler TorqueFlite and manual clutch.

“Junior raced a moonlighting pro drag racer on Interstate 57 for $1000,” Messino recalled. “The highway had been completed but wasn’t open to traffic. Hundreds of people lined the sides of 57 to watch the race, which Junior and his Camaro won going away.”

Another early hotspot of street racing where Black racers were the majority was a McDonald’s restaurant on the South Side’s 71st Street. Messino recalls that dozens of Black racers would gather there every weekend night. “White or Black, you could count on getting a race there,” Messino said. “There were very few posers.”

Not far from there, on 69th and State Street, was Sammy Scott’s New Tuff Rabbit Lounge. Scott was partners with a drag racer of renown named Ed Burrell. They campaigned a series of potent cars that wore the Tuff Rabbit name and were the pride of the community, dominating their class at local tracks. Scott’s bar was a busy watering hole where many drivers hung out, but it’s best remembered as the focal point of some of the most outrageous and dangerous racing ever to take place on Chicago streets: the flying mile.

I heard about the flying mile from pro drag racer Austin Coil and his pal, Merle Mangels, in the mid ’70s. They built motors for some of the Black racers who pursued this extreme, illegal sport. When I asked how I could learn more and maybe photograph the races, they sent me to the Tuff Rabbit and told me to ask for the Rabbit. That would be Bobby “Rabbit” Parker. Coil and Mangels had built a 500-horsepower small-block for Parker’s Corvette. They were among only a few people other than the racers who knew that, late at night, when there was virtually no traffic on the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge, very hot street machines would race for a full mile from a rolling start.

I made my way to the Tuff Rabbit one summer night, armed with a camera and hoping to get a story about the mile-long drags for High Performance CARS, the only magazine of the day that was either foolish enough or courageous enough to cover street racing. When I walked through the bar’s front door, many eyes found me and conversations turned muted.

That initial quiet quickly broke: “It’s that magazine guy,” said a friendly voice from the back of the bar, which I would later learn belonged to Harry “Dawg” Cannon, buddy to Parker who was seated at a table wearing a Blue Max hat and a diamond-studded rabbit pendant. Cannon wore an Orange County International Raceway jacket with a Black American Racers Association patch. Next to him was a huge man named Big Fred, invoking images of Bad Leroy Brown. Years later, I learned that Dawg, Rabbit, and Fred were highly successful drag racers at local tracks but were best known for their street racing exploits.

“We’re gonna show you how mile racing goes down,” said Big Fred. “Frog here will drive you up to the starting line.”

Ronald “Frog” Williams and I followed Parker, Cannon, and Fred onto the seven-mile-long Chicago Skyway. There, high above the city streets, two Corvettes with loud, loping exhaust and fat tires left the starting line just north of the 87th Street toll booth, racing pedal to the metal for a full mile, braking only at a finish line about half a mile before the State Street exit, which was just a few blocks south of the Tuff Rabbit Lounge. The Skyway wasn’t smooth, and at high speed the cars bounced violently—a frightening scenario I witnessed while clinging perilously to the side of the bridge.

Such craziness is part of the city’s past, although I hear it still happens occasionally despite the danger and illegality. I do not endorse such activity, though the guys who raised hell 50 years ago helped build a movement that ultimately inspired many Black Chicagoans to formally compete at nearby dragstrips. First, it was at US 30 in Gary, Indiana, which closed in the ’80s, and today at multiple tracks in the Midwest, including US 41 Motorplex in Morocco, Indiana; US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan; Byron Dragway in Byron, Illinois; Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin; and Cordova Dragway in Cordova, Illinois.

Raylo Riley, who told me about some of the first Black drag racers in Chicago, has raced at every one of those tracks. He is, however, best known as the online historian and #1 fan of Gary’s US 30 drag strip. “I try to keep the memory of US 30 alive,“ said Riley. “I organize reunions, post about the old track regularly, and sell US 30 T-shirts that feature some of the stars of that great old track.”

Riley is also a successful bracket racer. He tours nationally with his ’95 Camaro. It’s a full-tilt race car with a 421-cubic-inch small-block Chevy under the hood, a roll cage, and a complement of top-shelf racing components. He runs only bracket races with big-dollar payouts and has won $10,000 twice at national bracket-racing events. In the quarter-mile he runs 10.20 at more than 125 mph; in the 1/8th mile, the track length at which almost all bracket racing is contested, his car covers the distance in 6.40 seconds. Consistency, a product of both car preparation and driver skill, is key to success at bracket racing, where each racer dials in their projected elapsed time and the start is staggered to reflect those numbers. Get to the other end too soon or too late, and you lose.

Drag racing is a family thing for the Rileys. “My father, Edward Riley, started racing at U.S. 30 more than 50 years ago,” said Riley. “I remember he bought a new ’70 Camaro and was taking it to the track before the little rubber dingles had worn off the tires. He was very successful running ET 5 at U.S. 30, a class for cars running in the 11s, much faster than the muscle cars of the day.”

Raylo’s brother Kyle was successful in racing, both in the highly competitive NHRA Stock Eliminator class and as a bracket racer. Today, his SFG Promotions is prominent in the sport. SFG paid a record $1.1 million to the winner of a July 2023 bracket race at US 131 Motorsports Park. That’s far more than Top Fuel and Funny Car winners were awarded at the recent PRO race in Bradenton, Florida, billed as the richest race in drag racing history. I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but Kyle Riley’s achievements with SFG Promotions are beyond impressive.

Raylo Riley introduced me to Richard Davis, known to his compatriots as “Big Drag.” Davis has been drag racing since 1976. Among his stable of nice machines are a Jerry Bickel Camaro that he runs in Pro Mod, a ’63 Split-Window Corvette that is primarily a street-race machine, a ’57 Chevy wagon that can easily lift the front wheels at launch, and several others. He got the drag racing bug from his dad, a Mopar guy who hung around Grand Spaulding Dodge back in the Gary Dyer/Mr. Norm days. He grew up loving Mopars but switched to Chevys for the availability and ready access to tuning information.

In the 1970s, Davis was one of Chicago’s most successful street racers. Parker, aka Rabbit, put him in his first car and taught him to shift a four-speed. “Rabbit had a brother that we called CW—his real name was Charlie Wilson,” said Davis. “He had a black Chevelle called ‘Bullet’ that won a lot of races, a Pontiac called ‘The Judge’, and a ’66 Chevelle called ‘Do It Any Way You Want’.” He got in trouble and died young. Rabbit died young, too.”

Both Davis and Riley remember a guy I knew well: Freddy Kemp, a Black drag racer who was paralyzed from the waist down. He got around on crutches and was razor-sharp, kind, and gentle. He owned a potent Dodge called “Breaking Point.” He had outfitted it with home-built hand controls for braking and throttle and competed successfully at local dragstrips.

In the late ’70s, I was teaching high school English and sponsored an auto shop club on the side. The students and I were building a dragster that we planned to race locally. Kemp would come by from time to time to lend a hand. I left for a New York journalism job in March 1980 and lost track of Kemp. Davis told me Freddy was allegedly killed by police in some kind of altercation long ago. I have no way of verifying that, but I’m dumbstruck.

Today, Davis, who is now 61, organizes races, including events that are known as gambler races: Entrants buy their way in and the lion’s share of the pot goes to the winner. Davis says he takes nothing but just wants the guys to have a good time and make some money. He also sponsors grudge races, which are essentially street races at the track. In those, competitors arrange private bets (my car vs. yours) frequently for big money. The “Christmas tree,” or electronic starting system, makes everything fair and square. With an electronic start, a car can be given a handicap by staging the slower car on the rear tire rather than the front. Thus it begins the race almost a full car length in front of its competition. It’s much more accurate than trying to stage such a competition on the street.

“Who are the best of Chicago’s Black racers today?” I asked Davis.

“That depends if you’re talking South Side or West Side,” he said. “On the South Side, you got Forgiato Zae. He does all the wrench work on his car and builds his own engines. His uncle was a street racing legend known as Starchild Mike. Another guy called Von is darn good. On the West Side, you got a young guy named Petey, and a racer they call Peanut is up and coming.

In all, there are hundreds of fast racers in the parts of town where most of the people who look like me live. It’s a good time to be a Black drag racer in Chicago.”

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Nowhere were the good times of the Fabulous Fifties more evident than in Detroit, the town that ate, drank, and slept cars. If you drove northeast on Gratiot Avenue from the heart of Detroit, you would pass the under-construction interstate highway that Eisenhower had ordered and the numerous new car dealerships that dotted the avenue before coming upon Gratiot Auto Supply. The big parts store and speed shop had opened just a few years previous and was growing exponentially as it tried to supply the burgeoning ranks of hot rodders who were hungry for more of everything that made cars go fast.

You would pass shops where young men were building race cars and storefronts where ordinary folk were creating businesses that would help supply parts and equipment for the rapidly growing auto industry. If conditions were right, you might hear the roar of racecars doing battle at Motor City Speedway. For a car guy in the ’50s, there was no better place to be than here, in the capital of the automotive universe—and Al Bergler was a car guy.

At a used car lot on Gratiot, in 1952, the 16-year-old Detroit native was cleaning and polishing automobiles for 50 cents an hour. It was his second job; his first was selling peanuts and popcorn at the speedway. At the lot, Bergler was close to the action and loving it. Occasionally, he’d get behind the wheel, too: To stock the lot, the owner bought trade-ins from new car dealers all over the city, and Al was part of the crew that would herd the new rolling stock to the lot. “I always looked for the coolest car,” he said, “and then I would drive that one back to the lot.

If one of the new acquisitions showed signs of having been driven by a teen, like fender skirts, a spinner knob, or mud flaps, Al would remove the offending parts and add them to his personal hoard of car goodies. When a ’41 Ford convertible rolled into the lot, Al took a shine to it. After borrowing $75 from his grandparents, he bought the car. Thus began a personal love affair with automobiles that still keeps him busy today at a spry and very lucid 87.

When he wasn’t at the used car dealership or cruising with friends, the young Bergler was a student at Pershing High School. However, while the teacher was explaining subordinate clauses, Al was thinking about cars he would build. With his parents’ blessing, he left Pershing and enrolled at Washington Trade School in Detroit, where he studied academic subjects in the mornings and learned to weld and straighten damaged sheetmetal in the afternoons. During his last semester, he chopped the top of a ’36 Ford for a teacher. The result was far better than one would expect of student work in a shop class.

It soon became obvious that shaping metal was Al’s art and calling. After graduating from the trade school, he went to work in a body shop. In between making damaged customer cars new again, he set about building a car for himself. The first one he built was a ’34 Ford Coupe. Hankering for a street-rod roadster, Al cut the top off the Ford, prettied it up, and planted a stock Chrysler Hemi under the hood. Not yet fully aware of the physics of internal combustion engines, he mounted six Stromberg deuces atop the bone-stock engine. It took that gasping Chrysler a while to catch its breath under full acceleration, but the build was a start.

Bergler’s next build was a rear-engine Crosley drag car, powered by that same stock Hemi. Al ran it for a short time, including an appearance at the ’59 US Nationals in Detroit. However, “I didn’t have the money it would have taken to make that car right,” he said.

Without a major investment, the Crosley would never be competitive, so Al set about building his first competition coupe, using a long-extinct design that was never common but always exciting: essentially dragster frame rails with a body at the rear and the driver draped over the rear axle.

Of course, no passenger car body was ever meant to be mounted on a narrow dragster chassis with the driver moved far to the rear, but some small European cars could be modified to serve that purpose. The Austin Bantam was among the more popular choices. Of minimal weight and modest proportions, the Bantam was a nice fit for a dragster chassis.

Unfortunately for Al, whose sole source of income was his body shop job, a finished dragster chassis would have been a stretch. Instead, he ordered a Chassis Research kit, essentially a box of cut and bent tubing from which an aspiring racer might build a copy of the dragster chassis that was selling robustly on the West Coast. Al built his car using gas torches and an arc welder.

Around about this time, Al met Ron and Gene Logghe at a Michigan Hot Rod Club event. The Logghes were just getting their feet wet in the race-car-building world, turning out accessory parts like front axles. Al mounted one of their axles on his Chassis Research frame. His venerable Chrysler engine was now sporting a supercharger, and the blower moved the little coupe with some urgency, although with the engine’s near-stock internal parts, the car was still not capable of beating the top dogs on a national level. Always game, Al and his coupe—which he had named Aggravation—gave it a try, competing at NHRA’s 1960 U.S. Nationals, which were once again held in Detroit.

Active duty with the National Guard gave Al some time to think about what was next. Once free of that obligation, he got together with the Logghe brothers to build a first-class competition coupe on a brand-new chassis. For power, he purchased a long-stroke, highly modified blown Chrysler engine from Connie Kalitta, another Logghe customer. Again, Bergler chose a Bantam body. Like every car Bergler has built, this one was beautifully finished, with the Bantam body seamlessly joined to the dragster, lots of chrome, flawless paint, and every part finely detailed. He named it Aggravation II. 

Back then, many racers would premier their new drag cars at Detroit’s Autorama rod and custom show. Even though it competed against many purpose-built show cars, Bergler’s pretty coupe won the first Ridler Award in 1964, the nation’s most prestigious award for custom cars.

With its stout Logghe chassis and potent stroker Hemi, Aggravation II was a winner on the drag strip as well as on the show floor, and Al demonstrated that by winning Super Eliminator and the Best Appearing Car award at the 1966 NHRA SpringNationals. The car set AA/C records numerous times and recorded a best of 8.10 seconds at 184 mph on gasoline. Aggravation II appeared at Metro Detroit’s Woodward Dream Cruise a few years ago and is now in a museum.

At some point in the mid-’60s, Al decided Aggravation II needed a nose piece that would cover the front of the chassis, a look that was becoming common on the most attractive Top Fuel dragsters. He asked a guy who had done aluminum work for Logghe how much it would cost. $300 was the answer. At the body shop where Al spent his days, that was three weeks’ pay, so he decided to do the work himself, bending the aluminum over a four-inch pipe. Soon he was doing almost all the aluminum work for Logghe-built dragsters and funny cars. Hundreds of aluminum race-car bodies and interiors later, he’s still using the 4-inch pipe to bend metal.

“I made a bench on which I could clamp the pipe down. Still have it. Still using it.”

Al built one more competition coupe, a ’23 Model T roadster on another Logghe chassis, powered of course by his big-inch blown Chrysler motor. Ahead of its time, this “coupe” sported a canopy much like those used on today’s Top Fuel cars. At the ’67 Winternationals in Pomona, California, he won the competition coupe class and another Best Appearing Car award. The ’23-based coupe would later win Super Eliminator at the .67 SpringNationals in Bristol, Tennessee.

Bergler didn’t always work at the same body shop; for a brief period, he ran his own outfit. “During the late ’60s, I had a shop on Gratiot,” said Al. “One day, ‘Diamond’ Jim Cavallaro of Diamond Racing Engines called and said that Tom Ivo was in town and needed a place to work on his car. I told Jim he would be welcome at my shop. Ivo is a great guy but he likes to sleep days and work nights. While working at night, he played loud music. Neighbors complained, and I lost that shop.

“But that started a thing where guys on tour with their race cars would stop by for some aluminum work or just to service their car and hang out. I learned a lot from other racers, and I think they benefited as well.”

For 1970—now working from a shop on Groesbeck just around the corner from Logghe—Al remade the AA/Comp car as an AA Gas Dragster (AA/GD) with a digger-style body on the same underpinnings and raced to the runner-up spot at the 1970 NHRA Summernationals.

But the writing was on the wall. You couldn’t make much money with a gas dragster, and the fuel dragster boys with their faster, nitro-methane-burning cars weren’t doing much better. Funny Cars, on the other hand, were getting substantial appearance money from track operators all over the country, so Al teamed up with Tom Prock and built a Vega flopper on a Logghe chassis. Prock took the driver’s seat and Bergler handled the wrenches and build. A generation-two 426 Chrysler Hemi replaced the venerable gen-one Chrysler motor.

At first, Bergler and Prock drew blanks when trying to come up with a name for the car. Having previously rented out a corner of the shop to Pete Seaton and his funny car, named Seaton’s Shaker, they drew inspiration from that team. Thus was born the Motown Shaker, a funny car that would serve Bergler well for years to come. Prock, however, got an offer he couldn’t refuse—a chance to drive the Castronovo family’s Custom Body funny car—and left for the East Coast. Butch Maas then took the driver’s seat of the Motown Shaker, with Al filling in from time to time.

Most of the team’s appearances were match races, because that’s where the dollars were in the early ’70s, with the occasional national event rounding out the schedule. The Motown Shaker was a regular at the storied eight-car flopper shows held Wednesday nights at the U.S. 30 drag strip in Gary, Indiana. At one of those events, the blower exploded at half track, breaking the roof supports and leaving Al blinded. He recalls trying to spin the car out. Instead, it made a hard right turn and headed off between the light poles and out into a field. It continued across the field, which tore up the car a bit before it rolled to a stop. The track safety people couldn’t find Al and the car. He recalls standing up next to the broken car, shouting and waving his arms until he got their attention.

At some point during those profitable days of funny car racing, Al’s son Ron Bergler came on board as a wrench and crewman. In ’73, Al took over the driver’s seat full time and a Mustang body replaced the Vega’s. In ’77, the Mustang gave way to a Corvette, and in ’80 a Firebird became the last Motown Shaker.

“The match race money was drying up,” Al said, “and it was time to focus on my business.” Al brought the curtain down on his career as a pro racer, but his contributions haven’t gone unnoticed. He’s a member of both the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame and the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. NHRA has also recognized his work, honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Racing a funny car full-time in the ’70s meant you would spend far more days on the road than at home, leaving little time for anything else. So with those days behind him, Al decided that in addition to focusing more on his race car fabricating business, he would devote more time to his personal life, and he soon married his high school sweetheart, Nancy, who has now been Mrs. Bergler for some 40 years.

Al and Nancy bought a beautiful home in a forested neighborhood in Shelby Township, Michigan. A large pole barn behind the house serves as Al’s shop. Touring racers still stop by. Bob Pacitto, who worked for Logghe and has driven top drag cars including some for Connie Kalitta, stops by every day to hang, do some bench racing, and lend a hand on a job when needed. Although Al, at 87, is taking on less work, he’s still building race car bodies. When this reporter stopped by to see Al just after Christmas, Al was building a nosepiece for a customer’s dragster.

Although he hasn’t raced in over 40 years, All has done a lot of cackle tests, events where nitro-burning supercharged cars are started so the fans can hear the wonderful sound of the monster motors. At many events, dragsters and competition coupes are push-started, just as they were 60 years ago, adding an extra bit of old-time flavor. Al has cackled the Ridler-winning Aggravation II, along with various dragsters.

Al credits Ed Golden, a former Ford designer, with getting him involved. Golden had purchased the Probe AA/FD and took it to Al’s shop for restoration. When NHRA staged a cacklefest at the 2003 Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Golden asked Al to sit in the car and start it as it was pushed down the track. Al managed to wiggle into the seat of that old fueler and took the wheel. At the right moment, he clicked on the magneto switch and the fuel-burning supercharged Chrysler engine roared to life.

“It was an emotional experience,” said Al. “It’s like I was young and taking on the best at 200 mph with the sound of the exhaust pounding in my eardrums and flames shooting skyward to either side of me. I was overcome by memories of great times.”

“I was awe-struck; it was like I had been reborn,” he says. “When it was over, I was crying. I tried to call Nancy to tell her about it, but could barely speak.”

“’Call me back when you get yourself together,’ she said.”

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The PRO Superstar Shootout, held last Saturday at Bradenton Motorsports Park south of Tampa, Florida, was the richest drag race in history, with $250,000 payouts to the Top Fuel and Funny Car winners and $125,000 to the Pro Stock winner.

A beyond-capacity crowd, drawn by big names and perfect weather, saw current NHRA Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta take down Clay Millican in the final with a healthy 3.70-second pass at 325.14 mph. Millican had problems and slowed to 4.22 seconds at 196.39 mph.

“We’ve never really seen this kind of money, and the whole deal was it was pretty cool,” Kalitta said. “I know a lot of people worked real hard to make this happen.”

The biggest surprise was the Funny Car victory by Austin Prock, driving the John Force–owned car usually piloted by Robert Hight. Hight is having health problems and stepped away from driving for the 2024 season, leaving Prock, who has been racing Top Fuel, to take over Hight’s ride. This was his first race in a Funny Car, and he not only won the $250,000, but he qualified first. In the final round, Prock made a pass of 3.845 seconds at 332.42 mph to defeat defending NHRA world champion Matt Hagan, who ran a 3.872 at 329.75.

“I don’t even know what to say, I’m stunned. We just won the biggest payout in drag racing history,” Prock said.

In Pro Stock, the $125,000 check went to six-time NHRA season champion Erica Enders, who beat Dave Connolly in the final round with her run of 6.531 seconds at 210.05 mph to Connolly’s pass of 6.577 seconds at 208.81 mph.

“Dave Connolly and I have a lot of history and in that final round, I’d be lying if I told you my heart rate wasn’t a little bit higher than normal,” said Enders.

Still another surprise was Funny Car driver Bob Tasca III, who in Friday qualifying made a pass of 341.68 mph. It was the first time in history that a wheel-driven dragster (as opposed to a jet car) has ever topped 340 mph. That also makes the little Bradenton track, which has never hosted an event of this size before, the fastest drag strip in the county.

The PRO Superstar Shootout, organized jointly by PRO, which is the Professional Racers Organization, and the staff of Drag Illustrated magazine, was by almost any measure a success. It is the first genuinely major drag racing event in decades that wasn’t sanctioned by the NHRA.

The NHRA gets its season going at the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida. It’s set for March 7–10.

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Tony Stewart is a three-time NASCAR Cup champion, an IndyCar champion, an IROC champion, and a USAC Silver Crown sprint car and midget champion.

At 52, he’d like to add one more: The National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel championship.

Beginning with the NHRA season opener, the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway on March 7–10, Stewart will take over the driving duties for his wife, Leah Pruett, in the Tony Stewart Racing 11,000-horsepower, 330-mph Top Fuel car. In 2023, Stewart made his drag racing season debut in a Top Alcohol Dragster, finishing the year second in the standings. But while a Top Alcohol car is fast, a Top Fuel dragster is fast.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous about it,” Stewart told Hagerty Media. “But I was a little bit nervous when I went to Daytona for my first Daytona 500, I was nervous before my first Indianapolis 500, I was nervous the first time I got in a full-sized sprint car. I would say it’d be more disturbing if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous.”

This weekend, Stewart is at the big-money SCAG Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park, just south of Tampa. It’s the first major drag race in decades that isn’t sanctioned by the NHRA—it’s sanctioned by PRO, the Professional Racers Organization, whose members are a who’s who in drag racing. Last year, Stewart was elected to the board.

But Stewart won’t be driving this weekend—it’ll be Pruett’s last race before she steps aside, as she and Stewart are trying to start a family (nothing yet to report on that front, he said). The total purse for the PRO Shootout, the richest drag race in history, is $1.3 million, with $250,000 going to the winner of Top Fuel and Funny Car, and $125,000 to the winner of the Pro Stock class. Pruett, 35, has nine NHRA wins and finished a close third in the 2023 championship.

Stewart and Pruett met at an outing hosted in Utah by the late Ken Block in 2020, and were married a year later. Stewart started a drag racing team with a Top Fuel car driven by Pruett, and a Funny Car driven by Matt Hagan, the current NHRA champion. Stewart still plays a large role in NASCAR, as he and partner Gene Haas own Stewart-Haas Racing, a four-car NASCAR Cup team with drivers Josh Berry, Ryan Preece, Noah Gragson, and Chase Briscoe. Stewart also owns the dirt sprint car driven by Donnie Schatz, a 10-time World of Outlaws champion.

But it’s at drag races where you can usually find Stewart on weekends. “I enjoy it. I enjoy the people, I enjoy the atmosphere, the camaraderie—nothing against the other series, but it has an old-school feel that I haven’t seen in a long time. When I say that I don’t mean that it’s primitive at all, but the amount of fun that I’ve had there, even before I started driving, is considerable. On Friday and Saturday evenings, when the fans have all gone home and the crews are finishing up on their cars, we’re visiting with other teams and socializing and doing things we used to do way back in the day.

“That’s almost non-existent in motorsports. Some of the short-track guys will still hang out with each other when they’re traveling down the road in between races, but aside from that, you really don’t see it anymore.”

Some fans have speculated that the PRO race may be causing some friction with the NHRA, but Stewart disagrees. “There was a lot of animosity at the beginning from the NHRA, but we’re trying some different things that, if they work, maybe the NHRA can adapt down the road and keep growing the sport. This is not the proverbial pissing contest. Teams go south and do pre-season testing, and this event includes two-and-a-half days of testing that teams want to do anyway, with two-and-a-half days of an event attached to it. So to be able to race for the money offered up, and to have a unique format—I mean, I’ve never seen a Top Fuel dragster race a Funny Car. To be able to see that with the cars that don’t make the field—that’s going to be unique. I know it’s been done before, but I’ve never seen it.”

Bradenton Motorsports Park has been open since 1974, but has never hosted an event this size. “The group at Bradenton has done an amazing job to accommodate what needed to happen to make this event possible,” Stewart said. “I don’t think there would have been too many venues outside Bradenton that would have had the balls to make changes that we needed for this event—they haven’t blinked, they haven’t flinched, and that’s one of the reasons why we think this event will be a success.”

Stewart also addressed the challenges that face Stewart-Haas Racing, the NASCAR team. The past two seasons have been “miserable,” Stewart said, and its two most experienced drivers, Kevin Harvick and Aric Almirola, left at the end of 2023. Stewart has taken a lot of criticism, especially on social media, about the lack of competitiveness of Stewart-Haas, with many of the comments centered around the fact that Stewart is spending more time at NHRA races than NASCAR races, and he isn’t happy about it.

During the off-season, “I’ve spent more time in the NASCAR shop than I ever have, in all honesty. I can’t tell you what the results are going to be, but I can tell you that whatever they are, it’s not going to be for lack of effort on anybody’s part.

“I’m tired of hearing race fans complain that I’m not at the racetrack enough—somebody has to have the common sense to remind these fans that I’m not the crew chief, I’m not the engineer, I don’t make the pit strategy calls, I’m not the spotter—my job is to put the people in place to do those jobs. Whatever it is we’re missing is not because we don’t have good people.

“It’s frustrating on my side. It shows me how uneducated some of these fans are, and how they start talking before they think about what they’re saying. You can’t be in every place every time, and I’m not going to go to every NASCAR race. Even if I wasn’t racing in the NHRA, I wouldn’t go to every NASCAR event. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about our race teams, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about our drivers, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care about the results.

“For 20-plus years, NASCAR dominated my life. Now, I’m going to get some of my life back, and do some of the things I want to do, but it doesn’t mean that if we don’t have the results, I’m not putting effort into it. I don’t understand why people would say, after two seasons that went rough, that it’s because I’m not there. I’m confused and baffled by some of the stuff that you read, and the stuff you hear. Just baffled.”

Stewart admitted that he spent more time reading social media comments than he should have. “I had shoulder surgery the day before Thanksgiving, and I literally couldn’t do anything the first two weeks. So I went on the computer, and there was so much on social media—these people have no clue as to what’s going on. They just turn the TV on every Sunday and think they know everything. And they don’t know anything. It’s amusing to read some of it.

“It was a good reminder to just go do your thing. We don’t do all this for them, we do it for ourselves.”

For information about the PRO Shootout, which starts today and runs through Saturday, go to SuperstarShootout.com. For information about the NHRA Gatornationals, log onto NHRA.com.

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The 2023 National Hot Rod Association season was a good one for Pro Stock racer Matt Hartford—he won three events, including the prestigious U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis—and he’s looking forward to the 2024 NHRA season, which starts March 7-10 with the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida.

But first, there’s money to be won.

Hartford is one of dozens of drag racers who will be competing at the first-ever Skag Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park, south of Tampa. It’s a big-money invitational sanctioned not by the NHRA, but by PRO, the Professional Racers Organization, which represents most of the professional racers and teams in big-league drag racing.

The PRO Shootout will be the richest event in drag racing history, one reason it’s attracting racers like Hartford. “Obviously, we are looking forward to a race where the payout is almost as much as winning an NHRA season championship,” he said. The Pro Stock winner will pocket $125,000, and the winners of the Top Fuel and Funny Car competition will get $250,000 each. Total payout is a sobering $1.3 million.

Money aside, “Everybody wants to win the first one no matter what the series is, but it would be something you look back on in 20 years and say, ‘That was pretty cool,’” said Hartford.

The event will begin with one qualifying session on Thursday night, February 8, followed by three sessions on Friday. Then, the eight qualified drivers in Top Fuel and Funny Car and the 16 qualified drivers in Pro Stock will draw chips to set the pairings for Saturday eliminations.

With Super Bowl LVIII airing on Sunday, February 11, race organizers Wes Buck, founder and editorial director of Drag Illustrated, and Alan Johnson, president of PRO and crew chief for Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta, wanted to make sure the PRO Shootout didn’t go up against the biggest sporting event in America.

When Buck and Johnson announced the PRO Shootout six months ago, they said the purse would be $1.3 million, but no major sponsors had been signed. Fortunately for them, that’s changed, but you have to give them credit for guts.

“This is an inaugural event so there are bound to be some hiccups, but we felt we had to lead with conviction and put our money where our mouth is,” Buck said. “We knew we had to call our shot on day one, and here we are, $1.3 million later.”

Compared to some other pro motorsports, prize money in drag racing often hasn’t kept pace, Buck said. “We’re talking about changing the economy in drag racing. Our sport has the expense associated with running these cars, specifically Top Fuel and Funny Car, and the math has never made sense, but it’s trending in the wrong direction.

“A lot of these racers don’t expect their race operations to make tons of money, but it needs to be self-sustaining. And in the environment that exists currently, there really isn’t a pathway for drag racers to win enough money and even break even. So it causes a lot of these race teams to be 100 percent beholden to sponsors, with no security—it’s a tough environment to operate in.”

If this sounds as though Buck is criticizing the NHRA, he really isn’t. In fact, he says he’s done all he can not to represent the PRO Shootout as a shot across the bow of the NHRA. “There’s a lot of us versus them, NHRA versus PRO, and that’s never been our agenda. We certainly understand that people are competitive, and it’s easy to get your feathers ruffled, but we really feel that this is complementary to a great time in the sport of drag racing, and I think it’s going to send everybody off into the season with excitement and momentum and enthusiasm for our sport and what we do.

“We’re running well in advance of the NHRA season opener because we didn’t want any decisions to have to be made by fans or vendors—I think we’ve done as good of a job as we can to work with the NHRA and have this event be something inclusive.”

Besides Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock, the PRO Shootout will also run three Sportsman classes—Stock Eliminator, Super Stock Eliminator and Top Sportsman Eliminator. Pay-per-view streaming will be provided by FloRacing.com.

“We’re about to have ourselves a hell of a drag race,” Buck said.

For more information, log onto Superstarshootout.com.

***

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Sick Week 2024 kicks off on January 28 at Orlando Speed World. This year, instead of ushering in the new year with Florida sun and burnt rubber, I’m holed up in my Michigan home surrounded by snow. Rather than shed a tear (it would likely freeze), let’s go back to 2023 and relive the event through my camera. If you’re anywhere near this year’s southern soiree, I suggest you go. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to search last-minute flights to Orlando. —CN

Throw the Baja 1000 and the NHRA season in a blender, and you get Sick Week. During a five-day rally, drag racers in everything from decommissioned Crown Vics to hot-rod Firebirds cover over 1000 miles of public roads, visiting four different drag strips and making multiple runs to net the quickest time. The top cars here lay down quarter-miles in the realm of an NHRA Pro Stocker—under 7 seconds, at speeds exceeding 200 mph. Yet the real goal for the hundreds who compete is simply to finish.

“It’s super grueling,” says Hagerty contributor Tony Angelo, who participated in the 2023 event in a 10-second Firebird. “There’s limited sleep, and tons of parts break. But when you finish, it’s the greatest feeling of accomplishment ever.”

I caught the Sick Week bug last winter during its stop in Bradenton, Florida.

How Sick Week Works: Road to Strip to Road

Aside from burnouts, the most common sight during Sick Week is pant legs wriggling under cars, usually accompanied by shouted profanities. Roadside repairs are the rule, not the exception.

Teams are capped at two people, and the use of a support vehicle is strictly prohibited. Some racers tow spare parts, drag slicks, and other road-trip necessities in a single-axle trailer behind their ride. No trailer queens here.

Each morning, the group departs from a hotel for a nearby strip. At the racetrack, racers might swap tires, tune carburetors, or even change supercharger blower pulleys to prep their street-legal cars for the drag strip. Once each driver makes a pass (or multiple passes if they want to improve on their time), they pack up, convert the car back to street mode, and point their hood scoops toward the next town.

What You’ll See at Sick Week: Beasts of All Kinds

A common complaint about drag racing (and just about every professional racing series nowadays) is that the cars are too much alike. That’s not a problem at Sick Week, where you can see everything from a Volvo wagon to late-model trucks alongside the standard muscle car fare. They compete in more than a dozen classes. Many of the vehicles are seriously quick—a stock Porsche 911 Turbo S would run mid-pack—but all are welcome. A 1997 Jeep Wrangler competing in the stick-shift class ran a 19-second time.

How Sick Week Started … and How It’s Going

Sick Week is in only its third year, but the 350 entry spots sold out in all of two minutes. Sick Week’s founder, Tom Bailey—a celebrity in the drag-and-drive niche—is a four-time champion of Hot Rod’s Drag Week. His street-legal 4000-hp 1969 Camaro, capable of 5-second passes, unofficially holds the title as “the fastest street car in America.”

It was at Drag Week in 2021 that Bailey and a group of friends began discussing what they would do differently if they had their own event.

“At the top of our hit list was good track prep,” says Bailey. “Put us on great tracks where people can run their best times.” Bailey, a Michigan native, had spent his summers testing in Florida and discovered several quality strips within a day’s drive of one another. “I thought: ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this?’”

Bailey and his posse rushed to assemble the first Sick Week in 2022. It was an instant hit. “I remember arriving late to a track one day and seeing the cars lined up for miles,” says Bailey. “It was packed on a Thursday morning in February.”

What’s Sick Week Like? Hurry up and wait

“It’s hard to go fast. It’s even harder to make every stop,” says Angelo, the Firebird driver. This is a sentiment shared by all, as getting the drag car to the track is half the battle—Florida traffic is enough to force the coolant out of any radiator. You can only relax once you’re in the staging lanes. While they wait for their pass, some weary competitors sleep in the seat, on the ground, or on a hood.

You Don’t Have to Race: Join the Sick Ward

Of course, the real draw, at the end of the day, is the raw power of drag racing. Sick Week brings in so many spectators that Bailey created the “Sick Ward” for people who just wanted to cruise with the group and enjoy the camaraderie rather than race. Members of the Ward, as well as local drag nuts, pack the stands at every Florida and Georgia stop—pretty amazing for a weekday event.

***

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Roland “The Hawaiian” Leong was born on Oahu in 1945 and began drag racing in his teens. Moving to California in the ‘60s, he campaigned a long line of dragster and funny cars emblazoned with Hawaiian livery. Leong made drag racing his career and was a feared competitor and beloved friend. He passed away on December 29 at the age of 79.

A long list of wins and historic firsts can be attributed to Leong, who battled and won against some of the most storied names in drag racing. Leong put Danny Ongais behind the wheel of his Chevy-small-block-powered Top Gas dragster as they earned a class win over Mickey Thompson’s hemi-headed Ford at the 1964 Winternationals. After his first Top Fuel dragster pass at Lions Drag Strip ended in a crash, Leong leaned into his strength as an engine tuner and passed the driving duties onto a who’s who of drag racing hot shoes. Jumping full-bore into Top Fuel dragsters, Leong teamed with Don Prudhomme, who won his first Top Fuel Eliminator event driving the front-engine Hawaiian dragster at the 1965 Winternationals. They won again at the U.S. Nationals later that year before Prudhomme and Leong temporarily parted ways and Mike Snively drove the Hawaiian dragster to wins at the 1966 Winternationals and U.S. Nationals.

Moving to Funny Cars to take advantage of the opportunity to match race at venues across the country, Leong built a narrow and sleek Dodge Charger that wore one of the most beautiful Hawaiian liveries yet and took the country by storm. His drag racing instincts and mechanical know-how enabled Leong to compete in funny cars for decades, perhaps most famously with the Hawaiian Punch Dodge funny cars in the ‘80s. Even after retiring from car ownership after sponsor money dried up in the early ’90s, his expertise made him a natural choice for owner Prudhomme to bring on as Crew Chief where he helped Ron Capps secure his first event win. The team’s strong 1998 seasons saw them finish in second place behind perennial champ John Force.

Leong never seemed to fully leave drag racing, lending his expertise to the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series at which vintage-looking funny cars and dragsters compete. You could often find him at a race, hanging out with life-long friend Don Prudhomme; the two kept close even though they’d each hired and fired the other.

Despite his impressive achievements and staggering wealth of knowledge, Leong was always humble and always had time to speak to fans at events—me included. His humor, his wisdom, and his friendship will be sorely missed by his family and friends, as well as fans of the sport he was so instrumental in shaping.

***

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Drag racing legend Don Schumacher died last week after a battle with lung cancer.

Schumacher wore plenty of hats during his drag racing career, which began with his match races in Funny Cars in the 1960s, most notably driving his Stardust Dodge Funny Car, which became so popular he had more than one Stardust car traveling the drag racing circuits with hired drivers.

In 1974, Schumacher walked away from drag racing to devote time to the family business, Schumacher Electric, founded in 1947 and known primarily for its line of battery chargers. Schumacher grew the company considerably, adding plants in China, Mexico, and Belgium.

Schumacher returned to drag racing in 1998 to build a team for his son Tony. Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) made its competition debut at the 1998 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, “and by the time the 1999 season had wrapped, DSR had clinched its first of many championship titles. Soon after, the single-car team exploded into a multicar powerhouse,” according to the NHRA’s National Dragster. At one time, DSR fielded seven cars in a single season. He is the only owner to have victories in all four NHRA pro drag racing classes, with championships in three of them.

DSR has won 19 NHRA world championship titles and a record 367 Wallys—that’s the trophy for a race event win, named for NHRA founder Wally Parks—including the five Don won while behind the wheel of his Funny Car.

Schumacher contributed safety innovations to drag racing, including the Top Fuel dragster canopy, the roof-mounted escape hatch that allowed Funny Car drivers to quickly exit the car in the event of a fire, and he was the first to mount the lever that activated a fire suppression system on his Funny Car’s brake handle, so the driver could apply both while keeping one hand on the steering wheel.

Schumacher earned many accolades; in 2022, he was honored at the NHRA Awards Ceremony, where he was presented with the NHRA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Daytona Beach, Florida, and in May 2013, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Alabama. He also joined the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2007.

Schumacher used his team’s fleet of race cars to raise money and awareness for various charities. Each year ahead of the U.S. Nationals, DSR hosts a pre-race event at its Brownsburg, Indiana, headquarters to benefit Riley Hospital for Children, and for seven seasons, Schumacher, along with Terry and Doug Chandler, campaigned cars that enabled nonprofits, such as the Infinite Hero Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, to be recognized through a dedicated tribute livery at no cost to the organization.

In addition to Schumacher Electric, he owned DSR Performance, which sells many products for motorsports ranging from hats and tee shirts to a 1300-horsepower, supercharged 426 cubic-inch crate engine.

When not at a race track or leading his teams of employees, Schumacher enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren, fishing, and golfing.

Don Schumacher was 79.

***

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A machine that looks like the offspring of a Batmobile and an exotic sports car rolls toward the starting line. It’s known as a funny car, a beast that competes in drag racing’s top class for full-bodied cars (as opposed to exposed-wheel dragsters), and it’s going to perform at a level that automotive engineers once considered impossible.

Crew members wipe the tires as the driver focuses on the task at hand. Staging lights illuminate: the race official pushes a button, three yellow bulbs flash, and the throttle opens. All hell breaks loose as arc-welder-level spark from 16 plugs ignites gallons of nitromethane fuel pouring into eight cylinders of the 500-cubic-inch engine. The clutch gradually applies, according to a predetermined script. The supercharger packs in massive quantities of air, and more horsepower than any conventional dyno can measure hammers the huge tires. Sonic waves cause the air to vibrate, and those standing near the starting line feel the earth move under their feet.

The huge tires distort, squat, and grow as the car rockets down the strip. Battling forces up to 5 g, the driver struggles to keep the car in the lane. Should the tires spin, the driver will pedal the throttle, but if engine speed increases more than a bit, too much fuel will put out the fire in one or more cylinders. If the thrust generated by the rear-facing exhaust becomes off-balance, the car will veer. If the engine suffers a lean backfire, or a dropped valve, the car will explode in a ball of flame.

Should all go according to plan, a thousand feet downtrack and less than 4 seconds later, the 2600-pound machine will reach a speed of approximately 330 mph and trip the finish-line lights. The chutes will come out, and the driver will breathe for the first time in about five seconds.

Internet sources have it that the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport‘s 16-cylinder 8-liter quad-turbocharged beast of an engine is the world’s most powerful automobile powerplant, generating a whopping 1600 horsepower. That may make the Bugatti’s W-16 top-dog among production engines, but in the wide world of all things automotive, it’s a docile puppy.

The engines that power Top Fuel dragsters and funny cars generate more than 10,000 horsepower from an eight-cylinder engine displacing slightly more than 8 liters. That’s amazing, but so too is the fact that these earth-rattling powerplants are based on an engine design developed by Chrysler engineers more than 70 years ago. The granddaddy of internal-combustion drag-racing engines is the Gen I Hemi of ’51–58, followed by the larger-displacement and better-breathing Gen II of ’64–71.

While nitro-burning supercharged drag racing engines set benchmarks for performance, they fail in a test of reliability and efficiency. Today’s fueler engines must be completely rebuilt or replaced after about four seconds of open-throttle use, and the 14 gallons of nitromethane they’ll burn while completing each sub 4-second 1000-foot pass sells for $45 a gallon.

Although Chrysler pioneered the configuration of the drag racing engine, its amazing power is largely a product of backyard engineering. Developed through more than half a century of experimentation and tinkering, the engine is the product of great minds, self-taught engineers, and obscenely violent explosions.

The first step on the path that led to today’s engine was recognizing the potential of nitromethane as a fuel. That was an unlikely leap, because the explosive liquid was originally developed as a solvent used to clean printing presses. If you drop a match in a puddle of nitromethane, it will likely go out. It doesn’t generate as much energy as gasoline, but it contains oxygen, so it can burn with less atmospheric oxygen than gasoline. An engine can burn approximately 8 times more nitromethane than gasoline on each power stroke. When all the numbers are sorted out, nitro produces more than twice the power of gasoline when combined with the same amount of oxygen.

The racing history of nitro is a bit fuzzy, but 1930s German grand prix racers were probably the first to burn it in an automobile engine. Tether car racers picked up on it soon thereafter, and drag racers experimented with it in the early ’50s. Running a large percentage of nitromethane was not an option early on, as it was unpredictable, but early racers discovered that 10–20 percent nitro mixed with methanol produced a powerful, manageable fuel.

Step two was the Roots supercharger. Early drag racers cribbed superchargers from GMC diesel engines. Rumor has it that some aspiring racers would sneak into the Chicago Transit Authority’s maintenance yard at night and liberate superchargers from city buses. No one will verify that story, but those early huffers had to come from somewhere, and the racers weren’t buying them new from GM.

Today’s superchargers are manufactured of exotic materials to exacting specs and can push far more air into an engine than the bus blowers of yesteryear. The most successful drag racing teams have supercharger dynos that test the output of each unit before it goes on an engine, and the blowers are subsequently examined and recalibrated regularly—if they survive.

Back in the early ’60s, racers found they could produce 1000 horsepower from a supercharged Chrysler Hemi without resorting to high percentages of nitromethane and an abundance of blower boost. But as the sport evolved, competition became fierce. By the mid-’70s, the best funny cars were clocking 220 mph in a little more than 6 seconds, and appearance money became more substantial. More displacement resulted in lower elapsed times as did high-volume superchargers and fuel pumps. In the final analysis, if you can fill a big cylinder with a huge amount of nitromethane and air, compress it, and ignite it, a massive explosion will push the piston down with ungodly force.

Soon, racers were cracking the main webbings of factory Hemi blocks after just a few runs, and it became apparent that the cast-iron blocks couldn’t manage that much power. (Many collectors of Mopar muscle cars still cringe when they think of the thousands of Hemi engines that were yanked from cars and destroyed by racers in the early ’70s.) So, aftermarket suppliers, beginning with Keith Black, a California race engine builder, began producing strong yet light aluminum blocks and hemispherical cylinder heads.

Rebuilding the engine at least once every few runs became standard. The racers pushed harder. Nitro percentages were increased to nearly 100 percent, larger blowers spun faster, fuel pumps pushed higher volume.

Soon, runs of near 300 mph were causing engine damage regularly. Major teams bolstered pit crews and began repairing engine damage after every run. The best teams learned the only way to be sure that the engine would be in ideal condition for the next run was to rebuild it completely or replace it after every run. Pit crews became teams as well-coordinated as those that play professional sports. Each member was assigned a job to ensure that the engine could be completely rebuilt in the 90 minutes or less that separated each round.

Today’s fuel engines are equipped with fuel pumps that can deliver a fuel mix of 90 percent nitromethane and 10 percent methanol at a rate of up to 115 gallons per minute. At high rpm, the engine will burn more than a gallon of fuel per second. That fuel is delivered to the combustion chambers through 42 injector nozzles. The most common layout includes 10 nozzles in the throttle body or “bug catcher” that sits atop the supercharger and 32 in the intake manifold and cylinder head ports. The modern Roots-type supercharger develops about 60 psi of intake manifold pressure at the finish line. A massive amount of air combined with a huge amount of fuel equates to extremely high cylinder pressure and violent combustion.

But it’s not haphazard combustion. According to Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly, who together tuned John Force‘s funny cars to a record ten consecutive NHRA funny car championships, a vast array of hydraulic and mechanical devices control engine parameters during every 4-second run according to a predetermined scheme. The parameters are set for each run based on data gathered during the previous run, prevailing weather conditions, and what is observed on the track. NHRA doesn’t allow computers to control the engine in a feedback loop like those ECUs that regulate street-driven automobiles, but onboard computers can gather data. The typical device monitors up to 32 channels, recording temperature across multiple areas, ignition timing, engine rpm, driveshaft rpm, fuel flow, fuel pressure, clutch actuation pressure, the position of the clutch throw-out bearing, and more.

The engine’s 10,000 horsepower must be delivered incrementally or the car will go up in smoke, so a multi-disc clutch is programmed to engage gradually, with hydraulic actuators and variable centrifugal weights controlling application.

Between rounds, the crew chief analyzes data gathered during the previous run while the crew disassembles the engine. All pistons, rods, rings, and bearings are replaced. The assemblies that are removed will be examined and will go back in the mix if they’re not damaged and have not exceeded their life-cycle limits.

Track temperature and weather conditions are monitored. The brain trust can choose to increase or reduce compression by means of gasket thickness or piston selection. Depending on data indicating how each cylinder was running during the previous pass, the compression ratio of one or more cylinders may be adjusted to a value slightly different than that of the others. The supercharger speed can be increased or decreased. The fuel percentage, fuel delivery curve, and ignition timing curve can be altered. Ignition timing is a key tuning tool, because changing it requires only the insertion of a new chip in the ignition control module.

When the car is reassembled and ready for the next run, it is warmed in the pits to a temperature that will allow it to reach optimum level on the starting line.

On the way to the starting line, monitoring of weather and track temperature continues. Ignition timing chips and components that alter the blower drive ratio are on hand, ready for installation at a moment’s notice. Based on data and whether other cars are having trouble getting traction, the blower speed and clutch timing parameters can be adjusted while waiting in line, the fuel mix can be altered slightly by adding a small amount of methanol or nitromethane to the tank, and the ignition timing chip can be changed at the last possible moment.

At the starting line, a crew member hangs a starter motor on a bracket at the front of the engine. Another tech opens the throttle plates and squirts gasoline into the supercharger. A race official gives the go-ahead, and the starter motor spins the engine, which roars to life. As nitromethane flows into the cylinders the idle becomes crushingly loud.

The starter engine is removed, the body of the dragster is lowered onto the chassis, and the car creeps forward into a puddle of water. The driver, wearing fire-resistant gear and a helmet, is restrained by a seat belt system and a HANS device that limits head movement. The throttle, restricted by a stop, is squeezed, and it opens slightly. The machine’s 17.5-inch-wide rear tires smoke aggressively for a couple of seconds, propelling the machine across the starting line. Well-practiced in backing up while looking forward, the driver reverses to the starting line while a member of the crew directs them so the machine’s tires align with the sticky rubber tracks. Behind the starting line, the dragster’s body is raised, the throttle stop removed, and the idle speed and mixture adjusted one last time. Again, the body is lowered.

The car is staged, the tree goes green, and 10,000 ponies go to work. Even a slight malfunction can cause a devastating explosion, so crew members who didn’t go to the starting line stand ready with new engines, engine parts, a clutch, and even a replacement body.

But if all goes well, the driver will enjoy another bone-crushing sprint to 330 mph. If the win light comes on, the crew will celebrate for a few seconds, sprint back to their pit, and get ready to do it again. They have 90 minutes.

***

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In this Ultimate Drag Race, Hagerty video host Jason Cammisa decided to pit the legendary Porsche-built Mercedes-Benz 500E against the fastest wagons in the world: the E34 BMW M5 Touring and the Audi RS2 Avant, which was also built by Porsche!

He’s joined by Sports Car Club of America hall-of-fame racer Randy Pobst, and the results are surprising. Will the Mercedes’ four-speed automatic kill its chances against the two other manuals—a five-speed in the M5 and a six-speed in the Audi? And what’s with the six-cylinder E320 dogleg manual wagon and its DOHC 24V 3.2-liter straight-six?

The 3.8-liter S38 is the biggest straight-six BMW has ever made, and it produced 335 hp at an insane, independent-throttle-body-screaming 6900 rpm. The Audi’s much-smaller 2.2-liter, 20-valve turbo five-cylinder made 311 hp, and the 5.0-liter quad-cam, DOHC 32-valve Mercedes V-8 made 322 hp. But! It had variable valve timing so it hammered the others on torque.

The next question is: Can any of these 1990s legends keep up with today’s slowest sports car, the Mazda MX-5? You’ll be surprised by the outcome.

***

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62-year-old Mike Salinas is an independent drag racer, running in Top Fuel, the fastest class in the National Hot Rod Association competition.

Salinas and his rail dragster have a few sponsors, but he funds his racing mostly from his own pocket. He’s the owner of Valley Services, a waste facility in San Jose, California. His team is called Scrappers Racing, because his successful scrap business is what got him to the drag strip in the first place.

Last Saturday, Salinas pulled to the starting line at zMax Raceway outside Charlotte, North Carolina, knowing that he had the bullets in his 11,000-horsepower gun to make history. Rob Flynn, his crew chief, had been trying some new ways to get the V-8 engine’s power to the ground. Salinas looked at the temperature, dew point, barometer, track surface, and other conditions. “I figured we had a 45-minute window to make something happen,” Salinas told Hagerty.

All season, the car had been a challenge. “Last year, our car was a consistent, steady car, but it wasn’t fast.” During the off-season, he told his crew chiefs: “‘Go find me the horsepower, and the speed, and the elapsed time.’ Our car wouldn’t go over 334 mph. No matter what we did to it, it wouldn’t go over 334.”

That’s fast, but not fast enough to consistently win races.

The first test run of the season, Salinas went 299.06 mph, lifting off the throttle at just past the 600-foot mark—Top Fuelers run 1000 feet, and 600 feet is just short of an eighth of a mile. The Scrappers team had found something during the off-season, alright. Since then, Salinas says, “We’ve had to learn how to harness that new power. The car will tell you what it wants, and you just have to listen. And we’ve been listening. We’ve taken the basics and turned them on their heads.

“Every time we try to slow it down so it doesn’t spin the tires, it wants to go faster. It’s like an unruly little toddler! How do you get it to do what you want it to? That’s the challenge.

“I literally talk to the car sometimes. For this run [on September 23, 2023], on the way to the driver’s seat, I patted the injectors and said, ‘It’s time.’”

Right away, there was a problem. The face shield on his helmet was fogging up, and Salinas could barely see. The team paused long enough to wipe away the fog, and Salinas tried to hold his breath to keep the shield clear.

Then the face shield and the windshield started to fog. Again, his crew paused to clean them. It didn’t work. They fogged again.

The engine in a Top Fuel dragster is in the rear. Salinas had experience driving front-engine dragsters, with engines and superchargers so huge that he really didn’t have any forward visibility—he had to look out the side of his visor and judge the run based on how close he was to the wall. But the front-engine cars are slower than rail dragsters. Much slower.

Around the edges of the fogged face shield and windshield, “I could see the wall on one side, and the center line on the other. ‘Maybe this will work,’ I thought.” He could not, however, see the finish line. “I figured, ‘This is how we got here, this is what the pioneers did. Go for it!

“I took off and went down the track. I counted to four, because I couldn’t see straight ahead, and I lifted and put the parachutes out. I knew we had a great run. I’d managed to keep it straight.”

But it turned out he was, according to his crew chief’s analysis, 100 to 120 feet short of the finish line when he took his foot off the throttle. Calculations show he could have run 339 to 340.5 mph, which not only would have been the fastest speed of his career, it would have been the fastest speed ever—the record, set in 2022 by Brittany Force, is 338.94 mph.

Still, Salinas set the record for the first dragster ever to 300 mph in an eighth of a mile, earning him a $30,000 prize and some unexpected notoriety. While in Charlotte, he visited the nearby Hendrick Motorsports shop, “because I’m thinking of building a new shop and I wanted to get some ideas.” While he was there, four-time NASCAR champ and current Hendrick vice-chairman Jeff Gordon “walked up and asked to shake my hand. I’ve been a fan of his for years. I couldn’t believe it.”

Salinas comes from a drag-racing family—his father raced dragsters at tracks in the San Francisco Bay area. Salinas started out in slower classes and in 2009, he received his Top Fuel license at the Texas Motorplex. He made his professional debut in NHRA Top Fuel in 2011. It has taken this long to build a team and hone his skills to become a threat week in and out—he has won eight events in his career and is currently seventh in the Top Fuel standings.

Drag racing is a family affair—daughter Jasmine races in the Top Alcohol series, one step below Top Fuel, and his other daughter, Jianna, races Pro Stock motorcycles, which travel the quarter-mile at 200 mph. Jasmine will begin racing Top Fuel next season, giving Scrappers Racing a two-car team. “With Jasmine moving up—we’ve always been a family-funded team, but now we are actively looking for corporate partners, and we know we can deliver for them now.”

The next of the four remaining NHRA races is this weekend in Madison, Illinois, at World Wide Technology Raceway. The finals air on Fox Sports 1 from 3 to 6 p.m. ET.

The entire Scrappers team will be there. “Now we know how much fuel this car has left in the tank,” Salinas says. “And I think we’ve got something for the other teams.”

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Larry Carpenter has a long history with Chevrolet Corvettes, stretching back more than 40 years. The backstory of one of his more recent purchases, however, is still clouded in mystery. This ’56 was a former drag racer and certainly must have had a colorful past, but Carpenter, of Ogden, Utah, hasn’t had much luck digging into its quarter-mile exploits. Perhaps you or someone you know remembers seeing this straight-axle Corvette competing in Modified Sports Car classes in the ’60s and can help shed some light on details. Here’s a look:

Carpenter’s love of Corvettes goes back to his teens. “My dad was a Ford man,” said Carpenter, who let brand loyalty skip a generation. “In high school, I decided I wanted a Corvette.” His father thought that Corvettes were hard to work on. We suppose anyone who’s tried to service a big-block Corvette would have a tough time arguing. Despite his father’s protests, Carpenter bought his first Corvette just before his senior year in high school. It was a 1964 convertible with a 365-horsepower L76 327.

“I’ve probably had about 35 different Corvettes.” Carpenter admitted. His collection was never too large though, because his desire for a different Corvette would necessitate selling one to free up the room and the money to grab another. Today though, he’s less interested in selling any of his current fleet to acquire a new one. Over the past 40 years or so, Carpenter’s collection has included mostly second-and third-generation Corvettes. If there’s one theme tying them all together, it’s that none have remained stock. On the contrary, Carpenter seems to have a habit of buying banged-up race cars or basket cases and giving them a new life, with little reverence for concours-type restorations. “I’m not a purist,” Carpenter stated, completely at peace with the fact that his cars would be shunned by the National Corvette Restorers Society. “To me, NCRS means ‘No Components Remain Stock’.”

Indeed, his idea of a “100-point” car is one that has 100 aftermarket parts. We’re not casting aspersions on Carpenter’s taste, far from it: We’re fans of race-prepped ‘Vett`es and the godfather of Corvettes himself, Zora Arkus-Duntov, was a big proponent of giving Corvette buyers the parts needed to make them competitors on the track. Even if Carpenter’s Corvettes don’t remain stock, there is a theme, and it’s often a period-correct look from the late ‘60s to early ‘70s.

The car that’s spent the most time in Carpenter’s fleet is a ’66 coupe he’s owned since about 2014. It was a big-block drag racer that Carpenter swapped to a small-block and then back to a big-block. “It’s really a hot rod,” Carpenter explained, and it’s now equipped as a road racer, complete with Hooker side pipes. He also owns a 1972 Stingray that wears side pipes along with Torque Thrust wheels and an L88 hood.

Carpenter’s wife, Sandie, drives the 1960 Corvette that you see here. That was the first C1 Corvette in their stable. That car was purchased in the summer of 2016 as a running and driving car, but it was in the process of being stripped for paint. The fiberglass was in excellent shape, so it didn’t require any special work. The body was taken off the frame, the car was painted, and everything else was freshened up, including the engine. It had been equipped with a rather plain 350, but in keeping with Carpenter’s “day two”, or in this case, “year 10” aesthetic, the engine was treated to forged pistons, a more potent top end, and LT-1 livery, although it does use the famous Duntov 30-30 cam which offers a bit more high-rpm performance than the stock LT-1 bumpstick.

Carpenter purchased this 1956 Corvette in July 2017 from a buyer who picked it up from the previous owner’s estate. As best as Carpenter can tell, the car was based in the San Francisco Bay area and raced in its solid-axle configuration into the mid-1980s, at which point the car was driven off the end of a dragstrip. “That doesn’t surprise me. . . It didn’t have any front brakes.” Carpenter explained. According to the seller, the car hit a hay bale, although Carpenter attests that whatever it hit was far more stout than that, considering the damage to the body and the chassis.

The story goes that the damaged car was dragged back home, the engine and trans were removed, and it was parked next to a chicken coop. That part of the story tracks, as Carpenter noted that there was a definite lack of spider or spider webs when poking about the car’s interior and undercarriage during its rebuild. Score one for organic pest control.

When he bought it, the car featured hand-painted lettering on the side that read “Profile in Black” with the owners “Owen and Hankins” also mentioned. Carpenter did discover that there appears to have been a change in the partnership or perhaps a falling out as the Owens was mostly sanded off and the “and” was painted over. Despite spending years trying to track down the car’s history and posting on various vintage car and hot rod message boards, Carpenter hasn’t had any luck tracking down the family of the previous owners.

In the meantime, Carpenter decided to make it his car and got rid of most of the lettering, although he did leave plenty of the car’s patina. The track accident left the passenger side front fender hanging on by a thread, or rather several fiberglass threads. He repaired the damage as delicately as possible, keeping the “STP” sticker intact. “It was more work than if you’d done it the normal way, but it hides the damage well,” Carpenter said. Despite cleaning up the body and repairing the frame damage, plenty of the car’s original character is intact, from the cracked paint to the original lettering on the back. It’s tough to make out, but the hand-lettering reads “Function at the Junction” which Carpenter believes may reference a West Coast dragstrip.

With no engine or trans in the car, Carpenter chose a combination that he thought was appropriate. He found a used 327 with a worn-out block and salvaged its rotating assembly and fuelie heads. He also scored a seasoned 327 block and brought it to a machine shop, giving the machinist instructions to bore it to match his vintage .040-over pistons, but not to hot tank it, as he planned to run the engine without painting it to keep it looking vintage.

“I tried to keep this car as period correct as I could” — Larry Carpenter

The engine was outfitted with late-‘60s-appropriate speed parts, including the Edelbrock TR-1 “shoebox” tunnel ram and matching 660CFM Holley center-squirter carbs. Since the car still had a Joe Hunt decal, it seemed fitting to equip the 327 with a Joe Hunt magneto. Carpenter also found an appropriate exhaust, a used pair of Hooker fender-well headers meant for an early Nova. They were an almost perfect fit, and just as important, they look the part.

Because the car’s real racing days were over, Carpenter worked on making the car more streetable without losing its racy edge. “I had to rebuild the front end, the frame, and suspension. It was antiquated and sketchy. I don’t know how that guy dared to drive down the track,” said Carpenter. The straight axle, still of unknown origin, was rebuilt and it also got some much-needed front brakes, as Sandie’s 1960 Corvette donated its stock drums when it was upgraded to discs. The 327 is linked to an M-21 four-speed by way of an Ansen NHRA blowproof bellhousing with a Hurst shifter. It sends power to a Pontiac/Olds 9.3-inch rear axle fitted with a spool and 5.38:1 gears. Like we said, it still has plenty of race car manners.

Carpenter has done quite a job in making this car look as a survivor race car should, despite having to make plenty of repairs. As much as we love its current look, both Carpenter and all of us here at Hagerty Media would love to see how it presented in its heyday. If you remember seeing this car on the dragstrip when it was a quarter-mile contender, please share your story and we’ll help you get in touch with Carpenter so that he can be a caretaker of not only the current car, but also its racing legacy.

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During the height of the muscle-car era, American automakers used Woodward Avenue as a makeshift drag strip. The multi-lane road—an eight-lane boulevard in some stretches—runs more than 24 miles from downtown Detroit to Pontiac. Often under the cover of night, Big Three engineers raced high-horsepower ringers stoplight-to-stoplight in order to test new performance parts. One of their more formidable feats of engineering, a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere GTX known as The Silver Bullet, was good for a 10-second quarter mile on Woodward’s asphalt.

It’s fitting then, that in 2016, Mopar was back to racing on the streets of Woodward, but legally. The event, called Roadkill Nights, was a promotional collaboration between YouTube sensation Roadkill Garage and Dodge. Spectators were treated to head-to-head racing on a shut down, eighth-mile stretch of the famous Michigan boulevard as well as ride-alongs in a new Hellcat or Viper. It was a hit, and 30,000 people attended.

But this year, for the eighth running of the event (the first Roadkill Nights wasn’t held on Woodward), there was an elephant in the room: The Hellcat Challenger and Charger, the impetuses of the Roadkill collab, are going out of production at the end of 2023.

“It’s the end of one generation and it’s the ushering in of a new generation,” said Tim Kuniskis, currently chief executive of the Dodge brand and a longtime champion of SRT products. The “new generation” was on display in the form of the Charger Daytona SRT electric muscle-car concept.

It was, we must say, not the main attraction for the hoards of drag-racing fans who attended—some 42,000 this year. The event had to move from M1 Concourse to downtown Pontiac in order to accommodate everyone. Lines for the Hellcat drift demo were about as long as ones for a new ride at Disney.

Clearly, even if the Hellcats are being put out of production, they’re far from out of the picture. Performance vendors were displaying wares for the venerable 6.2-liter supercharged V-8s, Dodge was still giving people sideways ride-alongs in the soon-to-be-discontinued cars, and Mopars and other makes of all sorts were hitting the makeshift drag strip.

The drag racing, like other years, is the main draw. More than 120 racers from around the country flocked to Pontiac for a chance at cash prizes totaling $30,000 and for bragging rights as the fastest street car on Woodward.

Granted, most of the competitors—from GTOs to GT-Rs—took a liberal interpretation of the term “street car.” Sure, they were plated and registered, but the roll cages, racing seats, bead-lock wheels, and bumper-dump exhausts hinted at something more serious than the average street-strip ride.

Morning rains delayed the proceedings, but by late afternoon, the makeshift drag strip was jet-dried and prepped with around 200 gallons of VHT, a sticky substance used to give drag strips more bite, and the cars started making passes.

Just like an illegal street race, the rules to win were pretty simple: The car to reach the end of the strip first would advance to the next round of the tournament. There was no Christmas tree or timing equipment. Drivers had to anticipate a hand drop, à la American Graffiti or The Fast and Furious. Like sanctioned drag racing, however, there were classes. Cars will split into two categories: Big Tire (over 275mm width) and Small Tire (275mm width and under). Each class winner earned $5000, with the fastest Mopars in both classes taking home another $5000 each.

Despite the extra traction, the eighth-mile track was still an imperfect Michigan road, which made for close, exciting racing. Some competitors found it was all too easy to flub the launch or lose control mid-run and wind up in the opposing lane. According to Moe Zakaria, pilot of a turbocharged Fox-body and Street Outlaws racer, it came down to the tires, which had to be DOT approved. “Street tires made it tough to hook up. This car will do wheelies on the street with slicks.”

At the end of the day, Mikael Borggren, a veteran of drag-and-drive events like Hot Rod Drag Week, took the overall win in the Small Tire class with his LS-swapped, turbocharged 1987 Volvo wagon. For Big Tire, Jim Kline in big-block, nitrous-fed 1966 Pontiac Acadian, squeaked out the win in a close race against a twin-turbo Tri-Five.

The future of production muscle cars from Dodge or otherwise is at this moment clouded. In addition to the Hellcats, the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro will also be leaving production this year. But the enthusiasm on display in Pontiac this week indicates that Roadkill Nights and the legend of Woodward Avenue is alive and well.

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Dodge has closed the order books on the Hemi-powered Challenger and Charger, ending a chapter in Mopar muscle history that may have well been titled “Democritizing Horsepower.” The pair of vehicles enjoyed immense popularity, a testament to both their grin-inducing performance and Dodge’s ability to keep a finger on the pulse of enthusiasts. The cars have had a long run—from 2006 to 2023—and Dodge kept them fresh with nods to the company’s performance history while continuing to raise the bar on what’s expected from a factory muscle car.

As Mother Mopar embraces turbocharged inline-six power and electrification to give its customers the performance they expect, these V-8-powered cars will surely become collectible—some already have. You may know your 6.1-liters from your 6.4s, and your Hellcats from your Hellcat Redeyes, but there were so many limited-production Hemi-powered Challengers and Chargers that we’re sure that at least one slipped your mind by now. Heck, we probably missed one or two ourselves. Let’s start the count.

2006–2009 Charger Daytona R/T

Squeezing an extra 10 ponies out of the early 5.7-liter Hemi, for a total of 350, the Daytona R/T package set itself apart visually with its unique fascia, chin spoiler, graphics, and colors. Throwback high-impact colors for 2006 were Go ManGo!, Top Banana, and TorRed. Black hood and fender graphics proclaim the car’s Hemi powerplant and Daytona racing pedigree, respectively.

For 2007, Sub Lime Green and Plum Crazy Purple were the high-impact colors of choice, and in 2008, a new strobe stripe package near the rocker panel debuted over Hemi Orange. The last year was 2009, where Stone White was the sole paint option, and power was up to 368 hp, as it was across the Charger lineup. An optional R/T Performance Group upped output to 372 hp.

2007–2009 Charger Super Bee

A similar recipe to the Daytona, the Super Bee channeled Dodge’s other B-body muscle car with a package akin to the Daytona R/T, this time with 6.1-liter power. The 425-hp engine was highlighted by Detonator Yellow paint and black hood and quarter panel graphics. Dodge built 1000 for 2007 and another 1000 in 2008, when the color was switched to B5 Blue. Just 425 were offered in 2009, this time in Hemi Orange.

2008 SRT8 Challenger

Dodge kicked off the return of the Challenger with a 425-hp, Hemi-powered, limited edition available in Hemi Orange, Bright Silver Metallic, or Brilliant Black Crystal Pearl Coat. The hood stripes resembled carbon fiber. Inside, a numbered plaque charted the car’s place in the 6900-unit production run.

2009 and 2010 Challenger Drag Pak

Dodge gave sportsman drag racers a head start to build their own 1/4-mile machines with 100 Drag Pak Challengers in 2009. These cars cars were bare-bones: They didn’t include a roll cage, rear suspension, wiring, or transmission. You could order yours with one of four V-8s. A 5.9-liter Magnum was available for fans of the older small-block, but buyers could also choose one of three Hemis: 5.7, 6.1, or 392. Drag Paks returned in 2010 but with 6.1-liter power only.

Mopar ’10 Challenger

Available in black, red, and silver, the Mopar ’10 Challenger started with a 5.7-liter Hemi-powered variant and added a hood scoop and cold air intake along with front and rear strut-tower braces. Inside, the upholstery was upgraded with Katzkin leather seats.

Mopar ’11 Charger

Black with blue stripes, the Mopar ’11 Charger was built on the R/T with a 5.7-liter Hemi and came with the Super Track Pak, which swapped in a 3.91:1 rear differential, bigger brakes, stiffer sway bars, and Goodyear F1 tires. To set it apart from the regular Track pack Chargers, the Mopar ’11 got front and rear strut tower braces plus custom stitching on the steering wheel and a pistol-grip shifter for its five-speed automatic. Production was limited to 1000 examples.

2011 Challenger Drag Pak

Dodge really stepped things up for 2011, offering not just a shell and some cool racing components, but a complete race car that included a P0werglide transmission and a 9-inch, solid rear axle (Dodge would sometimes jokingly refer to it as an 8 and four-quarter rear axle). Mopar also went big with the engine, dropping the Viper’s 512-cubic-inch V-10 into the stripped-down chassis. It had an optional eight-point cage to help racers get up and running sooner, and only 70 were offered for sale.

But wait, isn’t this list about V-8-powered Challengers? Yeah, but it’s our list, and you can’t say that a V-10 doesn’t have eight cylinders arranged in a V. It just also happens to have two more.

2012 Charger Super Bee

After going on hiatus, Super Bee returned in 2012. In the meantime, the Charger had been updated with some exterior styling changes and a significant interior upgrade. On the performance front, the 6.1-liter Hemi was retired in favor of the 485-hp 6.4-liter Hemi. Super Bees were available in Stinger Yellow and Pitch Black.

2013 Charger Daytona

Dodge built 2500 copies of the 2013 Charger Daytona in four shades: Daytona Blue, Bright White, Billet Silver, and Pitch Black. The package included a 552-watt, 10-speaker Beats Audio System; 20-inch, brushed-aluminum five-spoke wheels; a performance-tuned suspension; and a satin black grille to match the vinyl graphics on the hood, roof, and quarter panels. Buyers could opt for the Daytona package in Charger R/T or the redundantly named Charger R/T Road & Track trims. The latter added Nappa leather/suede seats that were also heated and ventilated.

2013 SRT8 392 Appearance Package

Only 392 copies of this package were available, in five colors: Bright White, Billet Silver Metallic, Plum Crazy Pearl, Hemi Orange Pearl, and TorRed. True to the edition’s name, the options were appearance-related and included a roof, hood power bulge, side mirrors, and rear spoiler finished in Pitch Black to match the 20-inch wheels. A serialized dash plaque proclaimed the car’s production order. All SRT8s with this Appearance Package also received a pair of custom-designed, gloss black “392 HEMI” fender badges accented with a charcoal grey metallic insert.

Mopar ’14 Challenger

This was a truly unique Mopar variant, as the ’14 came in Bright White or Gloss Black with the option of three different blue stripe packages. Black 20-inch wheels, a black grille, and a black spoiler and fuel door offer either matching or contrasting accents. Where things get really interesting was at the Mopar Custom Shop, which offered to install options including performance suspension, hood pins, cat-back exhaust, and a short-throw shifter. Between that array of choices, each of the 100 Mopar ’14 models could be a one-of-a-kind muscle car.

2014 Challenger and Charger 100th Anniversary Edition

Dodge celebrated its 100th anniversary with this pair, which were available in V-6 or V-8 flavors in Pitch Black, Bright White, Billet Silver, Granite Crystal, Ivory Tri-Coat, Phantom Black Tri-Coat, Header Orange, or the exclusive High Octane Red Pearl Coat. The R/T Plus package used the 370-hp 5.7-liter Hemi and included Molten Red or Foundry Black Nappa leather, 20-inch wheels, and unique badging inside and out, with “Dodge Est. 1914” badges in the seatbacks.

Mopar ’15 Charger

Proving Mopar’s reputation for factory performance parts, the Mopar Charger added a new tune to go along with an intake and exhaust that upped the 5.7-liter Hemi’s output by 18 ponies, up to 388 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque. Only 50 cars with the upgrade packages were built.

2015 Challenger Drag Pak

With competition heating up, Dodge added a supercharged 354-cubic-inch Hemi and naturally aspirated 426 Gen III Hemi to the Drag Pak ordering sheet, creating an even more formidable track beast. Aside from their bold graphics, you can identify later Drag Pak cars by their hinged hoods; all earlier Drag Paks use pins. The supercharged version was limited to 35 copies, while the 426 was limited to 25.

Mopar ’17 Challenger

Once again based on a 392 Hemi Challenger, the Mopar ’17 was limited to 160 units, evenly split between Pitch Black over Contusion Blue and Pitch Black over Billet Silver. The two-tone is an easy giveaway, but so are the custom painted “392” fender emblems, each of which uses the trademark Mopar M turned sideways to make the 3.

2018 Challenger Demon

Just 3300 copies were made of the dragstrip-prepped, über muscle car. The Demon was all that the automotive press could talk about when it was launched—and for good reason. The supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi engine featured a 2.7-liter supercharger and came with a “Demon Crate” that included a tuner to unlock the engine’s full potential on race gas: a staggering 840 hp.

The Demon used all kinds of interesting drag racing tricks to hook up on the track and launch hard. It passed intake air past the air conditioning to chill it, and it had the first factory application of a transbrake. With skinny tires up front (also included in the crate) and drag radials out back, the Demon was capable of 9-second quarter-mile elapsed times.

Mopar ’19

Just 100 copies of the Mopar ’19 Challenger were built, and they set themselves apart with asymmetrical stripes that swerved around their shaker hood scoops. This special edition was built on the R/T Scat Pack, so each is powered by the 485-hp Hemi 392.

2021 Dodge Challenger Mopar Drag Pak

Only 50 of these track-only racers were built, and they are each powered by a supercharged 345-cubic-inch Hemi that uses a 3.0-liter Whipple supercharger and a charge cooler that was meant to hold ice to keep intake temps down. Each came with a TIG-welded 4130 chromoly rollcage certified by the NHRA for elapsed times as low as 7.50 seconds.

Last Call

As a sendoff for the Hemi cars, Dodge created a wide array of limited-edition models for 2023, and each was trickled out over several weeks.

2023 Challenger Black Ghost

Built to honor the legendary Detroit street racer, the Black Ghost featured a black “Gator Skin” roof on top of its black paint and was built on the Hellcat Redeye Widebody, meaning it had 807 hp. Just 300 were built.

2023 Dodge Challenger Shakedown

Limited to 1000 models split between R/T Scat Pack models in Destroyer Gray and R/T Scat Pack Widebody in Pitch Black, the Shakedown was built following the formula of the restomod Challenger Shakedown shown at the 2016 SEMA Show. Stripes similar to the Mopar ’19 keep to the black and red theme, which is also carried out by the red “392” fender graphics, Shakedown spoiler graphic, red Brembo brake calipers, and Alcantara seats with red stitching.

2023 Charger Super Bee

Super Bee returned for one last hurrah with 1000 limited edition copies divided between 500 Charger Scat Packs in B5 Blue and 500 Charger Scat Pack Widebodys in Plum Crazy. No matter the color, each Super Bee showed off Super Bee hood graphics on its SRT hood, SRT exhaust tips, and black Mopar hood pins. Dragstrip performance was enhanced with 20×9.5-inch knurled wheels with 275 drag radials on the Scat Packs and 18×11-inch drag wheels with 315 drag radials on the Widebodys.

2023 Challenger and Charger Scat Pack Swinger

Another retro-inspired package, the limited edition Swinger was available on both Challenger and Charger models, both in Scat Pack Widebody flavor. The package’s features were skewed toward aesthetics with “Gold School” finished grille badges, Shaker intake (on the Challenger), and 20×11-inch wheels. The interiors featured green and woodgrain touches. Buyers could select from three exterior color options: F8 Green, Sublime Green, or White Knuckle.

2023 Charger King Daytona

Honoring Willie “Big Willie” Robinson, whose 1969 Dodge Charger drag racer was nicknamed “King Daytona,” 300 copies of this orange special edition SRT Hellcat Redeye Widebody were built in Go Mango. Horsepower was bumped from 797 to 807 hp. Telltale details included King Daytona rear fender graphics in satin black with matching hood and roof graphics, orange six-piston Brembo brakes, 20×11-inch Satin Carbon Warp Speed wheels, and Satin Chrome exterior badges.

2023 Challenger Demon 170

We thought we’d seen the meanest drag-prepped street car when the Demon hit the strip, but the Demon 170 turns it up even higher with a larger supercharger and an E85 tune that churns out 1025 hp! It revs higher, pulls harder, and its drag radials scrape for traction as it trips the beams in the quarter-mile in the eight-second range.

Mopar ’23

Just when we thought they’d wrapped it up, Mopar dropped this duo. For the first time, the Mopar limited edition would come in two different 392 Hemi-powered widebody models, Challenger and Charger, with production capped at 220 of each model. Available only in Pitch Black, the Mopar ’23 models can be distinguished by their blue accents, including striping, Mopar emblems, and brake calipers. Another tell is an exclusive carbon fiber decklid spoiler.

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They were the glory days of drag racing. It was a time when Pro Stock race cars were much more like the automobiles we drove, only faster, prettier, and a lot more fun. Among others, there were Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins and his small-block Chevy powered Vega, Bob Glidden’s Fairmont, Lee Shepherd’s indomitable Camaro, and Ricky Smith’s Firebird. And as the greatest era of Pro Stock racing drew to a close in the ’90s and early 2000s, the top dog was six-time NHRA world champion Warren Johnson and his beautiful Oldsmobile Cutlass.

While Johnson retired from active competition more than 20 years ago, one of his favorite race cars—an Oldsmobile Cutlass that took him to his first NHRA season championship in 1992—has returned in the form of a nostalgia race car. The car you see below may look like Warren’s car, but it is in fact the 200-mph Nostalgia Pro Stock of Kevin Lawrence.

A cosmetically identical but mechanically updated replica of the Cutlass that Johnson campaigned back in the day, Lawrence’s Olds has made the pilgrimage to Midwest drag strips both in testimony to Johnson’s achievements and in celebration of an era long gone. The Cutlass has recorded 6.8-second quarter mile clockings at speeds of over 200 mph. It is owned, driven and wrenched on by Lawrence himself, a perennially underfunded racer who once did his best to compete with the likes of Johnson and the other Pro Stock super stars while working days at a body shop and running his race team out of the two-car garage behind his suburban Chicago house.

In 1976, when Warren Johnson embarked on a Pro Stock drag racing career, Lawrence was pulling up to the starting line in his potent ’68 Chevelle on a dark and deserted Illinois road. It was about midnight. An aspiring journalist covering street racing for High Performance CARS (a “bad boy” of car publication at the time) was on hand to record the action.

Lawrence was a racer with no bankroll, enormous energy, and impressive brain power. He was trying to earn a living taking on challengers on the street at triple-digit speed, long after most folks are in bed. Earn a living he did, banking enough over more than ten years to cover the down payment on the Palos Hills, Illinois house where he and his wife Pam Pappas Lawrence would raise two lovely daughters—and build more than a few race cars.

With a family to consider and the threat of arrest always looming, Lawrence began to reconsider street racing. “I kind of grew up,” he said. “The way we raced on the street in the ’70s was relatively safe, but as development took over Chicago’s once rural southwest suburbs, even the roads that had been devoid of traffic became heavily traveled. Street racing grew more dangerous by the day. But my main concern was that street racing was illegal, and I wanted my kids to understand that breaking the law has consequences.”

So, with his wife—his racing partner since high school—at his side, he marched off to NHRA’s Pro Stock wars. The leap from the street to professional pro stock racing was a long one, and a smooth landing proved elusive. Lawrence recalls one weekend when 36 Pro Stock cars, most of them running on budgets of more than $10,000 dollars a week, attempted to qualify for a 16-car field at Memphis. The 16th qualifier recorded a quarter-mile elapsed time of 6.803 seconds. Mr. Lawrence, running on a budget of flat broke, was number 21 with a 6.806-second clocking.

It was in Pro Stock competition that Lawrence met Johnson, who shared his view of racing as a way to earn a living rather than a source of ego gratification. Johnson had come from as humble a beginning as Lawrence—he learned mechanics trying to keep the family tractor running and learned to control a car driving on ice and show.

But by the time Lawrence arrived on the scene, Johnson was a seasoned veteran who rarely had trouble qualifying for an event. He had broken into professional drag racing much earlier and had built an impressive operation by the 1990s. Johnson’s career record is among the best in drag racing history, with 6 NHRA world championships, 97 event wins and a couple of IHRA Mountain Motor championships. A brilliant tuner and expert engine builder, he earned the nickname “Professor” and retired in 2013 at the top of his game. He now develops high performance motors for various types of motorsport but steers clear of NHRA Pro stock.

Johnson has known Lawrence for close to 20 years. “I leased him a motor once,” Johnson recalls. “He would ask a few questions now and then, and I would offer what I could. He tried to run his own program and actually did a pretty good job of it.”

Lawrence soldiered on in the Pro Stock battles after Johnson had hung up his fire suit, but a rule change that forced Pro Stock teams to switch from carbureted to fuel-injected engines in 2016 further complicated the financial picture. “Teams were spending 15 to 20 thousand a week trying to adapt to the rule change,” said Lawrence. “I couldn’t do it, so I bailed and sold everything.”

With more than half a century of drag racing under his belt, Lawrence was far from finished. As reported on this site, he drives Dick Messino’s 200 mph “Shake, Rattle and Run” ’57 Chevy. But the allure of classic Pro Stock machines continued to move Lawrence.

The obvious answer was a Nostalgia Pro Stock, a cosmetically correct duplicate of a great car of the past. With drag racing fans hungry for what used to be, track owners have turned to booking retro shows of nostalgia cars rather than paying top dollar for today’s top NHRA talent. Lawrence knew a car that invoked the past could be a money maker. And what could be better than one of Johnson’s best cars, his 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass, one of the prettiest and quickest cars of its era.

“I started running that body style in ’89 and in “92 we won a championship with it,” said Johnson. “It was aerodynamic, probably the best car GM produced for Pro Stock racing.”

“I discussed the idea of a Nostalgia Pro Stock with Warren in early 2019,” said Lawrence. “We were both at Pomona (then the site of NHRA’s Winternationals), and we looked at one of his old cars that was competing, but I decided against buying that car.”

But Lawrence returned to Chicago with Johnson’s approval to build a replica of the ’91 Cutlass. Starting from scratch with a new chassis and body was financially unrealistic, but soon, a friend told him that a Cutlass Pro Stock that once belonged to NHRA racer David Nickens was listed on Marketplace in San Francisco. It wasn’t much more than the bare bones of a used race car, but its chassis had been constructed by the highly respected Jerry Haas, and although outdated, it was a solid foundation on which he could build.

Lawrence purchased the car, had it shipped to Illinois, then dug in and got to work upgrading the chassis to current safety specs. He added tubing as necessary to make it as solid and rigid as later model cars and upgraded the shocks and struts to Penske/Drzayich components that are infinitely adjustable and engineered to handle race tracks good and bad. Then Covid reared its ugly head, and Lawrence ended up in the hospital barely able to breathe.

“We thought he was a goner,” said Pam, but he rallied and was back at work in a few weeks.

Lawrence had originally planned to run a 500 cubic-inch engine, like those used in NHRA Pro Stock, but Johnson talked him out of it. The Professor’s experience with huge displacement motors in IHRA competition had demonstrated that that a big motor could deliver great performance with reliability. So, Lawrence purchased a used Dart racing engine, a highly modified version of a big-block Chevy that displaces 622 cubic engines with Siamesed cylinder bores of 4.632-in. diameter and a stroke of 4.61 inches. With a much higher deck than the factory Chevy engine and revised lower end architecture, it can accommodate the long stroke necessary to achieve that much displacement. Lawrence freshened it up with a thorough look through, a valve job and a check of all vital specs. The engine generated over 1300 horsepower and more than 1000 lb-ft torque on a dyno.

Warren and Arlene Johnson pitched in to help Kevin and Pam Lawrence get the Cutlass clone on the track. Numerous parts from the Johnson inventory were shipped to the Lawrence house including titanium wheely bars and Johnson’s own multi-disc clutch, a key tool in the go-fast wars. Arlene who has files of decals and other trim pieces used on the various Johnson cars, dug out the appropriate pieces for the 1991 Cutlass and the car was painted at Modern Carriage Werks in Bridgeview, Illinois, the body shop where Lawrence works when he’s not at the race track. Ken “Stits” Sowinski, the legendary Chicago-area lettering artist, made the car a perfect match for the original.

After a year of hard work in that same two-car garage behind the Lawrence’s suburban Chicago home, with Pam, their daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren all pitching in, the car was ready for the racetrack. Kevin and the Cutlass compete at Midwest Pro Stock Association events. That series was conceived by the late Jim Wick in the ’80s but has been revived as a nostalgia show by Lawrence, Rick Jones, Dave River, and Jeff Wick. The field includes replicas of classic Pro Stocks, including Mike Ruth in Glidden’s Fairmont, Mick Beck in Ricky Smith’s Motorcraft Thunderbird, Tyler Shenuk in Jerry Eckman’s Pennzoil Firebird and more.  Thus far they’ve booked eight races for 2023 at Midwest dragstrips.

It’s a show worth seeing. In the pits, you can get a close look at all the classic race cars, along with the entire Lawrence clan. Guests are welcome to watch Kevin and crew pore over the car looking for a few extra ponies. Sometimes the grandkids drive their junior dragsters in on-track competition and provide some bonus entertainment. And you can leave with a Kevin Lawrence/Warren Johnson t-shirt, a great memento of all that drag racing once was.

***

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The biggest purse in the history of drag racing—$1.3 million total—will be on the line February 8–10, 2024, at Bradenton Motorsports Park, just south of Tampa.

The standalone event will be called the PRO Superstar Shootout, and it will be sanctioned not by the National Hot Rod Association but by the Professional Racers and Owners Organization (PRO), a trade group made up primarily of drivers and team owners. It’s PRO’s first major promotion.

The event technically begins February 6–7, a Tuesday and Wednesday, with open practice. One round of qualifying will be held on Thursday, three rounds on Friday, with races on Saturday. This is Super Bowl weekend, so PRO made sure to get the show over with before Sunday.

The invitation-only race will pay $250,000 each for Top Fuel and Funny Car winners, and $125,000 for the Pro Stock winner. Several other Sportsman classes will race as well. “That’s the most money I’ve ever raced for,” said Steve Torrence, current NHRA Top Fuel champion, at the introductory Zoom press conference. The race will apparently not be televised but will be streamed live on FloRacing, a pay-per-view site that features motorsports.

“We believe this is a dramatic new leap for professional drag racing,” said Alan Johnson, president of PRO and crew chief for Top Fuel racer Doug Kalitta. “The PRO Superstar Shootout will be unlike anything our teams have been a part of, and the result will be a one-of-a-kind show for our fans. This is an opportunity to try some new formats and to showcase our sport to a broad audience worldwide.”

Drivers will run four qualifying sessions to determine the eight-car fields in Top Fuel and Funny Car, and the 16-car field in Pro Stock. Random chip draws on Friday will determine the pairings for all rounds of Saturday eliminations.

Where the $1.3 million will come from was not revealed at the press conference, but participants said that potential sponsors are already coming forward. None were mentioned during the questioning.

Meanwhile, the NHRA is proceeding with its plans for the 2024 drag racing season, beginning March 7–10 at Gainesville Raceway, also in Florida. The PRO Shootout will be the biggest event hosted by the Bradenton Motorsports Park, which opened in 1974 and features mostly grassroots racing, plus pre-season testing for some NHRA teams.

***

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Plymouth hit the road in 1970 with its “Rapid Transit System” and put on clinics with drag racers across the country, highlighting the performance potential of its various V-8 engines. However, there were more than just elapsed times to brag about, as a quartet of customized muscle cars was also a part of the reverie. Three of those special cars wound up in Steven Juliano’s collection and went up for sale four years ago. The final custom, designed by Harry Bentley Bradley and built by Chuck Miller at Styline Customs, is this 1970 ’Cuda that’s bound for Mecum’s Indy 2023 sale.

It features a custom steel grille and lower fascia, along with a gorgeous custom paint job sporting a luscious fade. Originally finished in red, the car was painted green, blue, and white for the 1970 Rapid Transit System program and received the paint you see here in 1971. In our opinion, the second custom color scheme is superior. While the style is similar, the lines are more complex and the addition of the front-to-rear fade makes it absolutely striking. It’s audacious and loud, but given that it started life as a 1970 440-cubic inch ’Cuda with a shaker hood, subtlety was never really an option.

After retiring from Rapid Transit Service, this car was purchased and hardly driven, as evidenced by the 976 miles currently on the odometer. The brawny 440 and custom paint and bodywork drew too much attention, and the car was garaged in 1976, where it would remain, nearly unseen until early last year.

Ryan Brutt, the Auto Archeologist, has a video with Chuck Miller that goes into some of the history of the car.

Despite spending almost 50 years in storage, the lacquer paint survived amazingly well, with only a few chips and scratches (and some cat paw prints). Inside, the upholstery and carpet appear to be in great shape.

Like the three other custom Rapid Transit cars, this one’s sure to bring a premium when it crosses the auction block this May. Juliano had tried to purchase this car and knew the owner, but never actually got to see the car in person. Perhaps now that it’s out of hiding and back in the limelight it can once again join its fellow Rapid Transit System partners.

***

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1800-hp Mustang Super Cobra Jet 1800 is coming for your quarter-mile records

Intake: The next chapter of Ford’s electric motorsports efforts has arrived in the form of the Mustang Super Cobra Jet 1800 drag car. The name harkens back 1969 when Ford Performance introduced the Super Cobra Jet name as an improvement to the standard Cobra Jet package. The new car is a heavily reworked version of the Cobra Jet 1400, which holds the NHRA world record quarter-mile pass (8.128 seconds @ 171.97 mph) for full-bodied electric vehicles. Ford Performance expects the Super Cobra Jet 1800 to best that pass, thanks to a host of chassis, powertrain, and control system upgrades. It uses the same four-inverter, twin double-stacked electric motor setup as before, but the 1800 has a new transmission from Liberty, as well as a new lightweight battery system designed by Ford Performance and MLe Racecars. A new rear end featuring improved suspension geometry and larger Mickey Thompson drag radials will help get that mountain of torque down for good launches.

Exhaust: They might lack the aural drama of the gas burners, but these electric drag cars are unbelievably quick. On top of the quarter-mile record attempt, the Super Cobra Jet 1800 will also attempt to claim the electric vehicle 0–60 mph record and the two-wheel-drive electric vehicle 0–60 mph record later this year at an NHRA event. The package looks mean enough to pull that off. — Nathan Petroelje

Car companies lacking “megasite” options

Intake: Volkswagen’s off-road brand Scout studied 74 different parcels of land across the U.S. last summer as it hunted for a place to build a $2 billion assembly plant, dismissing most quickly because of insufficient infrastructure. Companies, says Reuters, are having trouble finding suitable “megasites” for building new factories. As for the Scout plant, “In one case, they learned it would take six years to build a needed rail link. Others lacked access to clean power, crucial for a project for ‘green’ electric vehicles. Some did not offer enough nearby skilled labor,” Reuters said. “Fueled by a combination of hefty government incentives, a transition to new transportation and energy technologies, and national security concerns about relying on distant suppliers, especially in China, there’s a factory-building boom taking place across the U.S.” While the U.S. has plentiful land, “there are not that many places to quickly plunk a billion-dollar-plus factory.”

Exhaust: The factory renaissance “could soon hit a barrier because of the scarcity of ready-to-go megasites, according to 25 economic development groups, state and local officials, utilities, and companies interviewed by Reuters.” That would be a problem for the Biden administration, the story speculates, “which has pushed through legislation to fuel the developments. Corporations have announced dozens of projects since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act last year.” — Steven Cole Smith

Alfa celebrates 100 years of Quadrifoglio with Giulia and Stelvio specials

Intake: It’s April 15, 1923, and Ugo Sivocci is lining up at the start of the Targa Florio in his Alfa Romeo RL Super Sport. On the car’s nose is a large green four-leafed clover on a white diamond background—the first appearance of the now legendary quadrifoglio mark. A century later, Alfa Romeo is introducing two very limited special editions of the Giulia and Stelvio. Just 100 of each will be available worldwide, and they’ll be distinguished with a host of celebratory styling additions that include unique 100th Anniversario badges, gold brake calipers, a carbon fiber grille and mirror caps, plus gold stitching throughout the leather/Alcantara cabin, carbon accents, and additional badging. The order books open soon and deliveries will begin in the fall.

Exhaust: The lucky charm certainly worked; not only did Sivocci win the Targa Florio, but Alfa Romeos also placed second and fourth as well, and the quadrifoglio would dominate motorsports in the 1920s, with Alfa Romeo taking victories in the very first Grand Prix Championship of 1925, plus the Mille Miglia and Le Mans. Surprisingly, it took Alfa some 40 years to capitalize on the success of the quadrifoglio, however, with the Giulia Sprint GT Veloce of 1965 being the first series production car to wear it. —Nik Berg

KBB: Signs point to dropping prices in new car market

Intake: There’s a sign that the hot new-vehicle market may be settling down. The average transaction price of a new vehicle fell below the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the first time in 20 months, according to a study by Kelley Blue Book, says a Reuters story. The average transaction price of a new vehicle in the U.S. declined 1.1 percent in March to $48,008 from February’s $48,558. However, March prices rose 3.8 percent compared to a year ago. Except for Toyota, which is still suffering supply chain issues, the top global automakers reported a rise in first-quarter U.S. sales on improving shipments to dealers as vehicle inventories grow. “Right now, in-market consumers are finding more inventory, more choice, and dealers more willing to deal, at least with some brands,” said Rebecca Rydzewski, a researcher at Kelley Blue Book.

Exhaust: In March, the average price for a new non-luxury vehicle, which includes brands such as Chevrolet, Ford, Hyundai and Nissan, was $44,182, a decline of $505 compared with February, but buyers continued to pay above MSRP for luxury vehicles, said KBB. — SCS

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Few drag racing cars have achieved the longevity, or popularity, of the Shake, Rattle, and Run 1957 Chevy. This Memorial Day Weekend, the candy-apple-red shoebox racer is set to compete at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin. Running 6.8-second quarter miles at over 200 miles-per-hour with pro stock driver Kevin Lawrence at the wheel, it will once again challenge the quarter mile.

The finned Chevy has been a drag strip staple since the fall of 1956, when it left the Ferrell Hicks Chevrolet dealership on Chicago’s South Side. For over six decades, it has been owned, raced, put aside, lost, and reclaimed. And Shake‘s keeper, Christopher “Dick” Messino of Chicago, has been by its side the whole way.

Dick Messino, now approaching his 82nd birthday, is no ordinary drag racer. Born into a notorious Chicago crime family, the young Messino was witness to the gambling empire run by his father, Biagio Messino, and the mob enforcement business of his uncle, Wee Willie Messino.

Dick’s ambition was to stay a step ahead of trouble while taking as big a share of the good life as possible, without fear or remorse. He didn’t choose the family trade. It was an obscenely dangerous high-stakes lifestyle bequeathed to him, and drag racing was an escape from it.

In the autumn of 1956, Dick was a junior at Chicago’s Morgan Park High School, an institution that served several blue-collar neighborhoods as well as the white-collar Beverly Hills and Morgan Park enclaves. Dick was from Mount Greenwood, a modest middle-class neighborhood on the west end of the school district. His buddy Paul Klein was the son of a wealthy Beverly resident who lived in a big house on the hill at Longwood Drive. Like many kids who come from money, he was given a new car as a high school graduation gift: a white ’57 Chevy with three-on-the-tree and a 283-cubic-inch V-8.

Soon, Klein—known to all as “CB”—and Dick were cruising the Beverly Drive-In looking for street racing action.

Even though CB and Dick came from very different families, they were both dedicated car guys. “We talked about nothing but cars and learned from each other,” said Dick. “I had picked up some mechanical knowledge of automobiles along the way. CB, too. Together, we were almost adequate wrenches.”

The Chevy was quicker than most at the Drive-In. Before long the duo wanted to see just how fast it could go, so they visited a new local drag strip just across the Indiana state line near Gary. U.S. 30 Dragway was funded by a group of civic-minded businessmen hoping to solve the street racing problem that plagued Chicago.

Dick and CB quickly found that while the ’57 seemed fast on the street, it wasn’t all that quick at the strip, so they set about making it faster. The fact that it was a brand new car didn’t enter into the equation. They stripped the bumpers and grille from the shiny Chevy, planted a fuel-injected short block under the hood, and topped it with dual quad carbs. The mods allowed the car to make 13-second runs at the nascent race track.

“By the time the Chevy was a year old, it looked like it was ten years old,” said Dick. “Then CB joined the army, and I bought the car.”

Dick realized there was good money to be made on South Side streets if you knew where to go, so he flat-towed the car to Chicago’s street racing hotbed—where Western Avenue went dark by Dan Ryan Woods and on the Calumet Expressway at 130th Street, which was largely rural back then.

Dick usually won. And when he didn’t, he would do whatever it took to get back on top, which included earning more money (by any means necessary), buying more go-fast parts, and putting in long hours under the car.

In Dick’s opinion, race cars shouldn’t be white, so he had local spray-gun guru George Little paint it red. Dick took on various partners who shared the workload and the good times on the street and strip. His gang raced in the the indoor drags at Chicago’s International Amphitheater in ’62 and ’64 where the car distinguished itself in 440-foot drags. Dick and other local shoes blasted full-throttle past indoor bleachers and decelerated through open doors to shutdown lanes in the parking lot.

Although Dick drove Shake for the most part until ’63, he eventually realized he could win more consistently with a hotshot driver banging the gears, so he teamed up with racer Eric Schmidt. Schmidt drove Shake until 1969.

Dick strived to make the car quicker, too. With some work and a heavily-modified 327-cubic-inch small block under the hood, his ’57 became a top competitor in the C/Gas class.

Like a lot of people who grew up on the South Side back in the day, Dick saw two clear career opportunities growing up. He could be a cop or a crook. And he learned through family connections that one role could complement the other. Dick chose both. For several years, he worked as a Chicago cop and developed his own version of the Messino family business.

First and foremost, though, Dick was a drag racer.

“I never scrimped when it came to spending on the race car.” said Dick of his ’57 Chevy. I made sure we had the parts we needed. If there was something better out there, something that would make us faster, I got it.”

By 1966, a big-block engine was the hot ticket, so a Hilborn-injected 427-cubic-inch Chevy replaced Shake’s mouse motor. The old Chevy responded with 10.40-second quarter-mile pass (against a 10.70 record), making Messino and Schmidt almost unbeatable in the Street Eliminator class at Great Lakes Dragaway and Michigan’s Martin Dragway.

It was at the Grove, in 1968, that the Chevy came close to being nothing more than a drag racing footnote. After making a pass, Shake rolled to a stop on the track. The next pair was sent off down the track before Schmidt had cleared, and the Chevy was rear ended. Hard. Both quarter panels and the rear deck lid were destroyed. The doors, the cowl with its VIN tag, and the fiberglass front end were spared, so the car was rebuilt. While Shake was in rehab, Dick became enamored of funny cars, so he parked the ’57.

Dick, in the spirit of the day, decided he ought to have a fiberglass flopper of his very own, so he built a fuel-injected Chevy II. “Erik didn’t want to drive it,” said Messino. “And I couldn’t find anyone else who could handle it.” So, after a few fits and starts, the funny car project was abandoned, and Shake was retrieved from the enclosed trailer where it spent the two years in storage.

Messino sent the ’57 to R&B Automotive Engineering in Kenosha Wisconsin for a makeover. There, it got a new roll cage, four-link rear suspension, and rear tubbed wheel wells to accommodate bigger tires. “Competition Phil,” a Chicago race car painter of legend—who often worked maskless with a fifth of whiskey at his side—gave the Chevy a fabulous candy apple red paint job. Other unpainted components were coated in chrome.

Next, Dick teamed up with driver Mario Manzella. Together, they managed to push the old Chevy to an 8.93, running on a stock Chevy frame with a gasser-style straight axle up front.

A pro stock effort was also in the cards, so Mario and Dick built a Monza race car that was campaigned occasionally on the UDRA Pro Stock circuit. The Monza recorded some high seven-second efforts before crashing in Detroit. That brought the pro stock effort to an end.

Shake, Rattle, and Run remained the love of Dick’s life, so he had a Glidden-style pro stock chassis built that would slip right in under the old Chevy body. He planted the 538-cube motor from the Monza racer under the hood, and the ’57 was once again spitting fire, turning away pretenders, and running low eights.

In 1988, Ted Borowski, an Illinois engine builder of considerable renown, told Dick he could build a 632-cube motor that would put Shake in the seven second range. Borowski was among the first to build super-size bowtie motors, and he did it with stock blocks.

Dick said, “Okay, build the motor, but you have to drive the car.” Ted became the new Shake handler and ran seven-second passes as an early Pro Mod, match racing throughout the Midwest.

Among Shake’s best remembered match races of the late 1980s are those of the “Shoebox Circuit.” The three-car traveling drag racing show featured Shake versus a Christine-lookalike ’57 Plymouth and a ’57 Ford called Mega Ford. Both were, of course, powered by stout motors and well-equipped for quarter-mile battle. Ford versus Chevy versus Mopar—the fans loved it. Running alcohol in the 632, old Shake ran 7.70-second passes and usually emerged on top.

Meanwhile, the dark side of Dick’s life was rapidly catching up with him. In 1993, he was arrested by Federal authorities and charged with a variety of offenses. Shake, Rattle, and Run, as well as most of Dick’s other possessions, was forfeited and packed away by the authorities. Two of his three sons were charged for their part in the family business as well. Due to a variety of legal technicalities, Dick was tried three times and served 12 years before his first conviction was overturned.

He was freed in 2005, and his belongings that weren’t sold were returned to him. Among them was the venerable ’57 Chevrolet. Despite being in the possession of the courts for 12 years, the car was intact.

“I had a different mindset after being released from prison,” said Messino. “I had grown up thinking you simply do what you gotta do to get what you want. That doesn’t work long term. Today I’m different. My friends say I’ve mellowed. I hope not too much.”

“Dick is a different guy now,” said Kevin Lawrence, who drives Shake, Rattle, and Run in competition. When I first met him back in the street racing days, he was quick to anger and aggressive. That’s gone. He has a thriving car dealership and a lot of happy customers. All completely legit.”

Lawrence helped whip Shake back into racing shape after it had been retrieved from government storage.

“It was rough from sitting so long,” said Lawrence, “and it was somewhat outdated, so Dick had it restored. Gene Pudlo of Pudlo Race Cars redid the chassis with updates for current rules, new rear suspension, engine mounts, shocks, struts, and more.”

The car was repainted and lettered. Lawrence was campaigning an NHRA pro stock, so his time was limited, but he was able to make a couple of test runs to help sort the car out.

Chicago-area shoe Mike Lopez took Shake’s wheel in 2009 and recorded the car’s first six-second pass. Lopez racked up an impressive record of match race wins over eight seasons.

After selling his pro stock in 2017, Lawrence took a full-time turn in Shake’s cockpit, where he remains to this day. His best quarter-mile pass to date in the 66-year-old Chevy stands at 6.83 seconds at 204 mph.

Lawrence has another race car of his own. His nostalgia pro stock is a near perfect copy of Warren Johnson’s early 1990s Delco-sponsored Olds Cutlass. At some events, he drives Dick’s ’57 and his Cutlass, requiring Lawrence to hop out of one car and immediately make a pass in the other. Both have somewhat similar powertrains, and both run in the sixes at around 200 miles-per-hour on well-prepped quarter-mile tracks.

A 632-cubic-inch big-block Chevy—built by Pat Musi Racing Engines—with nitrous now provides the power for Shake, Rattle, and Run. Lawrence, who builds his own motors for the Olds, runs a similar 622-inch big-block Chevy. Lawrence says that with all that displacement, both engines only have to rev to about 8000 rpm to make good power. Both are durable power sources. The connecting rods and valves are replaced after 30 runs, and failures are rare.

As if a pair of six-second race cars aren’t enough to keep everyone busy on race day, Dick recently bought a McGinnis-built Pro Mod car topped with a sleek, streamlined fiberglass ’57 Chevy body. The car had been built for someone who realized they were in over their head after the purchase. The price was right for Dick so he jumped at it. Although it was originally built to run a supercharged engine, the car received a Steve Schmidt 632-cubic-inch big-block.

Kevin’s son-in-law, Adam Drzayich, drives it. Adam is a racing veteran and expert engine guy who tunes Kye Kelley’s car for the Street Outlaws television show. He also tunes all of Dick’s cars. Sometimes the grandkids take to the track in junior dragsters, and they’re pretty darn fast. That warms Dick’s hardened old heart and makes him smile broadly. It’s a block party at the track—multiple families, multiple generations, and multiple ’57 Chevys.

Painted orange, the newest finned coupe also wears Shake, Rattle, and Run on the doors. Compared to the original Shake, Dick’s fiberglass ’57 is lighter, slipperier, and makes faster quarter-mile passes. The new car is nice, but nothing could replace Dick’s first quarter-mile queen: a 1957 Chevrolet hailing from Chicago’s South Side.

***

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The Grand National Roadster Show is nirvana for devotees of rods and customs. This past weekend, the historic Fairplex in Pomona, California, was packed with everything from tasty highboys and throwback track roadsters to aggressively stanced restomod muscle cars and lowriders sporting more bling than the Grammys’ green room.

Hot rodding isn’t only about flash and cash. In its earliest incarnation, the hobby focused on transforming humdrum transportation into one-of-kind high-performance vehicles, and the Roadster Show pays homage to these motorsports roots. Three race cars at Pomona caught my eye because they represented three different takes on the hot rod experience. Let’s take a closer look.

“Flat Tap Racing” 1934 Ford

The first was a chopped and channeled ’34 Ford five-window coupe with “Flat Trap Racing” graphics on the doors, holes cut into a sheet-metal grill that reminded me of a medieval shield, and a roof rippling with dozens of hand-formed louvers.

“I put it together as a street-strip car that you could drive to the track,” owner Cedric Meeks of Portland, Oregon, told me. He’s already dragged it on the sand in New Jersey, on the dirt in Northern California and on the pavement in nearby Riverside. “I’ll take it anywhere to race,” he said.

Meeks is the son of Russ Meeks, whose flip-top, rear-engine 1930 Ford won the 1972 America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award—which is basically the Best Picture Oscar of hot rodding. (Read about the 2023 winner here.) With that kind of heritage, a cookie-cutter ride wasn’t for him.

“The car had a 327 Chevy with an automatic in it when I got it, but I wanted something different,” he said. So he replaced the ubiquitous small-block with a 235-cubic-inch Hi Torque Chevy straight six with roller cams and a rare Wayne racing head and mated it to four-speed transmission and a quick-change rear end. Sweet.

Straight-eight Buick Indy car tribute

Across the show floor, I found another unexpected engine that piqued my curiosity. A few years ago, while running a restoration/fabrication shop in Czechoslovakia, Stanley Chavik got his hands on a Buick straight-eight. This inspired him to re-create the Buick-powered Indy car that Phil Shafer built and raced in the 1930s, when the so-called Junk Formula allowed pioneering hot rodders to run stock-block engines at the Speedway. When I asked Chavik why he embarked on such a quixotic tribute build, he laughed. “To beat the Bugattis,” he said.

Chavik shaped the hefty steel frame rails in his press brake and shaped the novel, upright two-man aluminum body by hand. Students of pre-war American production cars might recognize the radiator shell. “It’s a 1933 Pontiac grille—except that I made it myself because I couldn’t find one,” he said. He finished the car in 2016, first raced it in 2017 and brought it to the States when he moved his shop to Orange, California, in 2018.

Amazingly, the car is street-legal, and Chavik is happy to drive it anywhere except in the snow, where the tall, narrow, untreaded tires produce about zero grip. Still, when Southern California Timing Associations official turned a blind eye during an event at El Mirage, he got the Buick up to 120 miles per hour on the dry lake. “It was easy,” he insisted. “Driving this thing on the highway—that’s hard.”

“Speed Demon” streamliner

Fast-forwarding nearly a century and through dozens of technological revolutions brought me to Speed Demon, the wicked Bonneville streamliner renowned as the fastest piston-powered, wheel-driven car on the planet. When I’ve seen the car on the salt, with the fearless George Poteet strapped inside the cockpit, the car looked like a missile.

At Pomona it was displayed with the bodywork off, and I was amazed by how tightly the LS-based motor, twin turbos, and transmission were packaged within a spider’s web of chromoly tubing.

“There’s no book that tells you how to build these things,” builder/crew chief Steve Watt explained. “We have a great team of problem solvers. The car sits in the middle of our shop [in Ventura, California], and we walk past it 365 days a year.”

Land-speed cars have been setting records at Bonneville since a trio of thrill-seeking Brits—Malcolm Campbell, George Eyston and John Cobb—set marks there in the 1930s. It was the first SCTA meet in 1949 that started a legacy on the salt flats. Over time, Bonneville became the hod rod racing mecca.

Poteet and Watt have been taking Speed Demon to Bonneville since 2010, when they established a baseline speed of 404.562 miles per hour. Since then, they’ve made incremental gains year after year until topping out at 481.576 in 2020. Watt said the team has been working on some tweaks for their next assault on the salt, during the SCTA’s Speed Week in August.

“If we can get anything over 500, we’re good,” Watt told me. “Then George will be done, and we’ll slow it down from there. There are so many things that can go wrong and so many things that have to go right. It’s eventually going to catch up with you. I don’t care how good you are. If you keep tapping on that window, eventually it’s going to break.”

Exhibit A can be found on YouTube, where there’s in-car video of Poteet barrel-rolling an earlier version of Speed Demon at 370 miles per hour. (The mangled chassis now supports a show car.) Miraculously, Poteet walked away from the wreck.

Of course, nobody ever got hurt bench racing, and that’s all we were doing in Pomona. Plus, we could get Pink’s chili dogs at a nearby concession stand. All you get out on the salt is a sunburn.

Check out some of the Roadster Show’s other speed demons on display—including a street-legal Lola—in the gallery below.

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When he was a sophomore at St. Joe’s high school on Cleveland’s east side in 1973, my cousin, Tom Luzar, bought a ’56 Chevy. Well, he bought a significant portion of one, anyway.

“It was just a shell, really. It didn’t have an engine or interior,” he said. Over the course of the next two years, he built the car of his young dreams. Prepped for drag racing’s C/Gas class, Luzar and the ’56 held court at car shows throughout his high school years. “I took it to the Cleveland Autorama downtown at the convention center in ’75, ’76, and put a ‘for sale’ sign in the window when I took it there in ’77. Someone was interested, but wanted to see how it placed. After it took first in class, he bought the car.”

A Tri-Five—shorthand for ’55-’57 Chevys—no longer graced his driveway, but Luzar kept the memory of his ’56 close. In 2020, my cousin happened upon a gasser that looked almost exactly like the one he built, and he decided to rekindle those dreams. Though it didn’t turn out to be his old car, Luzar bought it and turned it into his COVID project.

Two and a half years later, Luzar’s 210 Sedan, the mid-level model slotted between the base 150 and the top-tier Bel Air, is nearly complete. This time around, he took a more streetable approach to his build: high-riding, drag-strip-ready front leaf springs made way for a more conventional setup, although ladder bars and QA1 coilover shocks in the rear make sure the car will still hook up like a proper gasser. A Chevy crate motor with some mild tweaks is backed up by a TH400 automatic transmission and a 3.70 Positraction rear end. “It’s not too much gear for the highway, and it’s still pretty fun from a dig,” added Luzar. The interior is more cruiser than race car, befitting a gearhead who’s now more intent on summer weekend use than optimizing weight for a specific NHRA class.

“For me, the Tri-Fives, particularly the ’55 and ’56 model years, are the grassroots drag racing car,” he said.

My cousin has a point. Tri-Five Chevys are still widely known in popular culture—they’re perhaps the quintessential 1950s American car—but their specific role in fueling car enthusiasm and the motorsports scene in America has arguably become under-appreciated as the decades pass. (Yes, Harrison Ford raced one in American Graffiti, but that movie came out—wait for it—fifty years ago.) These cars are an enthusiast’s canvas, successfully taking to customization, circle track racing, drag racing, or whatever their owners can think of.

That combination of adaptability and a design that’s so representative of the era helps explain their staying power and continued relevance in the car hobby, even as some cars from the 1950s fade. We frequently hear, and occasionally write about, the potential for a pivot in values for vehicles of certain eras as Baby Boomers begin to age out of the market. Of course, pantheon cars like 1950s–60s Ferraris or certain prewar brands like Bugatti are more insulated from demographic-influenced market movement, but the impact of this slow change in buyers remains a more open question for mass-market cars. Luckily for Luzar’s Chevy and those like it, interest among younger generations is not only strong, it’s growing.

The share of insurance quotes for Tri-Fives sought by boomers started to decline in 2021 and now stands at 46.6%, but the increased attention from younger generations is the real story. Share of Gen-X interest has increased nearly 20% since 2017, Millennial interest has doubled and, while still small, the share occupied by Gen-Z interest has nearly tripled in the same time period.

This widespread interest helps explain why the venerable Chevys have held on to their value and then some. We examined recent values for V-8-powered 210 Del Ray and Bel Air trims across the three-year model range. #1-condition concours-level cars are valued at $64,245, a 13% increase since 2017. Values for #2 (excellent) condition cars have remained steady, posting 1% growth in that same five year span. That slow, steady growth is what you’d expect and want to see in a mature segment, where collectors have for decades had a good sense of what the cars are worth. It also hints that the new, younger buyers are paying at least as much for their cars as the older generation—something we’ve noted to be true across the board with younger collectors.

On the other hand, driver-quality car values are down (-1% and a full -20% for #3 and #4 conditions, respectively) and can be had for between $20,000–$30,000. That’s a far cry from the days you could pick them up at a used car lot, but still relatively affordable for a collector car. Displacement matters, too: the 283-cubic inch V-8 commands a 34% premium over the 265 when both were available in 1957.

Given the breadth of the three trims along with various engine options, value differences from one Tri-five to another can constitute quite a spread. The above chart hits the upper-middle of the market, considering the 210 Del Ray and iconic Bel Air as equipped with V-8 options, but excluding the exotic-for-the-time Fuelie as well as the higher-performance dual-carburetor setup. Naturally, the Bel Airs, particularly the ’57—the one even non-enthusiasts seem to know all these decades later—fetch top dollar. In addition to the premium paid for condition, there’s clearly a value bump for the most popular, highest trim car. What that means, though, is that there’s plenty of opportunity to get in at a lower price point if you don’t mind a little less chrome or fewer options.

There are added bonuses to these cars having been popular from the get-go: yes, they’re old, but with high production numbers there are still more out there than many other models from the ’50s. Also, the Tri-Five aftermarket is strong, although Luzar noted that he ran into a few challenges during his build that suggest that might be changing slightly. There are also a lot of ’55-’57 Chevy resources out there—at this point, if you’re stumped while working on one, you’re probably not the first, and there’s likely a solution out there.

Regardless of which year you choose or whether you’re restoring to factory spec, building a period-correct gasser, or a creation of your own design, the Tri-Five will eagerly accommodate you. As for my cousin, he expects to have his ’56 on the road once the Northeast Ohio winter gives way to spring. “I’m an old-school car guy,” said Luzar. “That’s why I built the car the way I did—in keeping with how I remember working on cars as a teenager, but with a little comfort for cruising.” I can’t wait to meet up with him at the local shows.

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Via Hagerty Insider

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Old school drag racing is alive and well in Southern California. Of the vintage gatherings, March Meet and Nitro Revival are arguably the biggest tickets. Geezers, grandkids, and every go-fast fanatic in between come out of the woodwork to watch 2500-horsepower, nitro-chugging machines light up the strips. March Meet is a competitive festival offering a chance at bragging rights, a purse, and a sought-after golden Wally Parks trophy. Nitro Revival is a more-relaxed homage to the glory days of drag racing.

This year, Nitro Revival celebrated its fifth event. Founded by Steve Gibbs, former VP of Competition for the NHRA, the annual festival was established to “bridge to another era and connects race fans of all ages to some of the most iconic vehicles ever constructed, and allow them to interact with the people who built, drove, and maintained them.”

“Big Hook” Gibbs doesn’t do it alone. Daughter Cindy, coordinator Don Ewald, and a crew of other organizers have helped build this vintage drag event into a marquee gathering.

In 2017, Gibbs held the first Nitro Revival at Barona Drag Strip, not far from San Diego. The first event was a success but had “logistical limits,” as Gibbs puts it. The following year, the Revival traveled about 400 miles north to the prominent Weather Tech Raceway Laguna Seca in scenic Monterey. The second edition was a hit and racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits even made an appearance. The track, though, was a bit too far away from Southern California, where most of the old timers are located.

For the third show, in 2019, Nitro Revival found a home in the reborn 1/8th-mile Irwindale Drag Strip in San Gabriel Valley, just outside Los Angeles. (Fun fact: The original Irwindale Drag Strip was my home away from home back in the film days when I was shooting for Petersen Publishing’s car magazines.)

The 2019 event was an overwhelming success, which made the following year’s cancellation (due to COVID-19) sting even worse. The entire drag world impatiently waited for the grand comeback in 2021 at Irwindale.

Dubbed “Nitro Overload,” the Revival was back in full force. At one point, organizers staged least 50 thundering front engine diggers were arranged in a “line of fire cackle-fest.” Raw burning hydrogen combusted out of the headers, shooting flames skyward.

Within the vintage drag racing world, the anticipation for this year’s Nitro Revival was palpable. It was worth the wait. Drag racers made pass after pass along Irwindale’s strip, for three straight days under the glorious California sunshine. Over in the paddock, static starts brought fans to tears—I couldn’t tell if it was caused by raw emotion or nitro.

Front-engine dragsters and Funny Cars performed exhibition runs, while AFX muscle cars lit smokey burnouts. The “Outlaw Gassers” group pointed their straight axles skyward. A roster of candy-colored drag cars packed the staging lanes,  including the metallic blue Stone, Wood and Cook Willys that was once labeled Hot Rod magazine’s “most famous drag car of all time.”

Rick Osborn’s wheel-standing ’38 Chevy Special truck and Gene Schwartz’s flying ’52 Chevy pulled dueling wheelies and sent the crowd into an uproar. The ’38 truck houses a 480-horsepower LY6 crate engine backed by a Turbo 350 automatic transmission. Walker Evans Racing wheels wrapped in 39-inch BFG red label Krawler tires deliver the power to the pavement.

Beside the ear-rattling cackles of the Top Fuel dragsters, I favor the wild, wooly Fuel Altered machines. Someone once said taming one of those unpredictable machines is like “bull riding on wheels at 200 miles-per-hour.” Ron Hope and his world famous Rat Trap—with his son Brian behind the wheel—were present at this year’s Revival. “The Revival is a great means of documenting the history of the sport and a great opportunity to reunite with friends that we don’t see too often,” said the elder Hope.

Drag racing royalty gathered Saturday afternoon for a once-in-a-lifetime autograph session. The group of hall-of-famers included Ed “The Ace” McCulloch, Roland Leong (Hawaiian), “Wild Bill” Shrewsberry, 101-year-old Ed “Isky” Iskenderian, Ed Pink, Don “The Snake” Prudhomme,  “TV” Tommy Ivo and Linda Vaughn.

The day ended with the “Nitro Overdose”—this year’s cackle-fest and fireworks display. Fans screamed and whistled with excitement as flames closed out the Nitro-filled day.

Sunday was a repeat performance for all fans that really didn’t have enough. It seemed like nobody left. The National Anthem, Nitro exhibitions, wheel standers, static starts, and hours of “bench racing” carried the event well into the afternoon. “One o’clock Thunder” featured a gorgeous pair. Tom Hoover’s Fish Bowl—widely considered the most beautiful Top Fuel dragster ever built—with Bob ‘Floyd’ Muravez at the wheel fired alongside the Creitz & Donavan AA/FD with Richard Tharp in the seat. True to its name, shockwaves reverberated throughout the stands.

I caught up with Lori Petersen, who was driving a dragster powered by a blown 392 Hemi running on 100 percent methanol. The setup notched an elapsed time of 7.75 seconds at 178.5 miles-per-hour. “This machine, built by my dad and me, is a family operation and we love the friendships,” said Petersen. “For me, sitting in the seat takes me back to when I was 20 years old. It’s like stepping back in time.”

I sat down with Gibbs in the tent as the Revival was winding down. He was relaxed and wore a slight smile on his expressive face. I asked him what it felt like for the fifth edition of “his baby” to be in the books. With an expression of joy and pride he calmly stated, “It’s rewarding to do something that seems to satisfy a lot of people. The March Meet is a whole different animal, which I enjoy immensely but this event has a social element and is not a race. The goal is to gather the old timers to reflect about the early days of hot rodding, renew friendships and inform youngsters about the roots of drag racing. We’re already working on the sixth edition. All I can say is … be there!”

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If the best time to buy a winter coat is in the summer, perhaps, the best time to purchase a race car is during the winter. Regardless of whether this logic follows, we visited the Hagerty marketplace to see what they had in the way of go-fast rigs and compiled a list of drag strip racers (and one bonus car) for you to peruse.

After all, race cars—like chocolate cake or a good book—never go out of style. (I realize that I may be biased.)

1965 Plymouth Satellite

Drag racing fanatics are sure to recognize the words “Color Me Gone” painted on the doors of this 1965 Plymouth Satellite. Back in 1960s and ’70s, Michigan drag racer Roger Lindamood was a venerable threat on the quarter-mile in a similar Satellite.

Prior to making the leap to full time racer, Lindamood was a transmission specialist for Chrysler. According to drag racing historian Phil Burgess, Linadmood was influential in helping another Detroit-area Mopar team, the Ramchargers, switch from manual transmissions to automatics. Thus, the tribute Satellite for sale, here, has a 727 Torqueflite automatic. The gearbox is mated to a 528-cubic-inch Hemi built by Godfather Racing.

A full roll cage, Mikey Thompson race slicks, and a removable Ram Air hood complete the strip-ready appearance. Though, it’s not just for show. Lindamood’s son raced this car professionally as recently as 2012, and the car comes equipped with a B&M ratchet shifter and Hurst line lock (for supremely smokey burnouts).

Should you wish to transform the Satellite back to a more reserved appearance, all glass and all trim are included in the sale. But why would you? Instead, take it to a local strip and say “Color me gone.”

1993 Dodge Dakota

If you’ve ever wanted a 12-second drag car, this truck might be an excellent place to start. Built for NHRA Stock Eliminator competition, this Dodge Dakota features a dragstrip-ready 318-cubic-inch V8. “I never thought a 318 would have the potential that this Dakota has displayed,” says the seller who has owned the Flame Red pickup since 2004. Since then, they’ve taken the truck down the strip eight to ten times. Front discs help bring the whole show to a stop.

For $21,500, you can own the Dakota with its current 904 Torqueflite automatic transmission. In addition to the pickup, the seller is also selling a new lightweight 904—which, by their estimations, will propel the rig to 12.30-second elapsed times. Regardless of where the truck lands on the time sheets, these 1990s minitrucks look like a hoot at the strip.

1957 Chevrolet 150

The Dakota seller seems to have the market cornered on streetable race cars. Listed from the same stable, this 1957 delivery wagon is powered by a “fresh” 355-cubic-inch small block Chevy. Its seller is in the process of transforming a cruiser into a drag racing Junior Stock competitor, a tribute to their father who started racing in 1964. A Muncie four-speed, Hedman headers, and Cragar SS wheels help round out the image of this American Graffiti-era wagon. It also comes with a barrel of aftermarket parts—some installed, some outside the car—such as CalTrac tractions bars, tubular A-arms, Calvert shocks, and a chambered exhaust to be hung this week.

According to the seller, this Arizona car is rock solid. Should you have the dough, this card-carrying member of the Bowtie brigade would make a perfect stoplight thumper befit for Woodward and retro drag racing alike.

1965 Ford Mustang Pace Car

This is not a race car, nor is it complete. It is worth mentioning for our pace car collectors out there. This 1965 Mustang is in the middle of a full subframe-off restoration, and the seller wants you to take over the project. According to the listing, the bodywork is almost complete, and, from the pictures, we can see the pony taking shape on shop stands.

Of the 180 Mustang pace cars produced this year, only 66 are registered. Should restoration see completion by the next owner, it’s sure to lead the pack at any car show or race track.

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Lamborghini shows the new off-roadable Huracán Sterrato

Intake: For those Lamborghini sports car owners who are intent on, for whatever reason, intentionally driving their cars off-road, we present the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, which is entirely off-roadable. We know because we watched this video that has the Sterrato doing all sorts of un-Lambo-like things, unless you are old enough to remember the Lamborghini LM002 (1986-1993, kids). No specs available yet, beyond a V-10 and heavy-duty all-wheel-drive. Here’s a link to the video: Please turn the sound off if you’re in your 10th-grade math class.

Exhaust: Lamborghini’s answer to the Porsche 911 Dakar (we can’t wait for those comparison tests) debuts in person in Miami on November 30, which seems like a good reason to go to Florida. Plus, it’s gonna be cold in Michigan…  — Steven Cole Smith

Speaking of Lamborghini… boss pins hopes on e-fuels

Intake: As Lamborghini, like every other carmaker, gears up to go electric, CEO Stephan Winkelman says that company is hoping that carbon-neutral synthetic fuels will keeps its engines firing in the future. Speaking to carsguide.com Winkelman said that although the first fully-electric Lamborghini will be on sale “from the end of this decade”, he added that “When it comes to alternatives to battery electric vehicles, we only see one—synthetic fuel. Synthetic fuel as a total is carbon neutral, it has advantages but also has difficulties in terms of supply quantity and infrastructure. This is all something which has to be clarified by legislation and the industry if they want to go down that road,” he said. “We don’t need to decide today, but I can only see full electric cars or synthetic fuel as an alternative. I don’t see other ways for us.”

Exhaust: Winkelman is far from being the only one backing e-fuels as an alternative energy source. Porsche has invested many millions in the technology, with a carbon-neutral factory producing fuel in Chile and a second site in Tasmania, Australia underway that will produce 100 million liters of the green go-juice a year from 2026. — Nik Berg

Toyota teases new fifth-generation Prius

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Intake: Prius sales have been falling steadily, which some analysts blame on the styling, and the fact that midsized cars in general are weakening, as well as the obvious increase in competition. Toyota takes another swing at a fifth-generation model, which the manufacturer will reveal on Wednesday. As a placeholder, Toyota has released another of those candlelit profiles of its taillight. Toyota first showed the current generation Prius in 2015, notes Automotive News. It was one of the first vehicles within the group to use the new TGNA global vehicle architecture that is also expected to underpin the new car.

Exhaust: The current Prius Eco is EPA-rated at a healthy 58 mpg city, 53 mpg highway, with a range of 633 miles. It’ll be interesting to see if Toyota can beat that with the new model. — SCS

Porsche Macan Electric due in 2024 with 603 hp and 300-mile range

Intake: Porsche has dished some details of its upcoming electric Macan SUV, the first of which is that it will, imaginatively, be called the Macan Electric. It will be built on a new platform called PPE, have a 100 kWh battery pack and be available in rear- and all-wheel drive configurations with around 603 horsepower and 730 lb-ft of torque on tap. The rear motor will be mounted behind the axle, 911-style, to give a slight rear weight bias to aid handling, while rear-wheel steering will also be included.  Air suspension will be offered and drive will be via a single-speed transmission, unlike the Taycan’s two-speed unit. It will share the Taycan’s 800-volt charging architecture so owners will be able to charge up from five to 80 percent charge in 25 minutes using the fastest chargers. Although Porsche hasn’t confirmed the car’s predicated range the company said it will be significantly greater than its first EV, which the EPA pegs at 250 miles.

Exhaust: The hefty battery pack and high power are to be expected, but the rear motor positioning is interesting, showing Porsche’s commitment to 911 principles in a post-combustion era. — NB

NHRA finale at Pomoma; Force loses his body

Intake: The Camping World National Hot Rod Association 2022 season wrapped up Sunday at Pomona Raceway, just outside Los Angeles, crowing four season champions: Ron Capps in Funny Car, Brittany Force in Top Fuel, Matt Smith in Motorcycles, and Erica Enders in Pro Stock. The most dramatic moment of Sunday’s race was when Funny Car veteran John Force, 73, driving a “Chevrolet Camaro,” blew up a supercharger and the explosion was enough to send the entire body flying. Force was shaken, but, as usual, did not appear stirred.

Exhaust: The NHRA  had a successful season, with plenty of good racing, albeit with an occasionally short field in several classes. We’re looking forward to the 2023 season, which starts in March at Gainesville Raceway in Florida. — SCS

Ford’s F-150 Raptor R is one thirsty super truck

Intake: The EPA has released fuel economy figures for Ford’s F-150 Raptor R, the 700-horsepower supertruck that we’ve been wanting to see from Ford ever since the Ram TRX stepped into the ring. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, 5.2-liters of supercharged fury, 37-inch tires, and a penchant for rooster tails do not an efficient pickup make: The 2023 Raptor R is rated for 10 mpg city, 15 mpg highway, and 12 mpg combined. That’s on par with the TRX, although the Raptor manages one extra mpg on the highway. (The Ram’s fuel economy figures: 10/14/12, city/highway/combined.) If you want to slay dunes with monster tires and slightly fewer trips to the pump, Ford does offer a Raptor with 37-inch rubber and the EcoBoost V-6 engine, which achieves 15/16/15 mpg, city/highway/combined. Otherwise, the normal Raptor on 35s will reach 15/18/16 mpg city/highway/combined under a prudent foot.

Exhaust: If you’re the type of person shopping for a truck that can flatten acres of gnarly terrain at paces that would make a Corvette blush, you probably aren’t too offended by these numbers. Raptors and TRXs don’t sell on pragmatism. But, if the rise in popularity of some older gas-guzzling SUVs is any indication, sometimes the tradeoffs for what you get are worth it come the time of reckoning at the pump. You won’t hear us knocking you for choosing a 700-horsepower dune slayer. — Nathan Petroelje

OK, Subaru, for the last time…

Intake: We showed you the candlelit roof outline of the new Impreza hatchback that will debut later this week at the LA Auto Show: Now here’s part of the grille.

Exhaust: You owe us, Subaru. — SCS

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Former NASCAR and IndyCar champion Tony Stewart, who has competed in IMSA, World of Outlaws, USAC and dozens of other racing series, will add the NHRA to his resume this weekend when he races a dragster at the NHRA Nevada Nationals. Now, after a hall of fame career of turning left and right, Stewart intends to keep things going straight.

The driver’s drag racing debut should come as no surprise. Stewart is married to Leah Pruett, a Top Fuel dragster driver, and that relationship drew Stewart to the NHRA, where he is in his first year as a team owner for Tony Stewart Racing, fielding a Top Fueler for Pruett, and a Funny Car for Matt Hagan.

Stewart has tested Pruett’s Top Fueler, but is choosing something a little milder for his debut: A Top Alcohol dragster owned by Pennsylvania-based McPhillips Racing, one of the main contenders in alcohol racing. The rail looks a lot like the Top Fuel dragster, but is toned down a bit in appearance, and the engines run on alcohol instead of nitromethane.

They are still fast, though; Jasmine Salinas, daughter of Top Fuel driver Mike Salinas, won an event earlier this year in a McPhillips car. She was the top qualifier with a speed of 274.50 mph at 5.288 seconds. That’s the kind of speed Stewart will need this weekend if he plans to challenge the other 20 cars in his class, many of which are driven by experienced racers.

Stewart confirmed in a Zoom conference Tuesday afternoon that he graduated from the Frank Hawley School of Drag Racing, earning his NHRA license, and he has made a total of six practice runs in the Top Alcohol dragster. All the runs were solo, though, and he has never faced an opponent in the opposite lane.

Stewart said after the shakedown test in Redding, Pennsylvania he was told by the McPhillips team that they thought he was finally ready to run a race.

Fate would plug him into the cockpit sooner rather than later. The regular driver who was supposed to race the car at Las Vegas “had another commitment,” so the semi-retired Stewart took advantage of the open seat: “With the team’s confidence, it gave me the confidence to say, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.'”

Stewart said that those who have followed his career know that, “I don’t have a history of being a very good spectator. I watch, and then I want to know what it feels like in the driver’s seat.”

He added: “I just love the sport of drag racing. All the forms of motorsports that I’ve been a part of, the NHRA and drag racing is off on its own island.”

It’s no secret that Stewart, who still co-owns a five-car NASCAR Cup and Xfinity team, has had some harsh words for NASCAR lately. The three-time Cup Series champ is frustrated with the stock car series, largely surrounding a batch of severe penalties that NASCAR has dealt his teams for a few different rule infractions.

In an interview with the Associated Press, he said, “I’m so mad at NASCAR right now. I’m not talking about it…If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve got appearances to make, I wouldn’t be at another NASCAR race for the rest of the year. Wouldn’t waste my time.”

Stewart was at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend for the NASCAR race, and was supposed to be the Grand Marshal, but country singer Kip Moore filled in, igniting rumors online that Stewart had been fired from the job. Not so, according to Autoweek: Said a Stewart spokesperson, “It was merely a scheduling issue that we needed to address. Tony voluntarily stepped down from the grand marshal position so that he had the time to engage with partners associated with Stewart-Haas Racing that were onsite at Homestead.”

Regardless, Stewart said in the Zoom conference that, at 51, he might as well start a new career in drag racing. “I’ve retired from NASCAR, and sprint car racing is getting harder and harder.” He added that he’s too old for IndyCar.

Funny Car drag racer John Force is still winning at 73. If the weekend goes the right way for Stewart, few would be surprised to see him back, challenging the quarter-mile, with a whole new driving career.

The post Hall-of-famer Tony Stewart is racing again—in a dragster appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Irwindale Speedway, a half-mile paved oval track and an eighth-mile drag strip located just east of Los Angeles, has been pronounced dead almost as many times as actor Abe Vigoda (who finally, actually died in 2016). But Irwindale persists, though a new threat has arisen.

Irwindale Speedway opened March 27, 1999, with a seating capacity of about 6,500–nowhere near enough to attract NASCAR Cup or Xfinity races (NASCAR had the Fontana two-mile oval for that), but it should have been able to draw a crowd with weekly late-model shows, drifting, and other events, including dozens of TV commercials and movies filmed inside its walls. Numerous present day NASCAR drivers, from Joey Logano to Kurt Busch, have sharpened their skills on the progressively-banked oval.

Irwindale was built on a narrow strip of rocky land squeezed between a gravel quarry and the 610 freeway, which, at the time, seemed like a piece of crappy real estate no one would want. But suitors began showing up at Irwindale government offices almost from day one. In March of 2015, developers proposed a 700,000 square-foot outlet mall on the property. Yet Irwindale hung on as one of the last tracks in the Los Angeles area. Ascot, Riverside, Ontario and Saugus have all fallen to the steamrollers, and NASCAR is currently trying to decided what to do with its underperforming track in Fontana, Auto Club Speedway.)

Enter, new property owner IDS Real Estate, and a proposal for a five-unit industrial park called Speedway Commerce Center. Could this finally be the end of Irwindale?

Not so fast.

It isn’t IDS Real Estate, but the City of Irwindale that is proposing the Speedway Commerce Center, with the purpose of “increasing employment opportunity in the City of Irwindale.” Tim Huddleston, the Speedway’s president, published a piece on the track’s website headlined, “No Checkered Flag in Sight!”

He continues: “I would like to welcome IDS Real Estate Group to these hallowed grounds. The feedback and support we have received from them throughout the process has been great and we look forward to the operation of Irwindale Speedway and Irwindale Dragstrip for years to come.” So, we wait, with fingers crossed that the new proposal isn’t a death blow to the famed bullring.

“The saga of Irwindale Speedway is a strange one,” understated Doug Stokes, who handled public relations for the track for years. And thus, another chapter begins in this track’s curious story.

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Old habits die hard. Just ask Wayne Louis II of Broadview Heights, Ohio. He’s 44 years old now, married, with four boys. He spent much of his own youth with his parents, at the dragstrip and at van-ins, growing up around race cars and custom vans during their ‘70s heyday. While the van craze dimmed as the 1980s marched on, Wayne never let his enthusiasm dwindle. His big, beautiful, burgundy 1976 Dodge Tradesman is evidence of a flame still burning, as it tows, drag races, and camps its way around the Midwest.

The van roots run deep in Wayne. His parents divorced when he was 8, which is when the family van-ins stopped. However, you can take the kid out of the van, but you can’t take the van out of the kid. Once he got a driver’s license of his own, Wayne was back on the scene in full force. He even skipped his senior prom to go to a van-in—now that’s dedication. A few years later, the Louis family van tradition came full circle, and Wayne reintroduced his father to van culture. Years later, it’s an activity that they still enjoy together.
For a time, Wayne balanced his two loves—race cars and custom vans—by owning one of each. It wasn’t long before he realized that one of these vehicles was getting way more attention while the other was gathering dust. “I can take a van to a car show but cars can’t come to van-ins,” he explains. “I spent way more time in the van and only liked the car because it was fast, so I just combined them.” The man is nothing if not pragmatic.

That’s how he ended up with a short-wheelbase ’76 Tradesman that can run in the 10s at the drag strip. It’s powered by a massive Blueprint 540 big-block pumping out 700 horsepower, augmented by an Induction Solutions 250-shot nitrous plate system nestled between the carburetor and intake manifold. That prodigious power is sent through a built TH400 transmission, then to a beefy Dana 60 rear end with Moser axles, a spool, fat rear tires, and 3.73 gears “so I can still drive it on the freeway,” Louis explains. The result is an all-motor best pass of 10.98 in the quarter-mile.

“Now that everything is dialed in, we can start putting the spray to it,” says Louis. It won’t be long before he’s hunting venomous snakes and exorcizing demons in his do-it-all Dodge. “I drive it with the exact same setup as I race it. I wanted the van to ‘check all the boxes,’ so it has a full shaggin’ wagon interior and custom paint; I didn’t want to leave any ‘yeah, buts’ on the table.”

This genius Dodge may be the perfect one-car solution. Racing is expensive enough as it is, right? Who wants to deal with and fuel up up a tow rig, let alone find parking? His solution makes a bizarre kind of sense: just drive your race car to the track. “I can’t drive on slicks,” you might say. Throw ‘em in the back of the van. “But I need a place to put my tools!” Throw ‘em in the back of the van. “Where am I gonna sleep?” Throw yourself in the back of the van. Most people have to climb a mountain and sit cross-legged for a few years to achieve Wayne’s level of kind of enlightenment.

It’s taken three years to get the Tradesman to its current, spectacular state. Most recently, he and his father stripped, painted, and detailed the entire undercarriage. “It’s as much show as go,” he says, as if the shag carpet and kitchenette nestled in between roll cage bars didn’t make that clear enough.

The father-son duo’s goal for this season just enjoy the beautiful thing they’ve built, as well as the culture around it. “Vanners are extremely positive and supportive; you can go to a car show with a quarter-million dollar build and someone will point out the blemish. You can go to a van-in with a rust bucket and everyone will tell you how cool your custom steering wheel is.” The latter is the kind of show most of us would rather attend.

As far as the “go” half of the equation is concerned, Wayne and his father have become pretty involved in the no-prep drag racing scene, where the fast Tradesman has been a hit. “Everyone in the no-prep world has been very supportive,” Louis says, giving special credit to popular no-prep personalities Limpy, JJ, and Chris Lane.

As you can imagine, a vehicle like this is responsible for making great memories. So far, Wayne’s favorite has been getting a thumbs-up from Limpy while the van was pulling up to the starting line. Every step of the process has been special, Wayne says, as it’s all been part of the unforgettable experience he’s shared with his dad.

Wayne is one of those eminently quotable individuals that people are lucky enough to come across every now and again. Like Oscar Wilde, the Dalai Lama, or your old college roommate who could drink Bud Light through his nose. His sage advice for those who might want to get into vanning? “Van shows are meant to inspire you, not to intimidate you,” he says. “Find a local event and just show up, I guarantee you’ll leave with at least a half-dozen genuine friends.”

Sounds like a party. And there ain’t no party like a drag-racin’, shaggin’ wagon van party.

Cam VanDerHorst is a stand-up comedian and lifelong car enthusiast from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

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Bring a Trailer has become wildly popular in the last few years, and the bizarre and interesting project cars that were common in its early days have given way to rare, low-mileage collectibles that bring big money. This listing, however, brings the site back to its roots, but you don’t need to bring your own trailer, as this jet-powered dragster comes with its own 44-foot gooseneck for transport.

The tube-chassis dragster has been fitted with a two-piece fiberglass body so that it resembles a Mercedes-Benz W126 limousine. Because why not? There’s no real race where a jet-powered dragster could compete, so it might as well look interesting, and this one looks like it came fresh from an early ’80s time capsule, complete with lightning graphics over neon colors. Even though it was built in the mid-1990s, this new paint job certainly fits the era of the W126. If the new owner does feel the need for jet-assisted speed and squeeze out a few more miles-per-hour, a more traditional dragster body is included.

Powering the block-long quarter-mile missile is a Westinghouse J34 turbojet engine, with an afterburner. We’re not sure which specific J-34 it uses, but even without an afterburner the turbine pushes out 3000 pounds of thrust. Depending on the application, the thrust with the afterburner could be as high as 4900 pounds.

There’s no simple way to convert thrust to horsepower, so it’s tough to imagine just how quick this contraption is. Luckily we found a video of what has to be this very same limo making an exhibition pass in New Jersey in 1995, where it ran 235 mph. The video touts the engine as producing more than 15,000 hp, but its performance, while impressive, isn’t in the realm of Top Fuel dragsters that actually are producing five-digit horsepower.

Despite the complex powerplant, the cockpit of the dragster is remarkably simple. Unlike the typical home of a turbojet, there are no controls for pitch or roll, just a steering yoke, three gauges, and levers for the throttle and parachute. Upkeep of a powerful jet engine may seem daunting, although it might be a whole lot easier than the kind of twin-turbo V-8s that would otherwise be necessary to match the performance of a jet. It’s also gotta be much easier on tires!

The vehicle is located in Waikoloa, Hawaii, which is on the northwest side of the big island, and comes with a bill of sale for the car and Hawaiian registration for the trailer. We’re not sure how much it would cost to get a 44-foot trailer shipped back to the mainland, but we’re sure that potential buyers will have that factored into the price. With nearly all of its week-long auction yet to go, bidding has barely started at $3500. You can be sure we’ll keep our eyes on this one, as we hope it makes its way back to the strip.

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There is nothing quite as American as taking an off-road-oriented SUV and stuffing enough motor up its snout to turn quarter-mile times that would shame yesterday’s pony cars. In the latest episode of Ultimate Drag Race Replay, host Jason Cammisa pits two of America’s rowdiest SUVs against worldwide offerings with similar muck-turned-muscle pedigrees. Let’s meet the contenders.

The newest super-ute hails from Dearborn by way of the Cretaceous Period: Ford’s Bronco Raptor. With a twin-turbocharged, 3.0-liter EcoBoost V-6 sending 418 hp and 440 lb-ft to all four wheels through a 10-speed automatic, this sandy Scud missile is ready to devour anything—rocks, dirt, pavement, poodles, etc.—in its path.

The only thing stateside that might prove too big for the Braptor to chew, however, is Jeep’s Wrangler Rubicon 392. You know it well: 6.4 liters of Hemi V-8 fury, 470 hp, 470 lb-ft, eight forward gears, and a penchant for waking the neighbors.

To decide the king of the star-spangled hill, Cammisa lines up the Braptor and the Wrangler. 3… 2… We’ll spoil the result here: the Rubicon wins—but you’ll need to watch the video to see the margin of victory. (It’s considerable.) Dead dinosaur in rearview, the Wrangler steps up to the world stage, where it meets two formidable contenders from Germany and England.

First, Mercedes-AMG’s G 63, the inimitable Geländewagen in peak road-going form. Its twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V-8 churns out a whopping 577 hp and 627 lb-ft of torque, meted to all four wheels through a nine-speed automatic transmission.

Though down on power relative to the G, Land Rover’s Defender 90 V-8 still packs a punch: 518 hp and 461 lb-ft of torque from a 5.0-liter supercharged V-8, delivered to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic.

There’s no replacement for watching the three brutes in a dead sprint, but the G takes the bacon … handily. More interesting, perhaps, is how well-matched the Wrangler and the Defender are. As Cammisa explains, the Wrangler’s short gearing is a boon off the line, but once the Defender’s running through the longer gears, the gap opened by the Jeep closes at an alarming rate. Had this makeshift drag strip been two feet longer, the Defender would have clipped the Hemi-huffin’ Rubicon.

Because this is his show and he makes the rules (and that document only has like, four lines in it), Cammisa also pits the Über-G against a different foe: a 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo. Despite a yowling, 493-horse V-10, an aerodynamic shape, and a curb weight that’s nearly one whole Miata lighter than the G, the race is much closer than you’d expect.

“Who wins the race” is an easy question to answer; the why is a bit more complicated. For instance, how does a SUV like the Defender V-8, which has 48 extra ponies and just 75 pounds of surplus heft, get dropped off the line by the Jeep? In short, gear ratios—specifically the final drive ratios of the Rover and Jeep’s rear axles (3.6 vs. 4.56, respectively). The latter helps the Jeep catapult to 60 mph nearly a half-second quicker. The Jeep’s off-the-line advantage comes despite its chunky, 35-inch tires; the Defender has an easier time, clad in 32-inch rubber.

Tire type also plays a factor here. Both the Jeep and the Braptor wear portly BF Goodrich KO2 rubber clearly meant to lay waste to dirt and rocks, not to slay stoplights. Meanwhile, the Rover and the G 63 get serious street-spec rubber from Continental and Pirelli, respectively. Aside from providing better off-the-line grip, the latter tires’ lower rolling resistances enables the two overseas competitors to reach top speeds of 150 mph, while the Jeep and Bronco fall well short.

(But what happens if you try drag racing on the dirt? Don’t worry—that one’s coming.)

0-to-60 times below six seconds used to be reserved for exotic sports cars and glorious American muscle. As of 2022, off-roaders are now crashing the party. Heck, the quickest of these SUV can toe the line against a Lamborghini that’s barely old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros. If that’s not an indication of how far internal-combustion performance has come in the last decade or two, nothing is.

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Most metro high schools have a larger enrollment than West Salem’s total population of 1464 people. Even so, the town in rural Northeast Ohio has an impressive roster of local heroes, including Dean Chance, the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, at 23 years old; and Jacob Wilson Parrott, a Civil War soldier who received America’s first Medal of Honor for high-jacking a Confederate locomotive and escaping from imprisonment behind enemy lines.

West Salem is also the home to Dragway 42, a quarter-mile drag strip that dates back to 1957. Every summer since 2006 multitudes gather at the two-lane drag strip for the Rock-n-Race festival, temporarily inflating the municipality’s humble population.

Among vintage drag-racing events, especially in the Midwest, Dragway 42’s annual celebration of music and motorsport ranks near the top. Everyone from Tom Wolfe’s Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby grew up (and now has grandchildren), but they still know how to get down, just like they did when Kennedy was in office. Families, friends, veterans, and young guns join the fray, converging on West Salem’s strip for a weekend of fast passes—and one rather raucous burnout contest that most likely killed every mosquito in Ohio.

Dragway 42 is an absolute palace of speed, but it wasn’t always that way. Prior to its purchase by the current owner Ron Matcham, in 2013, the facility had fallen into disrepair. Under Matcham’s ownership, the facility underwent a $14 million renovation. The overhaul included flipping the direction of quarter-mile strip for a longer runoff area and laying an all-concrete surface. Beyond the freshly painted retaining walls, crew piled two large hills for spectators and lined a few hundred yards with aluminum grandstands purchased from Daytona International Speedway.

Where the seats end, fans erect make-shift campsites with easy-ups, beach blankets, and foldable chairs. Spectators watch from on high, as if in an amphitheater built for a troupe of speed-seekers both local and far-flung. “The track is smooth and is prepped well,” says Tom Kowal, who drove from Southeast Michigan to point his Dragmaster rail down the strip. “Between the surface and the bands, it’s always a good time.”

On the east hill, staff positioned a defunct trailer to house the bands that play throughout the day and deep into the night. Electric guitars and gravel-voiced singers scrape out covers of classic rock and punk favorites.

While the music and the ranks of carnival food trailers, which serve everything from hand-pressed lemonade to gooey nacho buckets, are proper window dressing for an old-school affair, the main attractions are the period-correct drag cars that line the paddock. Funnies, altered, gassers—Rock-n-Race welcomes a multitude of running classes, including vintage street cars. For three days, racers are ushered two-by-two through the staging lanes and down the drag way.

I spent an evening at the track with a Canon 1DX Mark 1 in hand, taking in the sights of Dragway 42’s vintage festival. After shooting some 1700 frames, I narrowed it down to about 50. Grab a nacho bucket and click through the scenes from West Salem. Smells and sunburn not included.

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The “Bakersfield Sound” was born in the 1950s, and perfected in the 1960s, by a cast of musicians and entertainers hailing from the desolate oil fields of Bakersfield, California. This new country music palette became a global phenomenon, no doubt enhanced by Hall-of-Famers Buck Owens and Merle Haggard—who gained international prominence for no-nonsense lyrics sung over twangy guitars, punchy drums, saccharine fiddles. Mention Bakersfield to any Nashville fanatic and they likely bring up ol’ Buck and Merle.

Blake Bowser thinks a third member should be added to Bakersfield list of local celebs. “Bakersfield is Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and the March Meet,” he says. Bowser serves as the vice president—and general manager—of the Kern County Racing Association. The group operates Famoso Dragstrip in Bakersfield and annually welcomes throngs of vintage racing fanatics for their March Meet drag racing festival.

I attended my first March Meet in the mid-1970s. I had just graduated from the Art Center College of Design and was freelancing for Hot Rod, Car Craft, and Popular Hot Rodding. Through the Grape Vine, I annually trekked up to the drag strip in Bako.

Famoso was birthed by a local car club called the “Smokers,” in 1959. It was later sanctioned by the U.S. Fuel Championships, who was nicknamed the annual vintage gathering, the “March Meet.” Driving behind a blown, nitro-chugging, fuel-injected, supercharged 392 Hemi, the late Art Chrisman was the first to top 180 miles-per-hour, in his Hustler I dragster. He would go on to win the first March Meet.

Famoso raceway was built in a great location, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, amid dense agricultural crops and very few people. If you take a back road to the track in March, you drive through miles of peach trees in full bloom. In the San Joaquin Valley, peaches fall to the ground like snowflakes. The tumbling fruit serves as Mother Nature’s call for drag racers to gather a Famoso.

In the early days of drag racing, youngsters street-raced in Bakersfield. Fresh from having served their country in World War II, these men and women had only hot rods on their minds. While the locals considered them to be outlaws, they would go on to be the pioneers of drag racing.

The inaugural U.S. Gas and Fuel Championship in 1959, was a momentous event as east faced west, in a showdown that featured young Florida-native Don Garlits. Garlits was enticed to travel west with a hefty sum of dough. He would race against the top dogs from the West Coast. Eventually, Garlits lost in his Swamp Rat I against Art Chrisman in Hustler I. The simple fact that Garlits showed up put the track—and March Meet—on the map. Over the years, the annual event became a racer’s race for drivers and a dream event for spectators.

Many drag racing firsts occurred first at Famoso. In 1962, Chris “the Greek” Karamestines became the first driver to break eight seconds at Famoso with a 7.99 second pass. Tony “the Loner” Nancy raced to his first major victory in the event’s 12^th year. Garlits drove his innovative rear-engined dragster to victory over the front-engined of Rick Ramsey. The popular Bakersfield team of Warren and Coburn finally won their first March Meet in 1975. In 1982, Shirley Muldowney and Lucille Lee battled in an all-women Top Fuel finale, for the first time. (Lee ran a 5.59 second pass, thus beating Muldowney.)

In 1994, the March Meet became a nostalgia race, featuring cars produced before 1972. Nowadays, it’s referred to as “the jewel of nostalgia racing.” With decent purses (at least enough to buy dinner) up for grabs, old school racers flock to revisit Famoso for the glory days racing sticky, shiny black asphalt. Two-speed planetary funny car transmissions, the direct drive top fuelers, and the behemoth altered dragsters feature modern day technology for safety, despite their nostalgic appearance.

This year, I found a few well-seasoned racers that actually pounded the pavement back in the day. They were enjoying the colorful vintage car show filled with pre-1975 street rods, muscle cars, and classics. They lined a portion of the property called, “Famoso Grove.” Adjacent to the show, it’s a huge automotive swap meet, a vendors midway, and a food aisle, featuring bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

One of my all-time favorite classes is the wild-and-wiggly AA/Fuel Altered group. There were many crowd favorites in that drag class, but one stood out from the rest. I’m referring to the original hot rod from hell; considered the world’s quickest and fastest Fuel Altered. It was none other than Rich Guasco’s Pure Hell. Guasco, now in his nineties, built and raced the machine in 1964. Featuring a 92-inch wheelbase and a nitro-burning small block Chevrolet, driver Dale “the Snail” Emery sat behind the wheel.

“Its just like when we raced in the 60s,” says Guasco. “It’s all the same but everything is more expensive, and we know a lot more. You still work your ass off and try to go as fast as you can.” Whether ripping down the quarter-mile or popping a huge wheelstand, the car puts on a fantastic show. They say Pure Hell’s nickname came from its owner’s fiery temper, as described by painter Tony Del Rio. In 1992, Guasco restored Pure Hell after it was destroyed in a wreck. Now it has an Emery-built 392 cubic-inch Hemi, sitting on a 106-inch frame, with Brian Hope in the seat, and runs 5.8 second elapsed time at 245 miles-per-hour. “We have pinion supports, now, upgraded fire suits, and slider clutch.” says Guasco. “We know so much more about fuel so a trouble-free pass is much more attainable…but you never know. Everybody had a fire in the old days. We come now, not only to win, but to see old friends and share stories”

I cornered Steve Gibbs, the first director of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum and former board member. Gibbs spent a good part of his youth at the March Meet and was part of every phase of drag racing. Gibbs is now promoting his next “Nitro Revival” at Irwindale Dragstrip, later in November. They’re marketing the event as a “cackle-clismic proportion, a sensual smorgasbord of sight, sound and smell.” It is created by racing people, for racing people. (You can learn more at nitrorevival.com.)

Gibbs’ career began back in 1961, on the old San Gabriel Drag Strip. In 1998, he was instrumental in the development of the Museum in Pomona, California. “I’ve been coming out Famoso since 1957, back when it was just a Smokers weekend race,” says Gibbs. “This track was kind of an outlaw track, doing whatever they wanted. The NHRA banned nitro from 1958 to 1963. That’s what made this place so popular. They ran nitro here, and couldn’t keep the nitro fans away. This is Mecca, this is Woodstock; the kind of event and brings back all the old timers to reminisce and reflect.”

Racing legend Don Ewald piloted the Buttera-built BankAmericar Top Fuel digger and campaigned with his brother John during the sport’s glory days in Southern California. They considered Famoso to be a home away from home and a place to get together with friends and share stories. “It was very unorganized, but the purses weren’t that bad,” says Ewald of Famoso. “You’d come in, find a place to park, and that was your pit. The only rule back in the day was you had to be “fired” (running) by 5:00 pm. I’m still here because I love nitro and I love drag racing. It always gives me something to look forward to and I have a wife that supports that…that’s why I’m married for 25 years,” he adds with smile.

March Meet is one of the most prestigious drag races on the vintage circuit. It kicks off the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage points series–which coincidentally ends at Famoso in October. Then, come spring, when the peaches start to fall like snowflakes, they’ll do it all over again.

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Six-time NHRA champion Don Prudhomme made a living piloting eye-catching race cars down the quarter-mile. Early in his career he drove the Hawaiian rail for the Leone family, and in the ’70s, he campaigned an Army-sponsored Chevy Monza. But his greatest fame came when he teamed up with Tom “Mongoose” McEwen, and they match-raced their funny cars—the “Mongoose” Duster and the “Snake” Barracuda—in the late-’60s. The pairing caught the attention of Mattel, leading to premium sponsorship for both cars, a line of Hot Wheels toys, and eventually a feature film titled “Snake & Mongoose.” McEwen died in 2018 at the age of 81.

Prudhomme turned 81 last month, as he prepped for a 1000-mile off-road down the Baja California peninsula. Just last year, after his class victory in the NORRA 1000, Prudhomme called it quits on off-road racing. “Yep, I said that,” Prudhomme recalls. “But Baja is just a place that keeps calling me back to try it one more time. I think we can win it again.

“I’m just ready to go—I’m 81 years old, but I still feel like I’m 51.” Aside from a sciatic nerve in his back that keeps acting up, Prudhomme says he’s in amazingly good shape. “I’ve been blessed. And I just got a cortisone shot for the sciatica, so my back should be good to go.”

Prudhomme and racer Dick Firestone (yes, from the tire family) will be racing the retired drag racer’s modified Can-Am UTV once again. “We’ve done some work on it, and it should be a little faster,” Prudhomme says of his wicked-looking side-by-side. In fact, when we spoke to the Snake—a nickname he earned in high school growing up in Southern California—he was taking the shocks from the Can-Am to veteran off-road racer and tuner Walker Evans for some last-minute tweaks. Apparently, it’s a star-studded affair, as P.J. Jones, son of racing legend Parnelli Jones, will be helping out, too.

“We’re serious about it,” Prudhomme says. “If we weren’t, we’d have no business heading down there.”

The 1000-mile scramble is sanctioned by the National Off Road Racing Association (NORRA). The first NORRA Mexican 1000 ran in 1967, and eventually transitioned into what we know known as the Baja 1000. The NORRA 1000 is a little more low-key than the Baja 1000, with five days allowed to cover the 1000 miles.

Each year, the route is different, and unlike the Baja 1000, you can’t pre-run this race. You don’t get the chip containing the route for your GPS until the day before the race. Drivers have less than 24 hours to study the downloaded map before they careen off into the desert. “It’s tough,” Prudhomme says. “Some days we’ll do 250 miles, some days 150, but we’ll average 200 miles over the five days.”

The race starts Monday, May 2, and runs through the following Friday. (It is live-streamed at NORRA.com.) The field is comprised of restored vintage race cars, historic vehicles, as well as modern-day, high-tech race cars, trucks, and motorcycles as they traverse the challenging and spectacular landscape of Baja, Mexico.

“I like going fast,” Prudhomme says. “I don’t go crazy fast anymore, I just go fast.”

Prudhomme went crazy fast for years. As a teenager, he joined a Southern California car club called the Road Kings of Burbank. “They had a dragster that they took to a track near where I lived, and I got to drive it. I was hooked. Absolutely hooked.”

Prudhomme won his first national event in 1965. (If you have Roku on your television, there’s a 24-hour NHRA drag racing channel, and they’ve been airing vintage black-and-white coverage of the first win for Prudhomme and his rail dragster.) Not long after, he moved to full-bodied Funny Cars. The Snake is one of the few drivers who have won titles in the NHRA’s Top Fuel and Funny Car classes.

According to veteran Prudhomme, the dragsters are easier to drive, but he preferred Funny Cars, and won four titles in the fiberglass floppers. “They’re a little trickier, but they are the most exciting to drive,” he says. He was also the first Funny Car driver to top 250 mph. Prudhomme eventually retired from driving in 1994 but continued to own winning race teams.

As for drag racing today, “I wish I had a lot of good things to say. It costs so damn much money to be in it professionally,” says “the Snake.” To race, you have to bring a lot of sponsorship, or your folks supply the money, or you marry into it, or something. The cost has run a lot of the good people out. But that’s the way it is with all professional racing. It’s all about money.”

“I’m glad I came up when I did. It was the golden years, really – the building of the sport, the innovation, the ability to do new things. I’m so glad I raced when I did,” says Prudhomme.

He added: “And I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing now.”

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New Wagoneer owners can now (kind of) live that woodgrain life

Intake: Almost as soon as Stellantis yanked the silk off the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer siblings last Spring, questions began bubbling up like a bad case of heartburn. “No woody option?” “Where’s the woody option?” Wagonmaster, a shop in Texas, was hot on the trail. “We noticed along with the rest of the world that the woodgrain was not going to be a part of [the Wagoneer], at least from the factory,” said Chip Miller, Wagonmaster’s CEO. “We said then, that we could come up with a solution.” For $1750, you can now buy a woodgrain vinyl and molding trim from Wagonmaster to install on your new 2022 Wagoneer or Grand Wagoneer. It’s the same 3M Control-Trac Vinyl that the shop uses for kits for the original Grand Wagoneers, just cut to fit the new model. Miller says the kits will be available on Wagonmaster’s website in the next two weeks.

Exhaust: It was only a matter of time before someone pulled this off. It’s fitting that a leading restoration shop for the original Wagoneer, one that has worked closely with Stellantis since the rollout of the new body-on-frame utes, is the one to do it. The lucky few customers who have the kit already installed on a new Wagoneer (mostly dealers using it as a demo, but a few local clients as well) are smitten, according to Miller. “Without exception, everyone who has seen it in person has been wowed.” We think it makes the exterior of the new Wagoneer look pretty sweet. What do you think?

The NHRA unleashes the Demon (and Tesla Plaid)

Intake: The National Hot Rod Association is the top sanctioning body for those that live for the staging lanes and quarter-mile wide-open runs. One of its most popular programs is the Street Legal group, which allows NHRA-licensed contestants to grab a helmet and safety jacket, roll up to the strip, and send it. But the class has had some safety constraints that in recent years have disallowed certain high-performance OEM cars from competing just because of how quickly stock cars can now run the quarter. Thankfully, an announcement today will change those rules for the better.  Now, racers with 2014 and newer model-year cars that are capable of running 9.00 seconds and/or 150 mph in the standing quarter mile may compete in Street Legal class events without the additional roll cage and other safety gear previously required for those speeds. That means a green light for the previously-outlawed Dodge Demon, as well as Tesla’s bonkers Model S Plaid. Additionally, racers with 2008–2013 OEM model-year machines will be permitted to run as quick as 10.00 seconds and/or 135-mph in the standing quarter. The NHRA says that the move comes as an effort to “keep pace with current trends in the high-performance auto industry” and notes that changes to the program “will allow a broader and more diverse range of vehicles for the participants and give recognition to their on track performance.”

Exhaust: Remember when Dodge took out a full-page ad in some of the buff books back in 2017 that was a literal reprint of the ban letter from the NHRA? Those were because the Demon’s 9.65-second quarter-mile pass was—at the time—too fast to be legal. The times, they are a-changin’. This marks the second time the NHRA has revisited this rule. The first change was in 2012, when the line dropped from 11.5 seconds to the 9.99 mark. That was a fast mark back in 2012, but cars like the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, Tesla Model S Plaid, Shelby GT500, and of course, the Dodge Demon have pushed the capability of production cars even faster, spurring this rule update from the NHRA. One caveat to the new change: Your Demon or Model S Plaid may now be legal in stock form, but you will still need an NHRA license and some personal safety gear, including a helmet, fire-rated jacket, long pants, and closed shoes to show and go. Be sure to read the full rule on the NHRA website to arrive at the track prepared and ready to lay down your best passes.

Carbon Cobra weighs 88 pounds, packs 800 hp

Intake: Classic Recreations has crafted the lightest Shelby Cobra body ever made. Made of carbon fiber, the entire shell, including hood and doors, weighs just 88 lbs. Uniquely, the carbon structure is so stiff this Cobra doesn’t require a tubular chassis like its predecessors, and will “rival current supercars in weight and horsepower” according Shelby American. Carbon fiber tackles the first part while the second is covered by a supercharged Ford Performance Gen 3 Coyote engine generating more than 800 hp. A T56 Magnum Tremec transmission and Wilwood six-piston brakes are fitted. Dubbed the Diamond Edition to celebrate 60 years of Shelby American, it is officially licensed, will get CSX serial numbers, and be built by a new special division at Classic Recreations. Only ten will be made, priced at $1.2 million apiece.

Exhaust: Classic Recreations founder Jason Engel says that this project fulfills a Carroll Shelby ambition. “A dream of Carroll’s was always to place the highest horsepower engine possible in the lightest, most agile car imaginable and it is our honor to have met that challenge.”

Rivian raises prices, drawing ire of customers with reservations, then backtracks

Intake: When dual-motored versions of Rivian’s R1T truck and R1S SUV with smaller batteries were rumored, all signs indicated that the cost of entry would decrease and afford more people the opportunity to consider the fledgling EV brand. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Rivian leadership is citing inflationary pressure, increased parts costs, and consistent supply chain disruptions as reasons for why its entry-level dual-motor configuration is now being slotted in at $67,500, the price once held by its quad-motor setup. Meanwhile, said quad-motored R1Ts have now swelled $12K over prior sticker, while the R1S is up $14.5K. Only those who are in the final stages of the transaction will be spared from the price jump. Flummoxed buyers are reassessing their options, publishing grievances all over the Twittersphere and even go as far as cancelling their reservations. The harsh reality of the situation isn’t sitting well for a company that once had the luxury of lowering prices back in 2020 when interest for the upstart EVs came pouring in. The mixed messaging is a tough timing for Rivian’s forward momentum, as the company focuses on dousing a separate fire by breaking ground this summer on a contentious facility in Georgia that will triple production capability when it comes online in 2024.

Exhaust: Rivian isn’t the only manufacturer getting slapped around by covid chaos, but that won’t make this steep price hike feel any less frustrating for those on the waiting list. Unexpected price increases aren’t unheard of in the world EVs. Just this past summer, Tesla had to explain price hikes in its Model 3 and Model Y models. However, in most cases, prices rose by a couple thousand, and price honoring remained in effect. All of this lends validity to the Automotive News report, where a former executive pointed out at $67,500 Rivian would be taking a loss on each R1T, and claimed that the leadership waited until after the IPO to raise prices.

(UPDATE 3/03/22 9:38 a.m. ET: In a letter to existing reservation holders released this morning, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe stated that Rivian would honor the original prices for existing reservation holders. “As we worked to update pricing to reflect these cost increases, we wrongly decided to make these changes apply to all future deliveries, including pre-existing configured preorders,” said Scaringe. “We failed to appreciate how you viewed your configuration as price locked, and we wrongly assumed the announced Dual-Motor and Standard battery pack would provide configurations that would deliver price points similar to your original configuration. While this was the logic, it was wrong and we broke your trust in Rivian … I am truly sorry and am committed to rebuilding your trust.” The letter makes clear that anyone with a Rivian preorder as of the March 1 pricing announcement, the original price will be honored. What’s more, if a reservation holder had canceled their preorder on or after March 1 and would like to reinstate it, Rivian will restore the original pricing, configuration, and delivery timing.)

Not everyone digs Andretti’s F1 ambitions

Intake: Last month, the racing world was whipped into a frenzy when Mario Andretti announced that his son, Michael Andretti, had applied to the FIA to field a new team in F1, dubbed Andretti Global. Reception to the announcement was overwhelmingly positive, but according to a new report from Autosport, not everyone in the F1 paddock is as keen to see another team come through. Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff and Red Bull Chief Christian Horner both voiced concerns about another team, with Wolff arguing that Andretti Global would need to prove what benefits it would bring to the sport as a whole (besides the $200M entry fee) if it was to be welcomed. Unsurprisingly, Michael Andretti was caught off guard by the comments. “I thought that it would be a no-brainer to get done and just go,” the potential team principal told Autosport. “But obviously nothing’s that way in Formula 1.”

Exhaust: This isn’t the first fly in Andretti’s F1-curious ointment. Last year, a deal to purchase the Alfa Romeo racing team fell through at the 11th hour. With Renault recently announced as the potential engine supplier for the team and Mario assuring that all of the funding and strategy is set in place, all that’s left to do is get the green light from the FIA, a famously cantankerous organization—especially with regards to F1. We’re seriously hoping that stamp comes soon. It would technically make two American-based teams on the grid; Haas F1 has been at it since 2015, but with limited success. What’s the matter, Christian and Toto—afraid of a little upstart competition?

INEOS Grenadier will get its first major off-road test chasing BMWs

Intake: INEOS is sending 20 of its Grenadiers to Albania for an 800-mile off-road adventure, and they’ll be following BMWs all the way. That’s because the Grenadiers will be serving as support vehicles on the BMW Motorrad International GS Trophy, where 22 riders will compete in a series of navigational and riding tests as they journey across the rugged mountains of Albania. Six Grenadiers will go early to scout the route before being joined by the rest for the main event. “The BMW Motorrad International GS Trophy is one of the world’s toughest off-road challenges. A great test for the riders and their machines–and for their Grenadier support vehicles–it’s exactly the sort of thing we built the Grenadier for,” said INEOS Commercial Director Mark Tennant.

Exhaust: BMW is the Grenadier’s engine supplier so it makes sense for INEOS to lend a hand. More importantly, it’s a very public opportunity to demonstrate the Grenadier’s off-road prowess—the vehicle’s raison d’être. 

The post Woody time for your Wagoneer, NHRA unleashes the Demon, and the lightest Cobra body ever appeared first on Hagerty Media.

For years I walked through hundreds of car events and heard stories swapped between muscle-car veterans about so-and-so’s Camaro that “used to pull the front wheels on the street” or a car that was “so fast you couldn’t grab a dollar off the dash when I was accelerating.” Having been fortunate enough to drive and experience a fair number of well-restored cars of the era, I always assumed these memories were heavily tinted by rose-colored nostalgia.

Then I watched Horsepower Depot’s 1969 Camaro ZL1 rip off 9-second passes with full, original sheetmetal and factory-correct tires. Surely this thing has something wild going on … But then the owner posted a video telling exactly what he’s done to the this Hugger Orange coupe.

Frankly, I am shocked.

The car campaigns in the FAST series, which is designed for factory-appearing, stock-tire vehicles. In other words, the rulebook is particularly tight compared to that of the NHRA or the American Drag Racing League. The FAST structure contains three classes, with the quickest held to three basic rules: factory tire size, factory-cast engine blocks, and a limited displacement. In other words, if you open this Camaro’s hood, it needs to look as if the year were 1969. That said, the internals of the engine are not subject to restriction. So, despite the factory air cleaner and exhaust manifolds on this ZL1, it cranks out somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 horsepower. The exact details of the engine build remain a mystery—the owner says that the details belong to the engine-builder, and thus the information is not his to share.

The chassis is basic stuff, though. A nice set of front shocks, big brakes hidden behind factory steel wheels, and a bump-steer kit comprise the changes to the front end. The rear is a set of split monoleaf springs, uprated shocks, and an antiroll bar. This suspension setup makes for a car that launches straight and avoids being a total handful at its nearly 150-mph trap speed.

The really fascinating thing about this build is the tires. As pointed out in the video, the Camaro’s shoes are legit Firestone wide-ovals. Horsepower Depot’s team shaves all the tread from a brand-new tire before doing a few smoky burnouts in the driveway, a processes which both softens the rubber and changes the texture from moisture-wicking to race-slick smooth. These Firestones are basically as close as worn as they can get without the cords showing. Another factor in starting-line traction is a timing retard mounted on the brake pedal. When the light goes green, the driver releases the brakes, which starts a timer that retards the ignition timing, reeling it back in as the car goes down the track.

Overall, it’s a super slick setup (ha?) especially considering the car’s simple look. Keep in mind, however, that you or I could go out and buy these parts tomorrow, install them on a car, and never get the results that Horsepower Depot has achieved. The trick here is in the tuning and setup. Props to the team with this Camaro. I thought for sure anyone saying they had a super fast first-gen was merely wearing those rose-colored glasses, but I have to admit that with a careful mix of know-how and just a little modern technology, there is plenty of straight-line speed in old muscle.

The post How to run 9-second quarter-miles in a stock-appearing ’69 Camaro ZL1 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In the early Seventies, a Cadillac dealership might have seemed a bit of a humdrum place to work for a young tech with hot-rodding heating up his blood. At that point in the brand’s history, its connections to racing and performance were either two decades behind it (Le Mans, La Carrera Panamericana, Cadillac-powered Allards) or three decades into the future with the “V” models and SCCA World Challenge. In 1971, Cadillac was 100 percent dedicated to offering 5000 pounds of soothing living room comfort on wheels.

It was in a New Mexico Cadillac dealership in 1971, though, that Courtney Hines began incubating an idea that would ultimately manifest in a 4600-pound, full-body Coupe de Ville that ran 9.7 seconds in the quarter-mile … all on the motor. That motor was (and still is) the “8.2 Litre,” which was Cadillac’s pseudo-European badge for the 500 cu-in V-8 made for 1970–1976.

Hines named the car “Flash Cadillac.” It was a timely allusion to Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids, a then-new band that played oldies and Fifties-style originals. (The band appeared in 1973’s American Graffiti as Herby and the Heartbeats.)

As if running high nines in an American luxo-tank wasn’t staggering enough, Hines is now aiming to take “Flash” deep into the eights with a twin-turbo 8.2-litre. The motor is one that Hines’ CAD Company had built for the Spectre Speedliner, which became the first wheel-driven, gasoline-fueled car to exceed 400 mph when it hit 415 mph at Bonneville in 2010.

When Hines spoke with Hagerty in late 2021, he said he had installed a new transmission in the Flash and was dialing in the boost controllers. In an earlier test run, the big red Caddy ran low nines, accelerating only for the first eighth-mile before blowing the transmission. He is hoping to do some full quarter-mile tests this year.

So how did this mechanical madness start?

Cadillac ranch

Like many seemingly unusual drag race combinations, the Flash Cadillac started as a “What if?” mulled over many bull sessions between friends. Hines and fellow Caddy wrench Marty Dike had been discussing the potential of the Cadillac V-8 that debuted as a 472-incher in 1968. The engine grew to 500 cubes with a bore job for the 1970 Eldorado.

“I was working on these cars all the time, and I began realizing some things about the Caddy engine that were beneficial for performance,” Hines recalls.

Firstly, of course, there were lots of cubes, which exceeded rivals Lincoln (460 cu-in) and Chrysler Imperial (440 cu-in). Along with the big cubes came plenty of room. “Everything was on five-inch centers,” explains Hines, concerning the Cadillac 8.2 Litre. “There were no siamesed ports. Everything was spaced out properly.”

He saw other elements he liked, including a block high in nickel content. “It’s really tough. It’s tall, with a 10.8-inch deck height. That makes it wide, but there’s a lot of room in there. There’s a good rod length-to-stroke ratio with a 6-and-3/4-inch rod.”

Up top, the Caddy’s heads had “smallish” ports and two-inch intake valves, which produced high velocity for the copious low-end torque that Cadillac buyers expected. In its quest to reduce complexity and improve reliability, Cadillac had mounted accessories directly to the block via threaded bosses. Hines remembers that Cadillac touted the 472 having 25 percent less gasketed surface than the old 429 it replaced, reducing the potential for leaks.

Cadillac eliminated another source of potentially catastrophic leaks by running a heater bypass through a channel in the block, rather than a hose going through the intake manifold. Other details that appealed to these hot rodders included a front-mounted distributor and external oil pump for easy access. Except for a few years in the late Seventies when Cadillac offered throttle body fuel injection, all of these quiet brutes were fed through a trusty Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor.

“We kicked it around over some dinners,” says Hines. “We thought it was worth trying to hot-rod one.”

Look what the repo man brought in

The journey from bull session to rubber on the road took just a little while. The year that Hines started at the Cadillac dealer, a ’70 Coupe De Ville repo came in with body damage and missing parts. It sat for a couple of years before Hines and his buddy bought it for $50.

“It started out as a kind of joke,” Hines says. “We were going to paint it purple and make it a street cruiser, but take out weight.”

More than a decade before Hot Rod magazine stripped a ’70 Coupe De Ville to the bones for its “Caddy Hack” article, Hines and Dike took a gentler approach. They pulled out the seats and door panels and installed a bench seat from a van. Hines recalls that weight came down from a stock 4600 pounds to 4300. They left the factory-stock 472 alone, as well as the highway-friendly 2.93 axle ratio. The first performance “upgrade” was to remove most of the exhaust and run a muffler on the crossover pipe.

“We found it was pretty quick, even against some muscle cars, and it was respectable at the track,” Hines recalls.

Things escalated from there. Adding dual exhausts with cutouts uncorked enough added power to overwhelm the rear tires. They installed a Ford 9-inch rear and bought street slicks from J.C. Penney, which at that time sold speed parts. They re-installed the door panels but removed the power brake booster, air conditioner, and heater.

“We went faster,” says Hines. “Then we had Chet Herbert regrind a cam and had a local guy port the heads. We tweaked the stock intake and put on a Holley. That didn’t do much, so we put on a dual four-barrel setup and it went a whole second faster. We put in a high stall converter. We just kept at it.”

Hot-rodding a Cadillac was not an easy task in the Seventies, since there was real demand for speed parts associated with the 500 cu-in engine. “Everything had to be made or adapted from something else,” Hines says. “We didn’t have the money to have things custom built.”

The hard work and improvisation paid off. At the 1977 NHRA Bracket Finals at Green Valley Race City in Texas, Hines put the Caddy solidly into the 11s.

“Today, we make all of that stuff,” adds Hines, referring to CAD Company, a performance parts maker for Cadillac 472/500/425 V-8s founded by Larry Kruzick in 1984. Hines’ company, Flashcraft, Inc., bought the outfit in 2001. “We’ve got our own line of aluminum heads, intakes and headers, and we’ve gotten some obsolete parts back into production,” he says.

New horizons

Hines left his Cadillac dealership job in 1979 to start his own service and repair business, which he says is now one of the largest in Albuquerque, with numerous ASE Master Techs, including himself. With the added resources, he decided to turn up the heat on the Flash Cadillac.

“We back-halved it and put in 14-in wide slicks. We built a fuel injection system and ran methanol. Then we built a stroker for it and had a custom roller cam made. It started making serious horsepower.”

The Flash, meanwhile, would ultimately run in the 9.70s in the mid-1980s at Firebird Raceway in Idaho, its quickest ET before on a naturally aspirated motor. And that was with Hines lifting three times because the car got loose. He got booted, though, because the car had been safety-certified to 9.90.

World’s fastest Cadillac

That brings us to today, with Hines planning to run a very heavy car with a very powerful twin-turbo engine. As mentioned, CAD Company built the twin-turbo Cadillac engines for the 415-mph Spectre Speedliner. Amir Rosenbaum, founder of Spectre Performance, an air intake maker, commissioned CAD Company to build the engines for his streamliner running in the Unlimited Blown Gas Streamliner (A/BGS and AA/BGS) classes.

There was a 484 cu.-in. 472 for the A class and a stroker 500 (529 cu. in.) for AA. The car ultimately broke the record with the 484 when the 529 tossed a valve.

“We started with a junkyard core and modified from there,” says Hines. “What shocks people was that we were running the factory block, factory heads, factory cast crank and not running a roller cam. We didn’t even run a harmonic balancer. The heads were ported out, and we were using aftermarket rods, pistons and roller rocker arms.”

Under pressure

Going back to the “What if?” inspiration that sparked the Flash Cadillac in the first place, Hines was looking for something to do with extra engines he’d built for the Bonneville effort. “We decided to put one in the Flash,” says Hines.

The twin-turbo engine, which could make about 2000 horsepower in the Speedliner, uses a FAST fuel injection system and CAD Company’s own aluminum heads. Prep for the Flash’s enormous jump in power included adding reinforcing the chassis with added 2/3-inch steel frame rails running the length of the car, plus building a cage certified for a 7.5-second quarter-mile run. The engine was set back about six inches, and the car has a Chris Alston’s Chassisworks front end with rack and pinion steering. The rear houses a Strange ring gear with 40-spline axles.

Oddly enough, the Flash Cadillac now looks closer to stock than before, because with the new turbo motor, there is no need for a hood scoop to feed a tunnel ram intake. The new stock-style hood is fiberglass, as are both chromed bumpers. The parachute cannon is hidden behind the drop-down license plate, and the car has wheelie bars. The car retains its original glass, power door windows, tilt steering column, most of the factory dash, and even the fender skirts.

Cadillac engines for everything!

While can expect to see more of Flash Cadillac in the near future, Hines remains focused on supplying customers with 472/500 engines and swaps, including putting these later engines into earlier Cadillacs.

“We get a lot of street guys and tractor pullers, and some airboat racers in Florida,” he says. “Some just want cruisers with more power.”

When Flash Cadillac shows up at the track again, it’s likely to be behind the tow vehicle Hines used 20 years ago, a 1965 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 factory limo. He bought the extra-long Caddy in 1979 and replaced its 429 with the more modern 472. In early 2021, he woke the limo from a 15-year sleep in a hay barn, cleaned it up, and dropped in a 540 cu-in stroker. He plans to add fuel injection and disc brakes.

We wonder if Hines might get his imagination spinning again and try that one on the strip. It’s a “weighty” question.

The post Heavyweight Hauler: The Flash Cadillac has spent four-plus decades flattening drag strips appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Many Hot Wheels fans say that playing with the 1/64-scale models as kids sparked a lifelong love of cars and, for some, an automotive career. In Somerset, England, Lee Johnstone took the opposite route. The winner of the 2021 Hot Wheels Legends Tour, Johnstone didn’t play with the tiny hotrods as a kid, because he was 18 and in technical college when the first batch from Mattel hit store shelves in 1968.

Johnstone’s winning car is an utterly unique 1969 Volvo 1800S coupe that he built into a berserko 10-second gasser named “Ain’t No Saint.” The high-riding hot rod will soon become the next addition to the Hot Wheels Legends Garage line for all fans to enjoy. (A gasser built around a 1968 Mercedes sedan was one of the top finalists in this year’s Legends Tour.)

Hot Wheels Legends judges, which include brand executives as well as top car designers and customizers, make their choices based on “authenticity, creativity, and garage spirit.” Johnstone’s wild Volvo buries the needle on all three counts. His gasser is the culmination of nearly three decades of building and racing experience, much of it while limited by a tight budget. The Volvo is also a kind of celebration of British pop culture.

Who’s the Saint you say this ain’t?

Hot Wheels appeal to ages four to 104, give or take. Depending on where you fall within that range, the significance of Johnstone’s car and its catchy name might not be immediately apparent. He acknowledges that many might take it to mean “don’t mess with me,” and that’s fine with him. Its real meaning, though, is rooted in television.

For many car buffs around the world, the sporty little Volvo P1800 coupe, built from 1962-1973 (as the 1800ES sport wagon for the final two years), instantly recalls memories of watching The Saint a global TV hit that originally ran from 1962–1969. Syndication and streaming in later years grew the show’s fan base.

Roger Moore played the lead role of dapper do-gooder Simon Templar, an urbane and mostly reformed conman, jewel thief, and safecracker character created by author Leslie Charteris. Known affectionately or derisively as The Saint by either side of the law, Templar always seemed to be in the right place at the right time to help right a wrong.

He drove a white Volvo 1800 throughout the series, and the car became as tightly linked with the character as the Aston Martin DB5 did with James Bond in the same period. (Moore would go on to play Bond in the ‘70s and ’80s.) The graphic on the side of Johnstone’s car is based on the one seen in the show’s distinctive opening and closing credit sequences.

In another British connection, the Volvo P1800 had been assembled under contract for its first two years by Jensen Motors, a company perhaps most famous for its Chrysler V-8-powered Interceptor luxury GT. After 1963, production moved to Volvo’s home base in Sweden, and the model name changed to 1800S. (Corgi Toys offered a 1/64 model of “The Saint” Volvo.)

It’s a gas, gas, gasser

But enough Volvo history. What drove a British auto mechanic from Somerset to turn this one into a gasser? Essentially, it was for the same reason that a person climbs a mountain: Because it was there. Back in 2013, Johnstone was looking to get back on the drag strip with his own car after being an engine builder for others for many years.

“I started looking for a typical American gasser-type vehicle,” he tells Hagerty. “But the rolling shells I found were priced too high for me. I’d about given up looking, then I was skimming eBay and came across the Volvo. The seller had bought it to restore but found that would be too expensive. He was about to send it to the scrapyard.”

Johnstone picked up the shell for 800 British pounds, or about $1300 at the time. While it easily steals the show wherever it goes, “Ain’t No Saint” was built to race by Johnstone and friend Steven Wright, who also provided the workshop space and the trailer. Conveniently, an old RV that Wright was planning to scrap supplied its big-block Chevy. More help came from Wright’s son-in-law, Steven Spiller.

The Chevy is fed by dual Holley Demon four-barrel carburetors and a 6-71 supercharger, among other speed parts. This unsaintly Volvo logged its quickest time so far, 10.01 seconds at 133 mph, in September 2021 at the NSRA Hot Rod Drags at Santa Pod Raceway in Podington, Bedfordshire, U.K.

“That’s pretty damn good considering it’s an all-metal car and weighs about 3000 pounds,” says Johnstone.

Draggin’ Jag

The Volvo is not Johnstone’s first drag race car. He’d gotten his first look at the sport in 1967. After a few years of watching the races, he and a buddy decided to build their own car. They began by dropping an old Jaguar six-cylinder engine in a Ford Popular chassis. “You could buy old Jag engines for 30 pounds in those days,” Johnstone recalls.

Initially, they draped it with the fiberglass body of a Rochdale Olympic, one of Britain’s many “boutique” cars of the ‘60s, with about 250 made. The body, though, which was designed as a monocoque with steel subframes and other reinforcements, proved too heavy. The fledgling racers found a shop that was making lightweight fiberglass Fiat Topolino bodies for drag racers and bought one for 60 pounds.

“We began racing in 1972, but the car was a bit of a dog. We had a lot to learn,” Johnstone says.

The car continually evolved, getting a tube frame and a supercharger in 1974. The final version in the ’80s replaced the Jag mill with a Chevy and ran mid 8s at over 150 mph. When the car finally became “out of tag” (obsoleted out of the rules) Johnstone and his racing partner divided it up, each taking some of its pieces.

Johnstone later started working as a builder and tuner for racer Bob Glassup, who was running a wild Topolino fuel altered in nostalgia drags. That car ran low 6s at just under 200 mph.

Garage spirit

The Volvo build began with cutting. “We stripped it out and cut out some of the front end to fit the Chevy,” explains Johnstone. “We built it up and got a 6-71 blower, and had to make an adaptor plate and manifold.”

Other elements came into play by experimentation. “We didn’t really design the car, we just kept working on it, trying different things until we got it the way we wanted. Once we got it past being a rolling shell, it was just a matter of getting everything to fit and work. We wanted to keep it old-school gasser, where you kind of thread a chassis into the shell.”

The front beam axle and suspension came from a scrapyard Leyland Sherpa van, and a Ford 9-inch rear replaced the Volvo’s axle but kept the stock spring perches. The stance seems exaggerated, even for a gasser, but that’s not as the builders originally envisioned.

“It’s a bit higher than we anticipated,” says Johnstone. “We thought the heavy engine would sink the Sherpa’s springs a few inches, but they moved less than an inch. We ended up liking the result.”

The Volvo retains its original window hardware and some original glass, but a few purists have given Johnstone grief over cutting the car. “I just tell them, if we hadn’t done it, the body was going to the scrapyard.”

A friend with a paint shop gave the Volvo its green shade. “We tried to match it so we wouldn’t have to repaint the inside of the boot and the door jambs,” says Johnstone, also offering that “Ain’t No Saint” was not the first name they considered.

“We built the car in Wellington, so we were going to call it the ‘Wellington Bomber,’” he says, as an homage to the British WWII bomber. “We were going to make a fuel tank that looked like a bomb with fins, but then thought the idea was silly.”

11 seconds on the first go

Fresh off the build, “Ain’t No Saint” ran 11s in the quarter-mile. Further tweaking got it into the high 10s at 125 mph and then even faster.

“We kept at it,” says Johnstone. “We switched the carbs, got a better 6-71 blower and knocked off more time and added more speed. We wanted to make it easy to maintain so that it just needed a cool-off period between rounds.”

Johnstone eventually bought out Wright’s share in the car but continued to use his workshop and bought his own old RV to tow the Volvo. He made “Ain’t No Saint” a family project with his three daughters, who each take turns racing it.

In 2021, Johnstone and family ran the Volvo it at three major English events: Dragstalgia, the NSRA Nostalgia Nationals and the NSRA Hot Rod Drags. All took place at Santa Pod.

Fast lane to fame

With five seasons of racing behind it, “Ain’t No Saint” had built up a local following and more fans on social media. “Lots of people had been urging us to enter the Hot Wheels Legends, but  we just never looked into it,” says Johnstone.

Then, he says, just before the end of the 2021 season, a pop-up ad on his phone announced a pending deadline for the European leg of the Tour. He and his crew made a quick video and were able to use photos that a Hot Wheels photographer took at the Nostalgia Nats.

“We sent in our package, not expecting much. And then came word that we’d won.”

Since then, Johnstone says the car has become an even wider celebrity, and even a kind of bad-boy British hero—not unlike The Saint himself.

***

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“Alcohol is for drinking, gas is for cleaning parts and nitro is for RACING”  -“Big Daddy” Don Garlits

What is nitro? To the average layman it’s a fancy term that might as well mean “dynamite.” Perhaps a shorthand for “nitroglycerin” (the explosive), or even “nitro beer” that gets its fizzy smoothness from being “nitrogenated”?

To the seasoned “car geek” and the obsessed drag racing enthusiast, nitro means pure, unadulterated, absolute power. The name is short for nitromethane (CH3NO2-for you chemist geeks), that is like gasoline but is pre-mixed with nitrous oxide and burns better as it has its own oxygen atoms. A Top Fuel Dragster, a Funny Car or any “nitro-burning” drag racer usually houses a 500-cubic-inch Hemi engine designed to burn nitromethane. This fuel is so important simply for the fact that more power per stroke is delivered from each explosion inside the engine. Present day Top Fuel dragsters are capable of an uncanny 8000-10,000 horsepower. Recently at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Brittany Force, daughter of Top Fuel Champion John Force, crushed the old record of 336.57 mph set by legend Tony Schumacher and blasted an amazing 3.659 seconds at a startling 338.17 mph—the fastest in Top Fuel history.

We saw nitro in action at the new Irwindale Dragstrip on November 6–7, 2021, soaking in nostalgic reflections and witnessing a motorsports revival hoping to “bring back the sights and sounds of the early days of hot rodding” says event founder director and first executive director of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum Steve Gibbs.”[It] lets fans experience a drag racing museum come to life not only through the vehicles themselves but through the presence of many of those who built, maintained and drove them.”

Steve, affectionately known as “Big Hook” has been “hooked” on drag racing since the 1950s and used to work at San Gabriel and Fontana Drag Strips while reporting for Drag News. By the mid-’60s, as coincidence unfolds, became manager of the original Irwindale Raceway, which was rebuilt and now relocated not far from that old location in 1999 and called Irwindale Speedway & Event Center, the location for the last two Nitro Revivals utilizing the 1/8-mile drag racing strip.

The Nitro Revival is enjoying its fourth successful edition with Steve and a dedicated staff of Cindy (his daughter and right hand), Don Ewald (media/website), Connie Johnson Braun, Tim Huddleson and the late Ron Johnson at the helm. The first edition was held at Barona Drag Strip near San Diego, California and was successful but had “logistical limits” as Gibbs put it. The second edition was moved North to the prestigious WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in the rolling hills of Monterey, California. This raceway is a great location with the calm, cool breezes of the Pacific Ocean feeding the blowers. The event was made even more memorable when drag racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits made a rare West Coast appearance and sat in the seat of Sonny Messner’s Swamp Rat III dragster in a push-start exhibition. We’ll never forget what he said when he hopped out of the digger:

“I think I was just in heaven and if I wasn’t I’m not going.”

Garlits has 17 championships and in 2000, voted by the NHRA tip 50 drivers list NO. 1 and has his Swamp Rat XXX displayed in the National Museum of American History at The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. The Laguna Seca track in Monterey had a great turnout but many felt it was a bit of a trek from Southern California, where the roots of hot rodding and drag racing began on unused airport runways. By the end of the late ‘40s the late Wally Parks (1913–2007) formed the National Hot Rod Association in 1951 to organize and promote the sport on a national basis.

The Nitro Revival’s third installment in May of 2019 moved to the 1/8-mile Irwindale Drag Strip in San Gabriel Valley. There, Gibbs wanted to the feeling of the era—Lions, Pomona, Santa Ana, Fontana, OCIR, Irwindale, San Fernando, etc.—to resonate with the shared emotions of the “old timers” who raced on the bygone tracks with flames cackling thunder in the sky. Just the name “Irwindale” was enough to draw thousands to reminisce and entice the “old school” dragsters to come from afar. It was like a family reunion.

Because of the pandemic, it’s been nearly a two-year wait to fire up the “cackle crowd” at Irwindale once again with nearly 70 “cackle cars” that were registered to arrive from all over the country. Greg Sharp, curator of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum once said that “A cackle fest is like a barely controlled atomic bomb. That exploding Nitro cracks like a gun shot and shoots header flames into the night sky.” Don “the Snake” Prudhomme once said: “Loud isn’t a strong enough word. It’s so overwhelming [that] your brain can hardly compute what it’s hearing and seeing. It’s damn near a religious experience.”

The “Nitro Flamin’” weekend was a needed step back in time for many older drag racers because, as we get older, happy memories become a cherished part of your life. Gibbs and Cindy along with an incredible crew put together a program Honoring Memories of San Gabriel and Irwindale Drag Racing, classic “cackle cars,” Hall of Fame All Stars Reunion, vintage 1/8-mile drag racing, and the Hot Rod Hangout hosted by Road Kings Car Club with pre-’73 classic cars. Fans and racers mingled and traded stories all weekend and we were curious as to what the Nitro Revival meant to some of the honored “old timers.” Some of the esteemed special guests included Ed “the Ace” McCulloch, “TV Tommy” Ivo, Ed “Isky” Iskenderian, Linda Vaughn, Bob Muravez, Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, “Fast Jack” Beckman, Tom Hoover, Kenny Youngblood, Don Ewald, Mendy Fry, Don Prieto, Ed Pink, and many more who also participated in an autograph session on Saturday morning where fans packed the area having items brought for signing.

From Saturday evening into the night, the Line of Fire Cackle brought out at least 50 cackle cars, filling up the track as it hosted tributes to the dragsters from the ‘50s and ‘60s. The cars were lined up for static starts with thundering sounds and flames and fury shooting into the cool night air.

I managed to chat with the ultimate showman of drag racing, “TV Tommy” Ivo, who at the age of 16 was first attracted to drag racing. He built the radical four-engine dragster and in 1962 he became the first to break the 8.0-second barrier at the wheel of his “Barnstormer” Top Fuel Dragster. The late Ron Johnson recreated the striking dragster that was presented at Nitro by the Johnson family (Connie Johnson Braun, Kol Johnson and Christine Griffin).

Ivo’s eyes light up when he gets inside it. “It’s heart-stopping to me. I traveled for thirty years and had friends all over the country and not so many here because we were working on the cars all the time. How do you fly back to Chicago to have lunch so I see people here that I’d never see again. And guess what, Don Prudhomme was my tire wiper then. This event is very important for the friendships that can be preserved and to teach the young people how the race cars were back in the day.”

Bob “Floyd” Muravez was a special guest, but for an old-time drag racer he is surprisingly most famous for something else: the secret he kept from his father who was against him racing. To disguise his activities he adopted an alter-ego name, Floyd Lippencott (an idea from Steve Gibbs), for when he jumped in the seat of the “Freight Train” dragster.

“I’m either idling or full throttle,” he said. What does this Nitro event mean to Floyd? With a serious tone he said: “All these people are my family, it’s a family get together. The cars and the Nitro is second, it’s the friendships and family warmth revisited; the cars are the icing on the cake. This type of event is important for the first, second and third generation of the families of the people here. Now, all the kids and grandkids can now get to see the roots of drag racing because here, it’s three-dimensional. The people here can touch it, feel it and experience the old Geezers’ deep-rooted passion.”

John Peters owns the famous “Freight Train” dragster, which houses a twin-engine gasoline small-block Chevrolet. The dragster  was once driven by Mickey Thomson and smoked the tires all the way through the lights. “We have to build a tire for this car,” Peters said.” “Seeing some of the old cars that ran in the ’50s and ‘60s and ‘70s, and also getting to communicate and revitalize old friendships, is really great. It also shows the public what drag racing was really about,” explained Peters.

Don Ewald—who was a winning Top Fuel dragster owner and driver back in the day piloting the noted BankAmericar dragster alongside his late brother John in the MasterCar—is part of the staff of the Nitro Revival. “The original concept created by Ron Johnson and Steve Gibbs was to revive the ‘Gathering of Cackle Cars’ from back in the day, and this edition of the cackle extravaganza was a sight to behold,” he said. “With all the old friends gathering to reminisce and looking forward to each revival, to me I can say its probable keeping me alive! Even though this is a niche market it serves a great purpose to teach the history of drag racing to younger fans.”

With this event, Gibbs was able to realize the vision he and Johnson had to create a chapter in the history book of drag racing to preserve the story. To pass on “the feel and knowledge of the way it was … a social gathering of “geezers” bringing back the glory days of drag racing with a full throttle propulsion. Like a museum coming to life.”

And last but by no means least, we talked to the “First Lady of Motorsports” and “Miss Hurst Golden Shifter,” Linda Vaughn. She said that the Nitro Revival meant the world to her, seeing all her old friends and the love and companionship that was so heartwarming. “I think this Revival is important for future hot rodders, and for the grandsons, sons and daughters because the next generation is seeing what we were all about.”

In my book, Top Fuel Dragsters of the 1970s, many of the photographs were shot at the original Irwindale Raceway so I’ve included some of the images actually shot at the strip in the gallery below. Enjoy!

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When my father, George Carroll, was 18, he purchased a 1969 Chevelle from Zele Chevrolet in Torrington, Connecticut. He was too young to get the $3800 loan himself, so his father cosigned. Around this time, Dad and a few other gearheads founded the Speed Syndicate Car Club. They rented a garage to hold weekly meetings and tune their cars. There was a strong rivalry between the members’ Chevys and Fords, so part of the weekend was spent settling bets racing on nearby Norfolk Road. My father formed many lifelong friendships during those years, and many of those folks are some of his closest friends to this day.

Throughout my childhood, I heard countless Chevelle stories. Like the time my mother took the pickles off her hamburger and threw them out the window. A friend found them stuck to the side of the car hours later and said, “Hey, you guys saving these pickles for anything?!” Or about the time they drove to Misquamicut, Rhode Island, where the car overheated in the long lines of beach traffic. Perhaps most common were the stories of how every Sunday from 1969 to 1980, he and my mother drove 140 miles round trip to Lebanon Valley Dragway in New York with racing slicks in the trunk. The more time he put in on the track, the bigger his collection of NHRA Class Winner stickers became. He started displaying them on the rear windows, which now offer a look back in time at what he and his Chevelle were capable of.

My parents have always said those days on the dusty track were long and hot but definitely worth every minute; good thing Mom always packed chicken salad sandwiches! And, of course, I’ll never forget Dad teaching me to drive stick, how to pull a holeshot, or go through the gears on his car. Talk about sweaty palms …

Over the years, a lot has changed. As Dad got married, bought a house, and had two children, he contemplated selling the car to help with finances many times. Luckily, as time went by, he realized the car was an irreplaceable member of the family. But there is also plenty that hasn’t changed. The Chevelle is still almost completely original, including the 31,000-mile SS 396/375 high-performance L78 engine with solid lifters, the four-speed M21 transmission, and the original 4.10 Posi rear end. It has not been gutted, restored, repainted, or had anything major replaced since it came from the factory. The Le Mans Blue still shines in contrast with the black bucket seats and original vinyl top.

My father’s story is of a hardworking, blue-collar gearhead who saved his money for years to purchase a car and pursue his passion for racing. Even after 52 years, it brings him great joy, and you’ll still find him under the hood, tinkering whenever he can.

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Another week on the Bonneville salt with no record to show. It’s just one of the realities of land-speed racing that is forgotten during the celebrations when barriers are finally shattered. After the fire at World of Speed, the Knapp Streamliner team and I returned last week for the SCTA World Finals only to fight a string of suspension- and transmission-related issues. We simply never got a clean pass. Despite this, we still had a great time while making incremental progress on each run, winning the small battles.

As in all of motorsports, failure must be faced—even if, in the time-trial formats of land-speed racing, failure isn’t strictly defined as losing to a competitor. Returning home with no record to show for our tears and sweat, I still knew exactly how—and why—guys like Burt Munroe built their walls of broken speed parts dedicated to the God of Speed. On the drive back home, I found myself pondering lessons that motorsports has taught me—after triumph, sure, but more often in tragedy.

The right solution isn’t found without failure

If you asked Kenny Duttweiler how many of his engines he’s seen shattered in the pursuit of speed, he probably wouldn’t be able to finish counting. If you talk to someone with 50 years of experience building engines who claims they haven’t scattered and torched their share of hardware, they’re either lying or simply never pushing an envelope worth mentioning. Duttweiler, on the flip side, dabbles in designing engines for which there are no known recipes, his parameters outlined by the goal of building the world’s fastest piston-driven car.

Endurance engines sacrifice output for durability, and most drag-racing combos are looking for the ragged edge if it means a fraction of an extra horsepower. Land-speed racing, on the other hand, demands immense power sustained over a long period of time. No other racing discipline requires as much continuous full-throttle time. In this unique mechanical environment, an understanding of what’s required to achieve a record often coincides with a grasp of the limits of currents parts technology. Land-speed racers churn out horsepower numbers that would make everything short of a Nitro car blush—for periods of time that would exhaust Le Mans racers (even without today’s neutered Mulsanne Straight).

Even with such an intimidating brief, it’s in failure that minds like Duttweiler’s thrive. Defeat generates a new problem to solve, which afterwards nudges the bar of performance a little higher. Land-speed racing is particularly prone to such a pragmatic approach, because there’s never any prize money for a record. The rules preserve the machine as the most important factor to earning a spot in the history books, and history has proven that reaching for the absolute edge of performance, a title will not come easily.

The mentality around failure is complicated. For many, any flavor of failure is a personal defeat. It’s not the goal, it’s not the win you’re building towards with endless long nights and strangled budgets. That cost, spiritual and literal, defines the trajectory of anyone in motorsport. Psychology papers expound upon the obvious, but we often tie our sense of self-worth and capability to the results of our actions, and the experience of falling short on a goal hits hard. The feeling of defeat is so strong that it can push otherwise motivated individuals to avoid it like the plague, refusing to approach or study these barriers because the cost of breaking through them is simply too high.

That element of human ego is one that motorsports hammers and forges over time. Those who adapt well to this smelting process learn to turn those “what-if” thoughts into future tools of success rather than self-sabotaging reminders of the past. Even when the failure is entirely your fault, the choice is to either sit in self-blame or simply take it as a hard reminder moving forward to adjust habits. Blaming the machine when parts fail provides a cathartic release, sure; but only though a careful understanding of the mechanical failure can a machine be pushed to its full potential. Technology only advances when we exploit it beyond the original design limits, find new problems, and selflessly push to solutions.

The joke on the salt last week was that every run was a “prototype run.” You rarely know you’re earning the run until it happens, and every push off the start line was just one more blind step towards success. Duttweiler said it best to Hot Rod Magazine in 2017: “When I flip that page in a book, I’m not going back to that page. We’ve already been through that and we can’t change it. But if we’re working on something for tomorrow, we might be able to change that.” The ability to move forward after a failure with a little extra wisdom is vital in motorsport.

Without struggle, success can be forgettable

Easy wins fill our daydreams for a reason. It’d be nice if just for once the machine worked perfectly, needed no adjustments, and did its “job.” If the weather would comply and give us a clean run. If that one guy weren’t an a**hole driver/official/whomever. Everyone who’s pushed a wheel into competition in one way or another knows that a single moment can break the plan and render the outcome uncertain despite every effort. Dale Earnhardt, Sr. is today known as a racer who simply won on NASCAR ovals—or fight you trying. His legendary tenacity has outlived the misfortune of his passing, but for Earnhardt, the first driver to tie Richard Petty for the most Cup Series Championships, success was encapsulated in moments like his 1998 win at the Daytona 500. A man like him isn’t brought to tears over nothing.

For two decades, a win at the Super Bowl of NASCAR eluded the Intimidator’s grasp. The 2.5-mile tri-oval was his albatross, and his 1998 victory came after 19 consecutive attempts, four of them resulting as runner-up even during his best years in the early- to mid-1990s while racking up those seven championship wins. Freak accidents were often waiting for Earnhardt Sr., like the leftover piece of Rick Wilson’s broken bellhousing from an earlier wreck that cost him a tire on the last lap in 1990. Or, more famously, the seagull that battered his attempt the following year, colliding with the #3 car on the second lap and blocking its grille. Despite clawing back to second place after losing time to removing the wayward bird, Earnhardt got loose in the last lap and spun backward before meeting Kyle Petty head-on. In ’86, he’d even ran out of fuel with three laps remaining.

“I don’t think I really cried as much as my eyes watered up that last lap coming to get the checkered. This is pretty awesome because we worked so hard to win this race,” he admitted in 1998 to the Las Vegas Sun after finally clearing house that Sunday. “I was overcome, to say the least… We’ve lost it every which way you could do it, and now we’ve won it and I don’t care how we won it, we won it.”

Though his death at the 2001 Daytona 500 defined much of Earnhardt Sr.’s legacy, it was the twenty years of struggle leading to his ’98 victory that cemented his legendary place in NASCAR history. The 500 has been on the schedule since 1959, its winners circle claimed by many—sometimes multiple times over by NASCAR’s greatest—but we remember few repeat Daytona victories like we do Earnhardt’s single claim to the crown. He wrote the kind of relatable allegory that fueled the peak years of NASCAR Cup Racing during the 20th century.

A respect for, but not fear of, the risk of death

The 2012 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was formative for many reasons, but it was watching a friend of mine slide off the hill that most altered my view of the sport. It’s one thing to catch a big wreck on TV, or to be a grandstand witness to the collisions of drivers who feel familiar, but the first time you experience a horrific racing accident is one that defines the sport to most individuals.

Yuri Kouznetsov, codriver of the Mitsubishi Evolution that crashed near Devil’s Playground, was a friend of mine from the rallycross series that had more or less opened the door to my attending at Pikes Peak that first year. We had all become fast friends in Texas, and for a handful of us to be at Pikes Peak together was just the top of the world as a burgeoning racing family that year. It had been a storybook year for our team, all things considered. Practice had gone smoothly and race day was the icing on the cake, with a decent slot in the day for our run. We had a skeleton team on the start line, since the car didn’t need any real babysitting, and we parked ourselves around the hillside below Devil’s Playground to get a good view of everyone winding up through the W’s from Glen Cove. Where I stood on the inside of a corner, drivers would dip out of view for a few moments before revealing themselves from behind the switchbacks for a blind left-hander. The turn was fast, with a sharply decreasing radius, and we later learned that driver Jeremy Foley had overdriven the corner under power for much too long before realizing his mistake. The Evo came into view from behind the cliff side for a brief second before it slipped off the road and into the abyss of a blue sky. From our vantage point, they had fallen off the mountain with nothing below to catch them, and for the next few moments, I wasn’t sure if I had just watched a friend—or two—die.

By the time the car came to a rest, it had fallen about 500 feet. With Foley and Kouznetsov’s wives on the hillside with us that day, and having already witnessed the breakdowns in digital communication on the mountain during incidents, I decided to make my way directly to the car. I figured, too, that a friendly face wouldn’t hurt two drivers who’d just stared down death. Both driver and codriver had managed to crawl out of the car as I began to scramble down, and I met them just moments after safety crews had rappelled down from the road way. Foley had been cleared on site, but Kouznetsov’s cracked helmet and dislocated shoulder sent him downhill in a Life Flight ‘copter despite his displaying good signs of only minor injuries.

I had already read works like David Freiburger’s The Importance of Risk, and had just begun to dig through the introduction of Neil Robert’s book, Think Fast, which expands upon the idea that other significant individuals in your life must also accept the chance that the choice to race may be the choice to die. But watching and reacting to a situation firsthand gave me a new respect for the consequences involved. The outcome lies not only in the risks taken by a driver in the heat of race day, but in the decisions a tuner or crew makes for their driver, too—safety is paramount. Failure is still a path to learning, but some failures put lives at risk, and the decision-making process from the moment a race is committed to must reflect that in a form of respect instead of fear.

As Jay Meagher poignantly said about his path to the SCTA 300 MPH club at Bonneville: “Well, if this is gonna go sideways, this is gonna go sideways. If this is going to end badly, it’ll end badly. I still have to choose to experience things in life without being terrified of them.”

The Racing Family persists

Okay, sure, Vin Diesel has memed the idea to death—but the reality is that many racing events bring together like-minded people from all over the globe, and with that comes a unique friendship. Especially given the pride that comes with success and the personal cost of failure that hangs perpetually in the balance, fast friends often become best friends who understand from experience many of these lessons mentioned so far. Despite being competitive, racing is a call to arms for people who’d otherwise likely never cross paths. An event can shrink the world into a bubble in a way that becomes irreplaceable in everyday life. At least once a year, a race or trial or weekend can be a chance to see and work with some of your favorite people. Certain disciplines of motorsports require a specific type of personality to succeed, too—such as modern-day Drag and Drive events.

For these events, racers built drag cars to survive over 1000 miles of street driving in the course of five days of racing. While many headlines come from the more insane builds, like the ’13 Camaro ZL1 of Tom McGilton, the bulk of the attendees build their cars in their garages over the span of many years, whittling away at their perfect street car the same way that James Taylor and Dennis Wilson did in Two-Lane Blacktop. For many, these events represent saved-up vacation hours, hours of overtime and weekends of side work to stock their racing budgets. The determination to make those life choices behind the scenes—while possessing the skills and perseverance to succeed in what’s essentially a cross-country, barn-storming endurance race—builds a character profile of sorts. Given the combination of a time-trail format and the survival mentality needed to push an often-ailing machine through the slog, the community centers on mutual respect through the act of participation. Racers loan each other spare parts, time, or tools with the idea that they’d rather settle their success on the track. More well-known facets of drag racing get heated: Competitors go through great lengths to game their opponent, where the community is adversarial and just, frankly, no fun to be around, because everyone is just there for a paycheck. By shedding that armor, events like Drag Week and Rocky Mountain Race Week have built an environment akin to nothing else in the sport of drag racing.

In the photo above are three cars: the Fox-body Mustang belongs to Tim Flanders of Ohio, the Cutlass to Nick Mancini of Long Island, and the Pennsylvanian-built Chevelle Malibu to Rick and Jackie Steinke. Their codrivers too, are from equally distant lands. They escape the monotony and stress of life for a week of chasing time slips across the country, push themselves as much as their hand-built machines, and grow a unique bond that defines a racing family. If not for one of these hell weeks, they’d never get to know and rely on each other, and even while apart during the rest of the year, they’ll still find ways to butt heads on a track, look out for each other though rough times, or run hard to find parts across the country. Finding good people in the car community can be tough, but given the right circumstances, some events attract the best of them.

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The burndown — drag racing’s dirtiest trick short of reaching over and yanking the other guy’s plug wires out. It’s a start line strategy that has caused controversy and calamity at every level of drag racing, and recently, the NHRA shook crowds and commentators when it backed drivers Mason McGaha and Bruno Massel off track and disqualified them for taking the practice to an extreme after three minutes of sitting at the line, waiting for the other guy to make the move. The debate raged whether or not they should’ve been allowed to see through their games, as has happened in the past, or if the line in the proverbial sand had to be drawn at some point. We’ll first look at what the burndown is and how it can be used strategically, and then we’ll dig into some of the finest examples of drag racing’s most infamous moments.

To understand the mechanism of drag racing which the burndown exploits, you have to first understand how the starting line procedure works. While there are many ways to set things in motion, everything from flashlights to dropped clothing has fit the bill, it’s the Christmas tree found at nearly every organized event that sets the stage. Its primary function in the production of a race is to both aid drivers in positioning their cars on the line and give them a countdown to the GO! signal. At the top are two levels of yellow lights known as the staging bulbs, which coincide with a pair of staging beams on the track. The drivers first roll into the pre-stage beams which gives them something of a heads-up before they approach the staging beam that will time the run. The general courtesy here is that one driver pre-stages and holds for the next driver to also pre-stage, before both soon roll forward far enough to engage the staging lights on the start line. Once both drivers are in the staging beam, the starter flips a switch, and the tree drops. A key feature of most trees is the auto-start timer that begins when a driver moves from the pre-stage beams into the staging beams, which will commonly put a seven-second limit on the second driver after the first driver fully stages. On the surface, it would make it seem like a burndown on the line is avoided if the second driver forfeits a run automatically, but that very timer is what applies the pressure in a burndown. The NHRA rulebook, which defines the procedures for many other series too, has nothing about how long it takes to stage, only that the drivers do have to eventually listen to the starter and stage at their command. “A reasonable amount of time will be permitted for drivers to stage. The time limit will be determined at the sole and absolute discretion of the official starter,” the book mentions under race procedures. “Failure to stage upon the starter’s instructions is possible grounds for disqualification,” is the caveat that ended the Massel vs. McGaha burndown.

If you’ve ever gone down a drag strip, even if it was just one time, there’s a momentum that builds once you leave the staging lanes and approach the burnout box. It’s a routine, of course. You’re reeled in by officials through the burnout before being quickly loaded into the staging beams. In that psychological checklist of operations, one step after the next is quickly crossed off until the only thing left is to stage and start the tree’s final countdown. Clearly, we’re here to race, and there’s a certain expectation that this staging routine will play out, more or less, the same every time, until the burndown comes into play with one or both drivers intentionally gaming the staging process to delay it. The mechanical element is easy to predict: the longer they idle, the more fuel is wasted, or if you catch the other guy on a two-step RPM limiter, you can force their hand in over-heating. But it’s the mental game that’s weaponized the most.

They define it in sports psychology as the pre-performance routine, a set of behaviors leading up to an athlete’s performance. The batter’s ground taps and wide-swung wind-ups, a boxer’s Sign of the Cross that ties to their controlled breathing, that tiny moment that aligns their mindset, with the last step of that routine signaling their impending competition. The concept is that these routines fill out distractions and intentionally focus the mind on the task at hand. With drag racing, the structure and pace ahead of staging guide drivers into this same mental state, and consciously too, drivers have their own pre-performance routines as they focus on the tree. Breaking this routine is by far, at the core of the burndown, the greatest evil.

A classic example is the 1971 showdown between Don Garlits and Steve Carbone, which led to an upset victory thanks to the competitive vengeance of Carbone. The two had at times become round-by-round rivals, and the story goes that it was Garlits who first burned down Carbone back in 1968 when he took his time to even start the burnout. Carbone had rolled into staging as routine, cooling his tires while Garlits meandered through the burnout box. The man never forgot this, even after winning the world championship in 1969, and when his chance came in the final round of 1971’s Nationals at Indy, he applied pressure on Garlits in the most familiar way he could. To his credit, he outgunned by Big Daddy’s latest rear-engined Swamp Rat and got his retribution when Garlits’ overheated Hemi overpowered the track.

Rivalries aside, some powertrains are the target of burndowns more than others. In classes with mixed power-adders (turbocharging, nitrous, supercharging), like NHRA’s Pro Mods, engines can differ greatly in how they apply power. Notably, and infamously, turbo cars need a smoother operation during staging in order to have enough boost at the ready when the light goes green. The belt-driven supercharger and the solenoid-triggered nitrous power-adders can respond immediately off the line and need very little time to stage. Drivers will leverage this to their advantage to force the hand of a driver in a turbocharged car, who will need time to sit on the chip and spin the turbochargers up—and they’ve got to keep it spooled up or else risk having to start all over again. This aspect of staging with different power-adders can be utilized to either force the driver of a turbo car to short-stage their machine, or vice-versa, sit on the two-step so long that it overheats the strained drivetrain.

The big leagues are hardly the only place where a burndown shakes things up. This Street Car Shootout clip shows just how much the game can work in either direction. It seems that the Nova is last to pre-stage as he slowly bumps it into place, and from there, he waits on the Mustang, which if I had to assume, appears turbocharged. Already wise to these antics, they hold until the Fox bumps into the staging beams, but seemingly overshoots on accident and rolls over the start line. This kind of slip-up would normally red-light the round, but the Nova still holds, giving the Mustang a technical loophole to back it in and force the Nova into staging. The split-moment between the Nova’s last bump into staging and the light dropping green is the moment everyone waits for, like qiuck-draw shootout in a wilder time of the west. The antics seemingly didn’t pay off, not only slower off the line, but the Nova fogs the local mosquito population into extinction with oil. You’d wonder if that thing got hot.

One of the most infamous burndowns in drag racing is still Warren Johnson and Scott Geoffrion’s showdown at the now-defunct Houston Raceway Park. Despite having gotten his start there, Geoffrion had split from Johnson’s team two years prior for the factory Dodge team, and Johnson wasn’t known for being the most forgiving guy in the sport, with this burndown in 1994 brewing to the top. While we can talk about the machines all day, their technology is marvelous and the performance astounding given the resources, but it’s the extension of these very real, human dramas behind the scenes that can make a burndown so memorable for fans.

The post What is a drag racing burndown, and why does it work? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This isn’t another race track obituary lamenting one more paved mecca lost to urban development or noise ordinances. Those have, unfortunately, become commonplace over the years, but this story has a light at the end of the tunnel. An airstrip in Calverton, New York, five miles west of the town of Riverhead, recently opened its doors to 200 racers and just over 1000 spectators in a breakthrough opportunity to prove to local leaders that organized drag racing isn’t the public nuisance it’s made out to be. Now in the track’s fourth weekend of action, local leaders and racers are finding common ground thanks to a group of diehard locals—and a particularly obsessed promoter from Florida.

Located about 15 minutes southeast of Calverton, Westhampton Raceway opened in 1952. It was paved two years later and then operated successfully under a handful of different names until the facility became known as Long Island Dragway in 1991 and then Long Island Motorsports Park in 1996. However, in 2004, noise complaints led to the historic drag strip’s closing and eventual conversion into a retirement community. For nearly 20 years, that decision has deprived Long Island drag racers a place to compete on their home turf. Long Island Motorsports Park’s land had been rezoned residential use, despite the track’s half-century of history in the region, which meant the two-lane strip was churned up after the shutdown and made into a gentle neighborhood road. At the time, the township’s supervisor told the New York Times that a drag strip is “an idea whose time has come and gone.” It was the last of three drag strips to have once operated simultaneously on the island, leaving racers gutted.

Since then, gearheads have had to pay life’s most precious assets—time and money—to continue their passion. The next-closest drag tracks were at least an hour away, and for Long Islanders it’s more complicated than just hopping into a pick-up and hauling the car and trailer across town; toll fees quickly stack up against a racing budget, and there are only so many ways in and out of the island, which means leaving for mainland tracks is something of a hassle. Some drivers travel across state lines to New Jersey and Pennsylvania or even as far as New Hampshire for big events, but where there’s a vacuum of local venues to race, the racers often just find places themselves. Street racing is illegal, of course, but once organized venues disappear from a region that is so geographically isolated, the temptation to engage in it becomes a lot stronger.

After years of frustration, in 2016 John Cozzali founded a Facebook group called “Long Island Needs a Drag Strip” as a hub to organize an effort around restoring drag racing to the island. Along with the advocacy of Florida-based Pete Scalzo, they led a community of supporters to find a location that could host them.

Town hall meetings in Riverhead began getting crowded with racing shirts and hope, but there was pushback. The communities in Calverton, near the old wartime testing facility and Calverton Executive Airpark, now known as EPCAL, provided familiar gripes about race tracks. “The last thing this community needs is a drag strip,” one resident said in a 2017 interview. “There are a lot of retirement communities in the area, and the noise would be a big problem.” Others thought that the crash barriers (the same concrete K-rails you see in road construction) would be a hazard to racers, not realizing that those barriers would make the converted runways at EPCAL for everyone. Final approval from the Riverhead Town leaders to conduct an objective noise test eluded Scalzo for years, especially as the council members rotated in and out of office, leaving the Long Island racers to start over from scratch, in a sense.

Scalzo had proposed several compromises to work around noise concerns, including requiring mufflers, limiting speeds to about 115 mph, and a serious commitment to changing plans should the sound of racing be too much for residents down the road, or for visitors at the nearby Calverton National Cemetery. “I’ll prove we are not a noise issue,” he recounted at the inaugural Race Track, Not Street event at EPCAL. “If we are making a lot of noise and there are folks paying their respects to their fallen […] I wouldn’t want to be involved in it.”

Finally, the town board gave drag fans and racers a shot. For the initial permit allowing for eight events, the NHRA stepped up to sanction EPCAL as a Division 1 track. This was more than just a statement of support; the sanctioning helped to also provide a safety structure for all relevant permits and insurance. It wasn’t until the town’s official resolution marked August 21 as “Drag Racing Day” that nearly two decades of activism had actually paid off.

“Supervisor Aguiar has been instrumental with getting these events approved and she has been at every single one. She had an open mind and saw the tremendous opportunity that there was to bring drag racing back to Long Island and to the Town of Riverhead. She has supported the Motorsports community, and the entire Motorsports community supports her,” said Johnny Consoli, one of the committee members of Long Island Needs A Dragstrip. “She has said that she would love to have these events happen more and more. It truly has been an economic generator for the town with the local delis, restaurants, and shops getting some much extra foot traffic from these events.

“We can’t thank Pete Scalzo and Maree Moscati enough for giving us this opportunity to race here on Long Island,” he continued. “Along with Tom and Eric, they transformed a runway into an NHRA sanctioned dragstrip!”

There is one other event (separate from Race Track, Not Street) that will also run this fall, but future permits will still require a review process. Everyone is hopeful, and with a few events under his belt at EPCAL without issue, Scalzo’s scrappy efforts might just endear him to the town. For now though, it’s become a racer’s delight each weekend, with everything from stock late-model Chargers and Camaros to drag-and-drive regulars in their purpose-built street cars.

“We have said it from day 1, ‘Teamwork makes the dream work,'” Consoli said. “Pete also has had tremendous sponsors that have pitched in to make these events be the best they can be. Without all of these pieces of the puzzle, we wouldn’t be able to say that Long Island got a dragstrip.”

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“This is the dinosaur tour.” A perfect one-liner to describe the age of race cars in attendance at the 40th Annual Buick GS Nationals. Unlike many hi-po drag meets, where late model cars reign supreme, the rides packing Beech Bend Dragway’s paddock are primarily pre-1985. David McIntosh, the man who supplied the quote, has plenty of these short and sweet sentences, keeping any conversation as pleasant and airy as whipped chocolate mousse. I could listen to McIntosh talk all day—automotive knowledge that comes from over 40 years of running your own engine shop and a heft of good-naturing ribbing, piped through a breezy Georgian drawl—but he’s got places to be. A staging box specifically, to ignite the porky slicks on his 1971 Buick GS drag car.

It had been 29 years since McIntosh’s gold GS (badged as a GSX) staged the Christmas tree at Beech Bend Dragway in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, McIntosh and his drag car were legends among the Buick faithful packing the festival grounds, and the racer spent much of his year prepping customer’s engines for the big meet at his machine shop. “Everything in my life was AB: after Bowling Green.” Back in ’92 the car hit 139 miles-per-hour at a 9.71-second elapsed time through the quarter mile. That year, he was crowned victor at the show, beating the all-Buick field known as the “Quick 16.”

In the years following, McIntosh was always heavily recruited to come back to the strip, but the stars never aligned again during 1990s. The racer and his wife had their son Donald 1993, and, in 1996, Donald campaigned the gold Buick for the final time. That is, until this year’s GS Nationals. The prospect of a return for the torqued-out muscle car to the momentous iteration of GS Nationals at Beech Bend this year provided the proper push for McIntosh to dust off the old Buick and trailer it up to Bowling Green from his hometown of Dawsonville, Georgia.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as cleaning the car. No, it took three months for McIntosh and crew to prep the car that last drag raced 25 years ago. His buddy Eldon Glatfelter, who he met one year at the Nationals, made a 14-hour trip from Pennsylvania, and joined the project with friend Wayne Karraker, to help breathe life back into the old drag machine. McIntosh’s son Donald joined the fray too, equipping the car with a Motion Control Systems (MCS) shock package. An employee at MCS, and a racer in his own right, the young McIntosh actually built and designed the shocks for his father’s car.

McIntosh’s band of merry men spent three months thrashing, vetting each component of the car. They went through the 455-cubic-inch engine, yanked back-in-the-day from a 1970 Buick Electra, and sat it under a new set of Stage one heads. An Offenhauser intake sourced from McIntosh’s old hot rod Corvair sits between the heads and is an example of McIntosh’s contrarian attitude. “Everybody told me the intake didn’t work,” he says. “That’s the reason why it’s on there.” The car was buttoned up just in time for the 2021 event, and by the first day of passes down the strip, the car sat ready in the pits. “It was an emotional rollercoaster getting there,” says McIntosh, who, in addition to the flurry of reviving the car, also had to navigate a mid-summer scare of short fuel supply.

Sporting the same fire suit he wore in 1992, the 65-year-old-racer made several passes down the strip, but not without mechanical gremlins. The first day, an aftermarket master cylinder failed and at the end of the strip, brake pedal met floor. Crisis averted, the team was able to make the repair. During his time in the box, though, McIntosh noticed he couldn’t heat the tires like he used to, nor could he leave from the Christmas tree drag light like he remembered. A broken torque converter was finally identified as the culprit.

Despite the issues, McIntosh was able to lay down a 9.75-second elapsed time and qualify for the “Quick 16.” “It’s a pretty big rush. I build a lot of street hot rods that have more power, but the street’s different. They don’t leave like that,” he says. “Plus, I’m old.”

McIntosh’s first-round competitor played games with the wily veteran, at one pointing balking and backing out of the staging box. With the benefit of some time elapsed after the race itself, McIntosh now considers the trickery a kind of compliment—his rival racer no doubt intimidated by the gold Buick’s reputation. Not to mention that the gentleman that knocked him out in the first round also went on to win the whole event.

“If you’re going to lose, you always want that,” says McIntosh. “I don’t know why you want that, but at least you don’t look as bad.” Results aside, McIntosh and his gold GS did anything but.

It’s stories like McIntosh’s the highlight the importance of these hot rod gatherings, from Goodguys in Ohio to the Ford Nationals in Pennsylvania, to the Grand National Roadster show in California. They till the automotive anecdotes to the top and kick camaraderie into overdrive. Even before the event, McIntosh’s friends and family united to prep the Buick. Yes, the vehicles are amazing, and the racing is great, but the mass car shows like these dotting the continent are in many ways family reunions thinly veiled in burnt rubber and vaporized high-octane.

“I got to see people I hadn’t seen in years,” says McIntosh, who was still remembered as a local legend by fans that attended the event in 1992. “Overall, if I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I’d [still] do it,” says McIntosh, who had one last one-liner cued up. “Of course, I’d throw a new torque converter in first.”

The post This feral Buick GS drag car returned to the strip after a 25-year absence appeared first on Hagerty Media.

For the first time in nearly 50 years, you can get a big-block Camaro straight from Chevrolet. After 10 years of small-blocks getting all the racing glory, Chevrolet is putting a fuel-injected big-block V-8 under the hood of its COPO Camaro. And with the impressive 427 already bringing big-block-like displacement, Chevrolet went bananas and dropped in its largest V-8: a tall-deck, 572-cubic-inch behemoth that packs coffee-can-sized 4.56-inch bores. Look out, Drag Pak and Cobra Jet!

There is a catch. Because it’s a COPO Camaro, this beast is not for street use and is meant for NHRA Stock and Super Stock eliminator racing. But you should know that by now. There is good news, though. Chevrolet had previously capped COPO production to 69 units per year back when the drag-strip-only variant made its debut in 2012. Continuing the pattern established in 2020, the previous lottery system put in place to score one of the limited COPO Camaros is gone. Ordering is still simply on a first-come-first-served basis, with Chevrolet putting no limit to the production.

If you prefer your COPO with a small-block powerplant, Chevrolet has you covered as well, with both a supercharged 350 and a naturally aspirated 427 V-8, each port fuel-injected, soldiering on for 2022. Both engines are conservatively rated at 580 and 470 hp, respectively.

Although there are no power numbers available for the 572, expect it to also be underrated. We do know that the iron-block, four-bolt-main engine uses aluminum heads from Edelbrock and a Holley Hi-Ram intake with an Aeromotive fuel system and 58-lb/hr injectors that match those on its 427 stablemate. The heads listed have just a 315-cc intake port, in line with the Performer RPM heads often used in performance street builds, but the 118-cc exhaust port doesn’t seem to match any currently available Edelbrock castings. Those modest port volumes suggest that racers will have some porting to do to reach the engine’s full potential, which should be outstanding. Current COPO racers have squeezed more than 800 hp from their naturally aspirated 427s. and the 572 packs a bigger bore with bigger valves. While the big-block might not rev quite as high as its small-block brethren, it should still be able to move considerably more air.

If you’ve got your sights set on a COPO 572 and don’t have the $105,000 that a 572 COPO will cost you, don’t worry. Chevy will be offering the fuel-injected 572 as a crate engine as well. If we had to guess, we’ll be seeing one on display at this year’s SEMA show. Until then, have fun benchracing.

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Now that your bank balance has topped seven figures, the time may be right to indulge your favorite fantasies. If one of those dreams is owning your own race track, you’ve got until the end of July to rescue Michigan’s Milan Dragway from receivership.

Royal Oak, Michigan, attorney, and car enthusiast David Findling is the court-appointed receiver responsible for identifying those with the means and the will to restore Milan to its previous glory. Thus far he has received a half-dozen or so bids to shoulder Milan’s debts topping $2,500,000. Findling notes his task is three-fold: identifying the highest-dollar and best offer, confirming the viability of those funds, and determining the likelihood the new owner will fulfill future obligations related to Milan’s operation.

Findling adds that once his determination is made, the judge who appointed him must approve the sale in an open hearing. Since the final closing is unlikely before October 1, there’s little chance racing activities will resume until next year. Revenue exceeding the amount needed to settle the track’s debts will go to the current owner Bill Kapolka.

After Kapolka suffered ill health 18 months ago, Milan’s maintenance activities were suspended. In addition to repairing the strip’s weathered pavement and cleaning up spectator facilities (grandstands, parking lots, restrooms, food stands), the new owner faces two additional hurdles: remediating any environmental damage identified on the Dragway’s property and diminishing some of the noise radiated during racing to appease neighbors. An excavation crew to remove soil contaminated with traction compound, fuel, and drain oil will have its hands full; some combination of vegetation and earth berms may help reduce the din escaping the track.

In addition to IHRA sanctioned weekend drag racing, Milan has potential as a swap-meet, campgrounds, and rock-concert venue. There’s ample real estate to support motocross, go-kart, and speed boat competition. Michigan-based car makers and suppliers may be interested in renting these safe and secure facilities during the week for private testing. What better place is there to develop Amazon’s air-delivery drones?

If Milan piques your interest, don’t waste a moment getting in touch with Findling. Send your sincerest pitch and most generous offer to david@findlinglaw.com. And when you get Milan back on its feet, we’ll report that great news to the waiting anxiously fan base.

The post Milan Dragway to remain dormant for 2021, hope lingers on horizon appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Welcome to The Manifold, our fresh daily digest of news and what’s happening in the car world.

Ford sets, then resets NHRA electric 1/4-mile E.T. record in Ohio

All Ford – All Electric! What a ride. Go Ford!! #Worldrecord @elonmusk let’s race! pic.twitter.com/08D191Q9qM

— Bob Tasca III (@Tasca3) June 27, 2021

Intake: Funny Car driver Bob Tasca III (yeah, Bob Tasca is his grandfather) changed things up a bit last weekend when he strapped into the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400. His exhibition run at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, set a record for an all-electric 1/4-mile elapsed time when Tasca carried the front tires well past the 60-foot mark and nabbed an 8.26-second time slip. Then he improved upon that record with another pass—8.12 seconds at 171.97 mph. Afterwards, in the tweet above, Tasca threw down the gauntlet to Elon Musk.

Exhaust: The NHRA has embraced electric drag racing and will launch several all-electric classes in 2022, so hopefully this kind of performance is a taste of what we can expect in heads-up electric racing next year. Competitors may appreciate the simplified tuning when internal combustion is taken out of the equation, but it may be difficult to get used to the sound of a nearly silent 1/4-mile pass. If you’re a traditionalist, don’t worry; until electric cars start breaking into the 300-mph range, Top Fuel likely isn’t going anywhere.

BMW’s new 2 Series Coupe will shed camo at Goodwood

Intake: BMW will unveil its new 2 Series Coupe at the Goodwood Festival of speed in early July. The Munich firm says that this new 2 Series will harken back to the original 2002 of the late ’60s, boasting a compact footprint, rear-wheel drive (can we get an amen?), and at least the option of a straight six. The car promises to deliver the simple, engaging thrills that once defined the brand but have since been harder to find as BMW chases higher horsepower and supercar-like performance. It will officially be unveiled on July 8 at BMW’s “M Town” stand, after which it will dash up the hill at Lord March’s estate. Joining this pocket rocket up the hill from BMW will be a host of other models, including an M5 Competition, a special-edition M4 Competition designed in collaboration with fashion brand Kith, an iX electric crossover, and an i4 Gran Coupe, as well as a few motorcycles.

Exhaust: First things first: We’re thrilled to see Goodwood back on the calendar. BMW’s 2 Series has always been a bit of a holdout, staying truly compact while every other model bloats in the pursuit of more power. (Imagine your high-school linebacker joining an NCAA D1 school and getting placed on the O-line, gaining half his body weight in a summer.) The 2 Series is a manual transmission away from being the last simple, driver-focused offering in BMW’s lineup.

Next-gen Corvette Z06 continues to suffer delays

Intake: Despite the enticing train of heavily camouflaged prototypes we saw back in April, don’t expect the mid-engine Z06 model to debut this year. All reports pointed toward the 600-odd-hp beast arriving for the 2022 model year, but now GM Authority reports that the Z06 timetable is the latest pandemic-related automotive casualty: The Z06 could appear as late as the 2023 model year, when we had expected to see the Grand Sport.

Exhaust: Pandemic aside, the decades-long hype behind the mid-engine Corvette will likely stand the Z06 in good stead here. Even now, three model years into the C8’s life span, Chevy can’t make them fast enough. The C8.R’s riotous success on the endurance racing circuit should also help fan the flames of customer enthusiasm during the delay, since a version of the race car’s 32-valve, flat-plane-crank LT6 V-8—one unhampered by motorsports regulations—will power the C8 Z06. 

Nab the millionth 2020 Tacoma TRD Pro

Intake: A 158-mile example of Toyota’s kitted-out Tacoma, and the millionth “Taco” ever produced, is headed to Mecum’s auction block in Monterey, California, this August. If the ultra-low miles and the Army Green paint (an option unique to TRD Pro models in 2020) hadn’t already got your attention, know that all proceeds will go to the Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Exhaust: Though the Colorado ZR2 Bison has a more robust arsenal of off-road equipment, including a locking front diff and Multimatic DSSV shocks, it can’t rival the Tacoma’s near-cult following. A pristine example at a high-profile auction like Monterey could offer a hint as to the 2020 Tacoma’s half-life in the collector market.

The 2022 Subaru WRX is due in later this year, hood scoop and all

Intake: A new WRX is on the horizon, and Subaru is planning a reveal of the sporty all-wheel-drive mainstay later this year. The teaser image, released today, shows off very little of the 2022 WRX—a sedan-shaped silhouette with a familiar hood scoop.

Exhaust: Earlier spy shots of the upcoming WRX testing in Michigan (alongside a Tesla Model 3) provide a much clearer preview of what’s to come, including angular taillights in the fashion of the 2022 BRZ. Subaru isn’t known for rapid change, preferring to stick with tried-and-true methods to keep the sales rolling in and puppy-laden commercials rolling out.; the next Rex promises another turbocharged flat-four, although whether it’s an updated version of the existing 268-hp 2.0-liter or a sport-tuned take on the Outback XT’s 260-hp 2.4-liter engine remains to be seen. A flagrantly, wonderfully uncouth STI version is sure to follow, and rumors persist of possible hybrid power in the pipeline. We’ll believe it when we see it.

F9 roars to $70M opening for car-crazy Americans

Intake: Leave it to the latest flick in the Fast and Furious saga to supercharge the summer box office. When the dust settled, F9 captured $70 million on its opening weekend domestically — a roaring success for movie theater chains. Meanwhile, on the international scene, F9 also struck gold to the tune of $335 million in sales, bringing to the global haul to date to around $405 million and counting.

Exhaust: F9 sets an impressive benchmark for the rest of the summer blockbuster slate to chase, demonstrating American and international audiences alike gravitate towards the high concept action genre, especially when cars are involved. We couldn’t be prouder to witness all of the many different ways in which cars are leading us back to what feels like normal.

The post Ford sets and resets electric 1/4-mile E.T. record, BMW 2 Series Coupe heads to Goodwood, C8 Z06 likely delayed appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Southeast Michigan, the home of three domestic car companies, is the center of the auto universe to millions who live and work there. But as a place to take your favorite ride for a Sunday afternoon blast of legal speed, the Detroit area today ranks near the bottom of the hospitality list. Though amateur drag racing was nurtured if not invented here, drag strips struggle making a go of it. Milan Dragway, located 35 miles west of the Motor City—and less than 20 miles south of Hagerty’s editorial offices in Ann Arbor—is the latest quarter-mile track to keep its gates padlocked long after warm weather’s return.

In 1957, Motor City Dragway, one of the country’s first paved tracks, opened at a rural site 35 miles northeast of Detroit. Before electronic timing equipment was created, racers were hand flagged at the start and finish lines. So many cars came to race that aircraft spotting lights were used to stretch running deep into the night. But after 21 years of competition, civilization closed in and noise complaints shut Motor City down. Though the place has been abandoned for decades and grass grows through cracks in its asphalt, retired racers still come to pay their respects.

Detroit Dragway, located only 16 miles south of downtown Detroit, followed in 1959. This time it was industrial growth that shut the track down after 37 years of racing in 1996. Today, GM assembles electric car battery packs in the quiet manufacturing park that replaced Detroit Dragway’s sound and fury.

Milan Dragway opened in 1964 on repurposed farmland unlikely to be plagued either by civilization’s creep or noise complaints. Entrepreneur Bill Kapolka bought the facility in 1989. Over the years, Milan hosted both NHRA and IHRA national drag racing events as well as frequent swap meets, car shows, and rock concerts. A pond on the property supported marine drags and corners of the facility were groomed for mud racing and motocross events. Both Car and Driver and Automobile magazine rented access to Milan for occasional car tests.

Kapolka survived one brush with bankruptcy in the early 1990s. More recently he was tardy repaying funds borrowed from Les Gold, a Detroit pawn shop owner and reality TV star known as the “street-level economist.”

This March, Judge Daniel White of the 38th Circuit Court in Monroe, Michigan, placed Kapolka and the American Jewelry & Loan pawnshop in receivership. Proprietor Gold claimed to have a buyer approved by the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) ready to assume ownership and operation of the drag strip. Such a sale would relieve Kapolka of bankruptcy and, hopefully, restore Milan Dragway racing sometime this summer.

In spite of Milan’s distress, the drag racing sport is thriving. The largest organizer, National Hot Rod Association, claims 40,000 active competitors. The second largest International Hot Rod Association’s reach extends to Australia, Europe, South America, Russia, and other foreign countries. Recently, boutique organizations such as the National Electric Drag Racing Association have sprung up to support the growing popularity of motorcycles and cars powered solely by electricity.

The beauty of drag racing is that any participant’s skills are highly portable.  Once the nuances of the starting line’s Christmas tree are learned, successful procedures can be taken from one track to the next. In spite of the various lengths are now in use—1000-feet and 1/8th mile in additional to the traditional quarter-mile—the racing game is the same track to track. This sport’s fast pace and accessibility also helps keep the spectator stands packed during major weekends. Television coverage of the major national events has also prospered over the years. Four-wide competition supported by the top tracks is, in the eyes of many, far more exciting to view than any NASCAR race.

While Milan competitors and spectators are surely disappointed about their home track’s current closure, ample opportunities for them to scratch the racing itch remain. There are two active drag strips—Lapeer International and Ubly Dragway—located in Michigan’s “thumb” 100 miles north of Detroit. The Mid Michigan Motorplex in central Michigan offers test and tune sessions, junior dragster classes for kids as young as seven years old, and cash payouts for winners in several classes every summer weekend. US 131 Motorsports Park, 165 miles west of Detroit, which claims to be Michigan’s fastest track, operates every weekend from April through early November.

We can only hope Milan’s setback is temporary and that a new owner/operator with better finances and an upbeat vision rises to the occasion. Anyone interested in exploring this opportunity further should get in touch with Les Gold at American Jewelry and Loan in Detroit.

The post Michigan’s Milan Dragway is on the ropes appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The NHRA Summit Racing Series is about to have a whole new racing class that will likely cause a lot of stir in the drag racing world, though it won’t create much noise on the track. The class, set to debut for the 2022 season, will allow electric vehicles to compete against one another in the quarter-mile.

Electric vehicle racing is nothing new. Chevrolet showed off the eCOPO back in 2018, Ford tested the CobraJet 1400 at NHRA events in 2020, and Don “Big Daddy” Garlits himself has been toying with an electric dragster for years. There are some interesting benefits to an electric drag car. For one thing, an electric motor should offer more consistency, considering that atmospheric conditions don’t come into play like they do with a combustion powerplant. The batteries and motors aren’t cheap, but neither is a race engine, and an electric setup has fewer moving pieces that can break or foul or jam. What’s common in drag racing, no matter the powerplant, is the skill required to read the track and get the perfect launch.

Like their internal-combustion counterparts, EV drag cars will need parts to continue racing in top condition, and Summit Racing Equipment, the title sponsor of the aforementioned racing series, hopes to offer the same kind of support to EV racers that it has to fuel-burners for the last 50+ years. Likewise, the NHRA sees the benefit in giving racers a safe place to test and develop their cars, whether it’s a Sportsman drag car like the CobraJet 1400 and eCOPO or a Tesla.

“The NHRA is excited to provide the OEMs a platform to showcase their EV technology, production, and racing efforts,” said NHRA’s vice president of competition Ned Walliser. “Adding an EV category to Summit Racing Series expands our involvement in EV racing and better solidifies our effort to provide a platform of Speed for All.”

The NHRA is still cooking up class rules, but it hopes to have everything ironed out soon so that teams will have ample time to prepare for the 2022 season. As more manufacturers seek to get enthusiasts interested in electric vehicles, we may see new brand rivalries emerge on the drag strip.

The post NHRA launches new EV drag-racing class for 2022 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

John Force went over 332 mph in 1000 feet in Sunday’s National Hot Rod Association race at The Strip at Las Vegas, but it’s arguable that his greatest accomplishment of the weekend is outlined in the following quote after he was eliminated in the semi-finals:

“We did our job, we qualified good. We went some rounds, Robert with Auto Club, myself with PEAK and BlueDEF PLATINUM and Brittany with Flav-R-Pac and Monster Energy,” said Force, who is now seventh in points. “We didn’t get the win, almost got to the final but we had some breakage and that’s why you need sponsors. All my partners are really standing by me, Chevy, Cornwell Tools stepping up their sponsorship, Baldwin Filters and ParkerStore, you know and that what’s really important.”

Nine, count ’em, nine sponsorship mentions in one paragraph. Even NASCAR drivers would be impressed. As he said, “… and that [is] what’s really important.”

God, too. In an interview last week, “God just sends me down a road,” said John Harold Force. “I don’t know why, or where I’m going. But he always seems to let me recover.”

The Most Popular Man in Drag Racing is now 71, still behind the wheel of his 11,000-horsepower Funny Car on Sundays, hoping to be the last man sitting as he wins the finals. On Sundays, you get one shot at drag racing; fail, and you go home. Force envies NASCAR racers who get to screw up a lap, then have hundreds more to make up for the mistake. You don’t get to do that in drag racing.

Lean and healthy, down 25 pounds over the last year, this isn’t the same porky Force we spent a weekend with in 1997, when he strode through his motorhome before races, repeatedly downing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with additional peanut butter painted on them. That was 10 years after he won his first race. He won 16 season championships afterwards, and he isn’t ready to stop now.

But that’s exactly what he did at the start of the 2020 season, a couple of races in: After COVID-19 hit, the NHRA regrouped and resumed its season, but without Force and his three-car team. He quit, and he was uncharacteristically quiet about it. Many thought he was done, and maybe even the NHRA was done, too. Then he said he might be back in 2021, and here is. He and teammate Robert Hight, his son-in-law Funny Car driver, and his daughter Brittany dominated preseason testing at Palm Beach International Raceway. “I called my sponsors and told them, ‘Hell, looks like Force is still alive.’

“I knew then we were back,” Force said. “And I didn’t know how much I missed my hot rod.”

As COVID loomed, he met with the team—team president Hight “was an accountant in college”—and it was immediately clear that during the break he would be asking his sponsors for enough money to keep the doors open and stay on the road, but he had nothing to give them back that totaled up what the contracts demanded, and he wasn’t going to do that. So he closed the doors. “You have contracts that are cut and dried that tell you what the sponsors are paying for.”

He met with his sponsors—Auto Club, BlueDEF, a dozen others—“and we agreed to just move it down the road a year, pick up in 2021 if things were better.” They are, and he did. The NHRA has an implausibly tough schedule of 21 races, and Force, Hight, and daughter Brittany, who drives in Top Fuel, plan to make them all.

NHRA wasn’t so lucky. Mello Yellow, the citrusy soft drink, had partnered with the NHRA since 2002, and had a deal to continue being the series sponsor through 2023. But Mellow Yello lawyers took the opportunity to use the COVID shutdown to break the contract, effective immediately. NHRA counter-sued in September, but the outcome is unknown. Still, Camping World, run by CNBC’s “The Profit” star Marcus Lemonis, who sponsors NASCAR, tweeted that maybe the NHRA should have a sponsor that understands motor racing (it’s no secret Mello Yellow never really did), and they should talk. They did, and now it’s the Camping World series. The consensus is that Lemonis cut a sweetheart deal.

Still, for Force, it took a lot of money out of pocket to keep the electricity on in 2020. “For 25 years I scrambled to make enough money to stay on the road, and I finally made some money, and now I’m spending it all getting back on the road.”

Overhead is substantial. At one time all four daughters were on the payroll, and some of their husbands. He built a huge house in Yorba Linda, California, with its own waterfall. He took over an Infiniti dealership just down from the Nixon library and turned it into his 34,000-square-foot shop, complete with a grand piano in the library.

If all this current news sounds a bit grim, let’s take a 1997 interlude with a different top-of-the-world, Ma! John Force: A kid was tugging on Force’s pants leg while he was signing autographs: “And finally, I turn around, grab the kid and pick him up. He starts kicking his little legs and yelling, ‘Put me down! Let me go!’ He’s a midget! He’s so pissed he runs off. I had to chase him down to apologize.”

Want another? Force was talking about the most unusual items he has autographed, and the winner was an elderly man who told Force he had nothing for him to sign. “I tell him, ‘Hell, I’ll sign anything!’ So the guy reaches down, pulls off his wooden leg, and hands it to me. So he’s hopping there one on foot, and I say, ‘And to whom should I make this out? Any special message you’d like? Any family members you’d like to mention?’ And the guy says, ‘Just sign the damn thing before I fall over on my ass!’”

“We have a saying,” said his former crew chief, Austin Coil. “Life with John is often difficult, but never boring.”
Force never gets tired of talking about his origins, a 50-foot trailer in the San Gabriel Valley shared with his father, a truck driver; his mother; and four siblings. “Our Thanksgiving turkey was stuffed with newspaper, you know what I mean?” Force had polio as a child, and while he came back from it and played some football in college: “I knew nobody was going to pay me to run. So I had to get a Funny Car to do the running for me.”

He lost 84 straight races, 16 straight final rounds before he and Coil started winning. “We used to beat Force like a drum,” said retired racer Don Prudhomme. And though Coil retired long ago, Force is still, well, a force.

Not to say it has been easy. Three times, Force was tested with tragedy—two genuine, one economic.

The worst was when they were testing at Gainesville Raceway in 2007 with Funny Car driver Eric Medlen. In the very definition of a freak accident, Medlen was literally shaken to death as his car developed the most severe tire shake recorded, as one tire was apparently deflating. It hit Force hard; he pledged to, and did, help redesign cockpits and consulted with Goodyear, doing work that has likely saved lives. Medlen, son of crew chief John Medlen, was 33.

Six months later, Force was in the worst accident of his career, when his car came apart at the Texas Motorplex south of Dallas, while racing Kenny Bernstein. Force was helicoptered to the hospital with a broken ankle, an abrasion on his right knee, a dislocated left wrist, and mangled fingers and toes. He was hospitalized for a month. Most, except for Force, thought his driving career was over. More work went into making the car safer, and likely more lives may have been saved. Even more work went into rehabilitation.

The third disaster came in 2014, this one economic, when both Castrol, a 29-year partner, and Ford ended its association with Force for economic reasons. It was devastating. He has a deal now with Chevrolet, signed for what was reported to be about half of what Ford was paying, but none of his partners has been as loyal and profitable as Castrol. Force wouldn’t give up, then or now. The connection between man and brand was so strong that some fans still think of him as a Castrol spokesman. John Howell, who was Castrol’s motorsports manager, said Force’s strength as a spokesman did not come from coaching. “There are people within our organization who have tried to coach John, but all it does is confuse him.”

Cut to the bittersweet season opener, the NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville, Florida, where Medlen died 14 years ago. Force, Hight and Brittany all qualified well enough, but none won: J.R. Todd, one of the young guns who worry Force, took the title in Funny Car. Yet the Las Vegas run proved that it’s just a matter of time before Force, daughter Brittany, and Hight start winning again.

The respect is there on the other side, too. Todd says that when Force isn’t in the field, victory seems a little less glorious. “I’m glad they’re back. When I win, I want to beat the best. Plus, John is such a popular guy that it’s good to have him back at the track.”

“Back in the early days,” Prudhomme said in 1997, “everybody thought John was crazy. Now we think that maybe he’s just eccentric.”

The post The Force is still with(in) him, even at the age of 71 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is announcing that the upcoming NHRA Southern Nationals will be the last held at Commerce, Georgia’s Atlanta Dragway. Since the event was skipped last year due to the pandemic, the 2021 event will be the 40th hosted at Georgia’s House of Speed, after which the NHRA will seek a new buyer for the property in an effort to raise funds to update other tracks. Currently listed by the Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) realty firm, the property was confirmed for sale by the NHRA via Competition Plus back in December of 2020, and while the NHRA was initially optimistic about finding another track operator, the JLL listing later revealed the all-too-common push to redevelop the property for “a large mixed-use program of industrial, residential, and commercial uses.”

Sigh.

The NHRA states that the proceeds of the sale will go into its other tracks—Gainesville Raceway, Lucas Oil Raceway, and Auto Club Raceway/Pomona—but it strikes a blow to what was once one of the NHRA’s longest-running tracks on the nitro schedule. While Atlanta Dragway gets its name from the nearby metroplex, it’s actually a little over an hour away from Commerce, a city of approximately 6800 people. After opening its doors to racers in 1976 with the IHRA Dixies Nationals, this one-time red-dirt airport runway became a mecca for Georgian drag-racing fans. The NHRA purchased the track in 1990 and has since operated it as a yearly stop for its touring classes. The venue also hosts an endless list of sportsman and local events.

In a recent announcement, the NHRA says that it is committed to its 2021 weekly event schedule “through the fall, including the Summit E.T. Bracket Series events and the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series National Open, May 21–23, along with the NHRA Division 2 Summit E.T. Racing Series Finals, September 30–October 2.” Beyond that, the future is uncertain for the storied quarter-mile strip.

While it’s easy to focus on the loss to spectators, who now face a 200-mile journey to any race weekend in Bristol, Tennessee; Charlotte, North Carolina; or even down to South Georgia’s own Valdosta, I feel that the potential loss would be measured in public safety for the Atlanta metro area if Atlanta Dragway were to close down. Historically, when racing venues are erased from an area, the remains will shake out into the streets. Drag strips, in the spirit of the NHRA’s quest to quail early forms of street racing, were built to give hot rodders a safe and organized outlet. As time has gone on, urban sprawl and commercial development envelops the land where these once-rural drag strips stand. Then, one of two things happen: The new neighbors complain until a city decides their tax revenue is more valuable than the track’s, and levy noise enforcement; or the land underneath the track simply becomes astronomically more valuable than the track’s operations— which appears to be the case here. The choice to close the track’s doors, however, has greater impacts than providing another measly 318 acres for ticky tacky little boxes on the hillside. 

Many leaders, including those in the Atlanta area, are realizing that there needs to be safe venues for automotive enthusiasts in order to tame potential public harm, while others who have historically kept an anti-automotive culture view are suffering increasingly anti-authoritarian acts, like Southern California’s takeover crowd, which grew out of the over-policing of cruises and meets.

As for now, the future of Atlanta Dragway is undecided.

The post After 40 years, Atlanta Dragway will say goodbye to NHRA racing in 2021, possibly closing its doors appeared first on Hagerty Media.

From 1961 to ’64, my dad Fred worked at Al Roberts Plymouth in Garden Grove, California, where he managed the used-car lot. In the first year or so that he worked there, Al Roberts tried several times to get my dad to take a new Plymouth as a demonstrator that he could drive for free. My dad said that he liked Al and liked working for him, but he preferred his own Oldsmobile over the new Plymouths, which he considered kind of ugly.

When dealer memos appeared in 1962 announcing the upcoming 413 Super Stock package, as a joke, my dad told Roberts he’d take a new super stocker. Roberts responded by asking him which model, what colors, and what options he wanted. Dad answered each question, assuming Roberts was kidding. He didn’t give it another thought until Roberts called to confirm that his demo order was received and the car would be delivered in six to eight weeks. At that point, my dad told me he was in a mild state of shock, never expecting that he was being taken seriously, let alone that Roberts was actually going to order him a factory race car.

The night the white ’62 Savoy arrived, my dad took my mom and me for a ride. Once out of town, he stood on it a bit. I was 7 years old, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling of being pushed back in my seat as my dad shifted by pushing lit buttons on the dash.

He took it to nearby Jardine Headers for a pair of fender-well headers and tow-bar brackets, and with a set of Casler recap “cheater slicks,” my dad and the Plymouth were soon racing on most Sundays at Lions, San Gabriel, and Pomona drag strips.

He traded for a new ’63 when those arrived, now with a low-compression (11:1) 426, and gave it the same race-prep treatment as the ’62 had. He reached the quarter finals of Mr. Stock Eliminator at the 1963 NHRA Winternationals in that car, with a 12.25 at 116 mph. About a month later, he switched to a faster Belvedere with a high-compression 426. Dad already knew he was leaving Al Roberts Plymouth to open a speed shop with a partner, though, so he bought his own super stocker, a car he could keep for himself. This ’63 Savoy factory super stocker, with a high-compression 426 and an aluminum front end (1 of 50 so equipped), is that car.

The red Savoy proved the fastest of the four super stockers my dad raced. Like other factory race cars, it came with a booklet that included specifications. It explained that the car was built “for sanctioned acceleration trials” and was not built to be, or suitable to be used as, a daily driver. With another visit to Jardine and some race prep at Hayden Proffitt & Associates, he had great success in the NHRA’s AA/SA class (later A/SA) through 1966, winning events all over Southern California.

In spring 1965, the NHRA national record was 12.36 seconds at 116 mph; Dad ran as quick as 11.86 at 120.16 on 7-inch tires. The biggest name in AA/SA and A/SA back then was factory-sponsored Ford racer (and 1964 NHRA Junior Stock world champion) Mike Schmitt, who campaigned a very fast ’64 Ford Galaxie lightweight powered by a 427 High Riser. Schmitt and my dad raced in six heads-up pairings in 1965–66, and Dad beat him six times. He continued to be competitive for several more years.

Then, early in 1969, my mom suffered two near-fatal strokes. Dad ran his last race in the Savoy that spring at the Hot Rod Magazine Championships, before selling it to help pay medical bills. I know it stayed in the California racing scene for a few years and then started changing hands among collectors in the mid-1970s; by that time, he and I were focusing on my own super stocker, a 1964 Dodge Polara 500, which we turned into a seriously quick racer. Sadly, Dad died in 1976, when he was just 50 years old. I’ve kept the Polara all these years in large part because of his involvement with it, but I always wondered what happened to his Savoy.

I got my answer in 2014, when I received an email from a guy in Montana who had recently purchased it. Somehow he’d learned I was the son of the original owner, and he was looking for more information on the Savoy’s racing history. We ended up becoming long-distance friends, and in 2017, when he told me he had his eye on an original ’68 Hemi Dodge Dart and asked if I wanted to buy back my dad’s car, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Three weeks later, the transporter unloaded the red Savoy in front of my house. I hadn’t seen it in person since the 1971 NHRA Winternationals.

The car is still 100 percent as produced, its 13.5:1 426 Max Wedge fed by a pair of Carter AFB carburetors on a cross-ram intake manifold, with forged pistons and heavy-duty forged connecting rods, a hardened crankshaft, and a special Torque-Flite transmission putting 425 horsepower to the rear wheels.

So many wonderful childhood memories are tied to this Plymouth. My mom passed away a few years ago, and my brother died in 1999, so it feels like the closest thing to family I have left. To have it in the garage again, now parked beside the Polara Dad helped me build, is beyond special.

The post This Savoy is Mopar’s link to super-stock stardom—and my connection to my dad appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A veteran drag racer has popped up on Bring a Trailer and we’re wishing for some one-on-one time with this beast at the drag strip. This 1970 Plymouth Road Runner looks like it comes ready to run, complete with two fenders full of contingency stickers. Don’t worry, the listing notes that those are easy to remove and reapply without damaging the paint. Best of all, this muscle machine is equipped with a 426 Hemi V-8 and still looks great after a somewhat-recent restoration.

There’s no denying the 426 Hemi was among the most feared engines in drag-strip competition in its day. Apart from a 427 Cobra, a 427 Corvette, or a Buick 455, a Mopar B-body equipped with a big-block Hemi wouldn’t have had much competition. This particular Hemi Mopar B-body has the racing record to prove it.

The 1973 AHRA record of 13.24 seconds at 110.83 mph is impressive for a stock, production muscle car, especially in that era. It would take something in the range of a 392 Charger to best that time today, and a 110-mph trap speed suggests that there was a lot more on the table if the Plymouth had had better traction.

Unfortunately, this Road Runner is no longer equipped with its original 426 Hemi. Instead, it appears to be fitted with an over-the-counter replacement of the same vintage. No doubt the car’s drag racing career took a toll on the factory block along the way; we can only speculate what kind of rod-snapping carnage might have occurred. Judging by some of the photos of the replacement engine, this block may have also been on the receiving end of a wayward connecting rod.

A nicely optioned interior reveals bucket seats with a console shifter for the three-speed auto. There’s also a Tic-Toc tach in the dash. The odometer shows just 30,000 miles, but there’s no indication that’s accurate.

With six days left, bidding has only begun. The car’s tough life of drag racing has been mostly buffed away with its mid-2010s restoration, but we’ll have to wait to see whether this car’s racing pedigree has smoothed over the fact that the original engine is not in the picture.

The post This Hemi Road Runner broke drag-strip records in the ’70s, and it could be yours appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Over the last half-century, the organization has found its greatest success as a hub for grassroots racing. That the IHRA is still thriving today is a testament to the tenacity of its employees and racing participants. After surviving a number of challenges over those five decades—including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic—the IHRA is poised to tackle 2021 doing more of what it does best: provide great venues that host great racing.

Larry Carrier founded the IHRA in 1971, after first leaving the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) and then the American Hot Rod Association (AHRA). Carrier owned the Bristol International Speedway/Dragway, a one-half-mile oval and quarter-mile drag-strip complex that is tucked away between two mountains in the eastern tip of Tennessee. Carrier faced daunting challenges: first, from a sanctioning standpoint, the NHRA and AHRA oversaw almost all of the nation’s drag strips, and second, the feasibility of starting up a sanctioning body from nothing seemed a dubious effort at best. To make matters even more difficult, for the 1971 season at the Grand Americans, the AHRA had a contract with “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and a number of other top racers. With no tracks aside from Bristol and Rockingham, North Carolina—which Carrier also managed—and no top racers, Carrier’s success was far from certain.

“Way back then, drag racing was happening in southern California. The NHRA and founder Wally Park were all West Coast people, so I think this was Larry’s shot at being the East Coast person,” says Skooter Peaco, who has been with the IHRA for 17 years and is today its vice president. Initially, the IHRA mirrored the NHRA’s professional class structure of Top Fuel, Funny Car, and Pro Stock. Carrier was also responsible for scoring drag racing’s long-term sponsorship association with Winston, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s brand.

In 1987, Carrier sold the IHRA to Billy Meyer, who owned the Texas Motorplex. At the time, this track was considered to be the top drag-racing facility in the world. The Motorplex had been the NHRA’s premier track, but for 1988 it hosted two IHRA national events. “Meyer lost a fortune with the IHRA, due primarily to the fact that he was plagued by horrible weather,” says Peaco. “Just about every national event he had was rained on or rained out.” Meyer ran into financial difficulties due in part to this bad luck, and he owned the IHRA for just one season before selling it.

From 1989 to 1992, the IHRA was run by Pro Stock racer Jim Ruth and Ted Jones, who had long served as Carrier’s right-hand man. Ruth and Jones managed to rejuvenate organization. In 1990, they introduced an all-new class, Pro Modified, which has become a feature at IHRA events and one of drag racing’s most successful classes. During this time, Pro Modified became the IHRA’s primary asset in its recovery from the 1988 season that had nearly destroyed it. Unfortunately, Ruth was stricken by cancer and died, so the IHRA was taken over by a group of drag racers. “Being racers as well as being the owners of the sanctioning body proved challenging,” notes Peaco. “They ran it from 1993 to 1996, then sold it to Elton Alderman, owner of Prolong Super Lubricants. He owned the IHRA for one year and then it was out of business.”

In 1988, Bill Bader purchased the IHRA and set about reviving it. He moved the head office to Norwalk, Ohio, where his track, Summit Motorsports Park, was located. “Bader took something that was finished and he built it up,” explains Peaco. “He went west and got a bunch of tracks and sponsors to follow him. Bader is a very charismatic guy, and is arguably one of the top, if not the top, track operator of all time.” In the wintertime when the race track was closed, Bader would go around the country promoting monster truck events.

Bader sold the controlling interest in the IHRA to Clear Channel/ SFX in 2001. “Clear Channel bought up a bunch of stuff back in the ’90s and early 2000s, and one of the things they bought was the big, touring monster truck and Supercross events,” recalls Peaco. “The guy that ran the motorsports division knew Bader and they put a deal together where Bader would run the show, Clear Channel would have the majority stake and provide marketing support.” The support failed to materialize and in late 2005, Clear Channel split into two separate corporate entities, Clear Channel Radio and Live Nation, with the IHRA operating under the latter. Feld Entertainment bought Live Nation’s motorsports division in 2008 and operated the IHRA for four years.

Next up came Joe Lubeck and his partners Edward Kobel and Michael Dezer; Kobel was part owner of the San Francisco 49ers at the time, and Dezer was a property developer in Miami. “Lubeck had bought Memphis International Raceway and he owned Palm Beach International Raceway,” says Peaco. “He wanted to own the sanctioning body and a few more tracks, and he was going to put all that stuff together and then take it public. That was his big plan. He only owned the IHRA from 2013 to 2014 because he ran out of money before he could put it all together and take it public. Today, the IHRA is owned by IRG Sports + Entertainment.”

IRG is poised to revive the IHRA by focusing on what has been its primary strength since 1971. “We have been very good at working with member tracks, where 99 percent of them aren’t hosting one of these big events on TV,” says Peaco. “They’re your local track, the guy down the road that owns the track with his wife. They’re trying to make a go of it, and they need somebody to put together some programs that their racers would like.

“That’s us, that’s the space we fill,” Peaco continues. “Our forte is sportsman racing, regular guys who are taking their street car to the race track, and from there to building a 10-second Camaro. We’re not going away, because the core of our sport remains these guys that are insuring their car with Hagerty, buying parts from Summit, and going to their local, family-owned, IHRA-sanctioned track. As long as there are track owners and racers who want to participate in this sport at an affordable level and take part in our value-oriented programs, then we have a space.”

The post The International Hot Rod Association roars into its 50th year with the throttle wide open appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My first formation takeoff was a bit of a fail. I understood academically what was supposed to happen, and I had chair flown it many times sitting at my dining room table (chair flying involves visualizing and thinking through a flight while on the ground at zero knots and 1g). That said, academic understanding plus chair flying wasn’t a recipe for success in this case.

Once both aircraft are positioned on the runway, there’s some non-verbal communication between pilots using cranium nods and hand signals to convey in position, engine(s) run up, and ready for takeoff. The signal to release brakes together is a cranium nod from flight lead, with brake release occurring as chin hits chest. All went well until at the directed moment I forgot to release my brakes. Realizing my mistake, I released them a moment later as my instructor pilot’s voice came over the intercom and colorfully demanded I get off the brakes and into position. There are limitations to how much one can reduce power during a formation takeoff before it becomes unsafe, so physics dictated I stayed well aft and out of position until we were airborne.

***

“Is it supposed to sound like that?”

My wife and I were sitting in the stands at the drag race track not far from our home for open racing (“run what you brung”). We had never been to any kind of race before and she was confused by the coughing and sputtering emanating from a 2008-era Honda Civic as it worked its way down the 1000-foot track (a distance halfway between one-eighth and one-quarter mile). I told her the owner had likely paid lots of money to make it sound like that, although I suspected the driver had hoped for a better return on their investment; the mods were great at noisemaking but not so hot on quickly motoring the car down the track. I could relate, having flown several aircraft seemingly more proficient at turning dead dinosaurs into noise than into thrust.

While in the stands, I spent some time watching the starting tree so I knew what to expect when it was my turn. Thanks to the internet, I had an academic understanding of the process: two white lights to indicate in position and staged, then the three yellows, and finally the green lights. I explained the tree to my wife, since I was hoping she’d get a heroic shot of me launching forward, front tires nearly off the ground, car body twisting from the excess torque, and leaving my competitor in the dust, much as my flight lead had done to me all those years ago. Per the vernacular, I planned to chop down the tree, go A to B, and drive right out of the other driver’s life. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy (note: likely not part of drag racing vernacular).

One problem: I was driving my grandfather’s 1969 Jeepster Commando, a vehicle I personally rebuilt several years back. Its 225-cubic-inch V-6 provides 160 horsepower and 235 lb-ft of torque. Tough to drive that out of anyone’s life. Plus, it’s shaped like a brick. Although the F-4 “Phantom II” conclusively demonstrated that any shape will fly with big-enough engines, clearly some shapes are more aerodynamic than others. Aware of my vehicle’s limitations, I just had to find the right driver to challenge to a race. Unbeknownst to me, you could just get in line and race whomever you ended up next to; I thought you had to get in line with your desired competitor (also a viable option, though not the only one, as I had supposed).

After passing the tech inspection, I parked and wandered around looking for a vehicle that appeared as out of place as mine in order to challenge its driver. I spied a 1998 Honda CR-V and started walking towards it when I ran into my wife (she’d bailed at the tech inspection) and some friends. After a moment of catching up, I turned back to the CR-V but it was already in line to run. With nearly 200 cars registered to race and most of them just getting in line, I decided I’d find an opponent later, and we headed to the stands.

Training like you fight isn’t just important for fighter pilots or military personnel. Ideally, your training is more difficult than the fight, thereby (hopefully) ensuring your success no matter your field of battle. War isn’t a time to just eke out a victory; immediate and total dominance, particularly in the air, is critical to success. Achieving that goal demands extensive training against challenging threats. With this idea in mind, en route to the track I decided I needed practice launching the Jeepster much like I would at the starting line.

“Launching” is a bit of a misnomer in this case. There’s nothing fast about the Jeepster, as alluded to above. That’s not a knock, simply a fact. When I restored it, I took it completely apart and repaired it as I put it back together. In that process, I upgraded to disc brakes, power steering, and put in an HEI distributor, but aside from that, it’s pretty much as it rolled out of the factory in 1969 (not entirely accurate, but close enough for our purposes here). She’ll drive nicely at highway speeds, but with her three-speed transmission she’s most comfortable in the 50-mph range. She doesn’t stop or accelerate quickly, so I have to be a more patient, defensive driver as we cruise around town. Suffice it to say, I’ve never launched her out of a stop light or stop sign. In my train-like-you-fight launching sessions (on an empty road, naturally), I didn’t notice much difference from a normal start until the last of the four “launches,” when the shift from first to second felt a little rough.

She’d done something like this before. The clutch had slipped and wouldn’t shift out of first. The only way to get it into reverse had been to shut off the engine and then shift, repeating that process to get it back into first, but shifting to second had been totally out of the question. The clutch is a Rube Goldberg machine of unnecessary complication, with adjustment possible in at least four different places. My undergrad degree is in electrical engineering, so I’m not dumb, but adjusting that clutch befuddles me. After a long time lying on my back under the Jeepster, staring at that convoluted clutch, I opted to limp it in first gear to my neighborhood mechanic who had it adjusted in just a couple minutes.

Heading to the track, feeling the change in the clutch, I was afraid it would stick as it had before and I wouldn’t be able to race at all. My fears were confirmed when I had to use reverse in the parking lot by registration and she loudly, grindingly protested. Knowing it was only a 1000-foot track, and estimating I’d be slower than 60 mph at the finish, I knew I only needed one shift from first to second to be able to race. As to a clutch adjustment in the paddock, its perplexing nature made such an adjustment impossible—at least for me. I was going down that track, marginally functional clutch or not.

Speaking of shifting, the Jeepster does not shift quickly even in the best of times. Clutch pedal throw measures a whopping 6 inches. As mentioned above, she has a three-speed transmission, but reverse is in the top left corner, meaning a shift from first to second requires moving from bottom left to upper right. Once the clutch is in, it’s 3.5 inches of travel from first to neutral, an astounding 4 inches across neutral before another 3.5 inches up into second. Once in second gear, it’s another 6 inches to let the clutch pedal back out. Even if I’m trying to do that quickly, it takes at least 1.5 seconds per shift, another reason I only wanted to shift once while roaring down the track.

Side note: Prior to her rebuild, the Jeepster had straight exhaust pipes (no mufflers). That was evident by how loud she was, even at idle. Newly rebuilt, I took her to the exhaust shop and told the guy I wanted straight pipes. He looked at me incredulously and I told him that’s what my grandfather had on it, so that’s what I wanted. I’m sure he said something about how loud it would be, but I insisted and he demurred. It was way louder than I had anticipated. It was impossible for anyone to carry on a conversation within a two-block radius of the Jeepster, so I later had a muffler put on each exhaust. She’s still loud, but not like she had been. If nothing else, I figured she’d fit it at the track by virtue of the noise she’d make.

While chatting with friends in the stands, I watched an old-school VW Beetle run just over 20 seconds and hoped I’d be able to run sub-20. The CR-V’s turn to race arrived and it matched up against a VW GTI. Curious as to how it’d do, I watched as the CR-V got out ahead of the GTI, only to be caught on the big end. It ran a surprising 13.4 to the GTI’s 13.1. I knew the only way the Jeepster would go sub-13 in the quarter mile is if it were pushed off a quarter-mile-high cliff, and, due to its brick shape, maybe not even then. I was glad I hadn’t challenged him. It would have been embarrassing to lose to a CR-V.

Enough spectating; the moment had arrived. Not wanting to risk losing to a Beetle or a CR-V, I opted to go big and I challenged my buddy to a race. His car? A beautiful 1969 GTO with a 400 stroker (~450 hp). We talked lanes (he let newb me have the right so I could more easily see the tree) and got in line. He had already raced twice that evening and was concerned about how hot his engine was, but I told him he could clearly take it easy against me. I didn’t realize his real fear was how hot the GTO would get while we sat in line as it took us over 30 minutes to inch our way to the start. We’d move 30 feet before sitting for a couple minutes and he’d shut down as we sat. I didn’t have that option, because the Jeepster has a quirk where she doesn’t always immediately restart when she’s warm. Fear of shutting her down and not having her restart, coupled with my fear of the clutch giving out, meant I sat idling that entire time holding the clutch pedal. My left foot was asleep and totally numb when it was finally our turn.

While creeping forward, our lane had the GTO in front of me, a Shelby Cobra kit build behind me, and a McLaren of some variety behind the Shelby. I fought the urge to feel out of place in my yellow brick. It was “run what you brung” and I was not ashamed of what I’d, ahem, brung.

There wasn’t a burnout pad per se, but there was an area you could do a short burnout to warm up the tires. I’ve never even chirped the Jeepster’s tires, so I knew lack of traction wouldn’t be an issue—I just cruising through the burnout area towards the start. Naturally, my left elbow was hanging out my window as, other than my tingling left toes, I was nice and relaxed. After all, I had studied and knew what I was doing.

We made the 180-degree left turn from the burnout area to the starting line and I watched the cars in front of us stage and race off into the night. I expected someone to wave us forward and direct us when to stop, but they just motioned us up and left us to our own devices. My momentary confusion meant my buddy was staged before I even got to the line.

Due to the clutch issues I decided against revving the engine and trying to launch; a slightly-more-aggressive-than-normal start seemed like the best course of action.

Staged, GTO engine roaring, my left elbow still hanging out my window, the yellow lights started illuminating. After the first yellow lit I realized I should have two hands on the wheel. My left arm was still moving when the second yellow lit, but I was ready for two-handed driving by the third and final yellow. It seemed like the GTO leapt forward the moment the lights flashed green and I could have sworn his then flashed red, indicating a false start. Noting that, I thought, “No matter what happens, I’ve won the race.” At that point, I realized I hadn’t yet started driving, so off I went. To reiterate, when my flight lead’s chin hit his chest, I just sat there after the green light I sat there long enough to think I saw a red light and have a conversation with myself about it before driving away. Face palm.

The GTO was gone. I was moseying or perhaps sashaying forward, but moving definitely too slow to be sauntering. It felt like I was roaring down the track, though it’s impossible to hear my engine in the video my wife took.

Partway down the track, the moment to shift had arrived. Would it shift out of first? Would it go into second? Would I get stuck in neutral and be towed off after coasting to a stop short of the finish, ignominiously losing to a Beetle? Would I shell my clutch and/or transmission on the track? I’d love to say the speed of the wind in my face made it tough to breathe, but I wasn’t going that fast and I was just holding my breath. She smoothly shifted from first into second and I floored it again towards a glorious, victorious finish. Opting to disrespect my buddy (who had already exited the track), I touched the brakes just prior to the finish line. After all, he left early and I was the victor. I’d rub it in even if he couldn’t see it so I could talk trash about it later.

I took off my painfully small helmet as I approached the time-slip area. It was too dark to read, so I took the slip and parked near the GTO. I told him he had gotten a red light and I was the victor. Surprised, he told me to look at the slip. I was stunned to see that not only had he not gotten a red light, but that his reaction time was 0.020 seconds; better to be lucky than good. Remembering the mental conversation with myself at the start, I looked at my reaction time: 1.049 seconds. Ouch. That’s not a micro-nap, that’s slipping into deep REM sleep before gradually awakening, stretching, sitting up, checking your phone, putting on slippers, and finally getting out of bed. No more trash talk from me. Ever. About anything.

Did I at least beat the Beetle? My elapsed time was 17.848 seconds, giving me a total of 18.897 from green light to finish line, so I would have (barely) gapped the Beetle in a race to not be the slowest at the track. I’d call that a Pyrrhic victory. My estimate of 60 mph was pretty good as I crossed at 57.81 mph. My buddy ran an easy 13.071 at 87.20 mph, beating me by 5.806 seconds.

Normally, the Jeepster gets lots of looks wherever I take her, but the folks at the track were far more interested in the Pontiac-powered winner of our 1969 race. Our wives and friends joined us, and we laughed and talked for a while. Looking over to the line of cars to race, I noted it was significantly shorter than it had been previously. Having forgotten the discomfort of the helmet and my sleepy toes, I pointed out the short(er) line to my wife and said I wanted to go again. She laughed and was totally on board. Then, remembering the clutch, I made the tough decision to not give it another go.

Surprisingly, the Jeepster shifted fine on the way home, but she’ll only go in reverse when shut down. I suspect the clutch might need to be replaced soon, and I’m tempted to swap to a hydraulic clutch conversion at the same time. The good news is, I’ve got a couple months until the next “run what you brung” night, so there’s time to get her ready to go, at which point my wife will race her Miata ND against the Jeepster. After all, there’s no possible way her reaction time will be worse than mine! If you see a yellow Jeepster brick at your next track night, don’t bother challenging me if you can’t get it done in 19 seconds or less—’cause I’ll drive right out of your life!

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If you’re in the market for an interesting car show cruiser or a good first start at a nostalgia drag racer, this big-block Willys gasser pickup may be worth a look. We stumbled across this former racer at BarnFinds.com. Someone may have discovered the truck by searching for “gasser,” a fun term to throw into the eBay Motors search bar to find interesting projects, in case you find yourself with some free time.

The pickup, dubbed the Fertile Turtle by its former owner, is located on the southern California coast in Solana Beach, less than 100 miles south of the famed Lions Drag Strip where it used to race. The pickup, parked since the ’80s, is rumored to have been built by well-known chassis fabricator Chuck Finders, according to the listing. Its lineage may be tough to trace, however, especially considering that it’s no longer equipped with the same powertrain it used during its SoCal racing days. On the other hand, with such a unique name and livery, maybe not.

Its drag-racing small-block and Powerglide were replaced with a Chevy 396 big-block and Turbo 400 after it entered storage. The new engine is topped with a mid-rise single-plane intake and Holley four-barrel with vacuum secondaries. It even has Mickey Thompson valve covers for the right drag-car flair. An HEI ignition was recently added by the seller to get the truck back in running order, but an older distributor and some cleanup could have the pickup looking like a mid-’60s racer with little effort, especially if the manifold were swapped for a tunnel ram. Out back, a 1957 Oldsmobile rear axle provides a sturdy foundation to put the power to the wheels and also offers a removable third member. It may look like a Ford 9-inch, but you’ll have a much harder time scrounging up parts.

Those with a love of the ’60s gasser wars may want to give this auction a visit. With five days remaining, bids have just crested the $15,000 mark. Even without a verifiable link to one of the better-known chassis builders of the era, this pickup represents a snapshot, if an incomplete one, of a vibrant part of drag racing history.

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Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School is located at the site of his first-ever NHRA win, so it is no surprise that drivers from all over the world descend upon Brainerd Raceway to license up or simply test their mettle with some of drag racing’s quickest machines. Recently, NASCAR’s dark knight, Tony Stewart, joined NHRA Top Fuel driver Leah Pruett at Hawley’s school to give him a shakedown on what it takes to get down the track in some of the most powerful race cars on the planet.

NASCAR is notorious for flirting with the 200 mph barrier, but the NHRA’s nitro classes call that “barely half-track.” And in that juxtaposition lays Stewart and Pruett, who shared his point of view as he geared up and began making passes with the Hawleys. Breaking the mold of most YouTube clips, this is a fly-on-the-wall perspective that puts most of the camera time on the Hawleys’ instructions, which are invaluable.

Everything about drag racing at this level is unlike anything else in motorsport. The fire gear is so thick that it’s like putting on a full-body heating blanket in the summer—materiel so stiff that you’d almost think it was solid, whereas the average suit for the likes of NASCAR or other pavement/road-racing series is a sports coat by comparison. From there, the cockpit is all business. Because of the G-forces involved, each limb has its own duty to manage. Left foot is on the clutch pedal (although the machines are centrifugally actuated with engine RPM, the pedal still handles launch and low-speed driving duties), right foot is dancing with the throttle, left hand never leaves the butterfly steering wheel, and the right hand pulls a lever-brake. Despite the immense speed and cutting-edge engineering that goes into building an 11,500-horsepower lawn dart, nitro cars are still thoroughly mechanical beasts to tame, unlike your average F1 or Le Mans machine. And once off the line, the job hardly stops.

While some folks believe drag racing is a no-drivin’ fool’s game, the reality is that it’s a brutal test of precision and discipline. Driving straight is the goal, but you’ll need to wheel a machine that can blow the tires off at any speed it wants to, necessitating subtle counter-steer without going so far as to drive the car offline or upset the chassis’ careful limit when loaded up on the slicks.

Stewert is no spring chicken, either; he’s been driving the wheels of anything he could since he was a child and has grown to hold a measure of race craft in oval racing that few in the sport have ever achieved. Yet he dives into Hawley’s instruction like a fresh pile of putty, ready to be molded by the two-time Funny Car champ himself. And with Pruett on-site and able to, perhaps, co-sign on his runs in the Top Alcohol Dragster runs seen here, there’s a chance we could see an NHRA-licensed Tony Stewart in the future.

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The Greek—Chris Karamesines, according to official government records—is finally retiring from drag racing at the age of 89, following the 2020 NHRA nitro racing season. He’d been chasing a life on the drag strip practically non-stop since 1954.

The Greek’s detractors used to say that because he had no big championships behind him, there wasn’t much to his career. Those kinds of people disappeared over the years while Greek rode on, knocking new talent out in eliminations whenever possible. You can almost imagine him out there twisting his mustache like Dastardly while still winning rounds after all these decades, but the truth is that there isn’t a mean bone in his body. By and large, he’s been able to race on the goodwill of dozens in the NHRA, all of whom came together to ensure that The Greek could continue to line up on any given weekend—a distinct honor given to a man who came up through drag racing’s age of discovery.

In the quest to break 200 mph, Greek and Don Garlits trade places often for “the first,” depending on what your metric is for a bonafide speed record. For The Greek, his stake for such a claim came in 1960, four years before Big Daddy secured the title with a same-day back-up run to convince the skeptics. In this period, we had only just begun defining what a dragster was, as the sport entered the golden era that ultimately settled into classes we see today.

It was a brutal process of trial and error. Today we race blown “Hemis” (which bear little relation to the production engine) fueled by nitromethane because hundreds of souls in the ’60s chased a dream to build the fastest machine between the beams of quarter-mile strips across the nation. It was a Darwin-like survival of the fittest, with hot rodders experimenting over and over until evolution delivered the Top Fuel Dragster. The powerplants back then were untamed, safety was being learned about as mistakes were made, and guys like The Greek were known for their fierce driving.

In fact, the day that Garlits secured his backed-up 200-mph run in ’64 (what some say is the first official 200mph record in drag racing), it was during eliminations against The Greek, who earlier had a parachute failure, crashing through a wire fence and ending up near the railroad track by Island Dragway in Great Meadows, New Jersey. Even before that, Greek had a reputation for powering his car back onto course and still winning rounds after hitting the dirt. This was in an era before guardrails, much less concrete barriers, were even standard practice. Four years earlier, at Alton Dragway, Greek had already broken the 200-mph mark—a 204.54 mph shot heard across the world on April 24, 1960. While today we’d think almost nothing of an 8.87 at 200-plus in a street car, this was simply untraveled territory for drag racers at the start of the 1960s. The lack of a back-up run prevented some folks from taking the run seriously, but the bar was raised that day. The performance envelope we enjoy in 2020 is on a path trailblazed by racers like The Greek.

In life, The Greek hasn’t ever done anything the easy way. Despite being born in 1931, he managed to serve in World War II underaged. While in some interviews he’s claimed he was 16 when he was sent to Germany in 1945, his current age suggests that he was closer to 14. He was apparently wounded once before the motorpool injury that nearly took his life; a 10-ton wrecker slid into him, pinning his rib cage against the body of the ambulance The Greek was attempting to hook to it. Only then did he return to the United States and begin tinkering with cars, fueled by the mechanical artwork he had seen inside of the tanks and other war machines in Germany.

He began with stock car racing, which in his later drag years he claimed to be the source of his wild driving style. “It was never my intention to drive a dragster recklessly or just try to thrill people,” he stated during his induction to the NHRA’s 50 Greatest Drivers’ list. “I think the dirt racing experiences helped me. We ran a lot at Lions, and we knew that its close location to the ocean would develop dew on the surface when we raced late at night. That would make the tires spin more and caused the car to get sideways. I was able to save a lot of runs because I had more experience with that.”

As his rivals retired into their roles as team owners and celebrities, Greek kept chasing his goals. He ran vintage nitro events, making a 300-mph pass in Top Fuel (something that has become routine in these last few years of Top Fuel competition) and continuing to shake down the odd rookie of the week. As time went on, however, the community is what really began to carry The Greek to the line every weekend he wanted to run. In the last decade, as the NHRA became stricter in its enforcement of neck restraints, The Greek practically refused to buy one. Racer Jack Beckman was not about to let this be a reason The Greek retired, and he offered the veteran his HANS device until such time — which was kindly returned to Jack at Las Vegas when the season ended. Lucas Oil and Don Schumacher Racing had a pact to keep a seat for him ready, too—he wouldn’t ever have to worry about funding the operation again.

Despite the media wondering for years whether each season would really be his last, The Greek officially hung up his fire suit earlier this month. (The suit, of course, was borrowed from Funny Car racer Dale Creasy Jr. for this final event because The Greek’s was expired, and he didn’t see the need to buy a new one.) He is handing his NHRA Top Fuel seat over to his granddaughter, third-generation drag racer Krista Baldwin, who has been competing in Top Alcohol Dragster and recently earned her Top Fuel license with her grandfather watching. She’ll pilot the Lucas Oil dragster in Top Fuel while Greek deals with pressing concerns such as an impending hip surgery.

Young racers like Krista will become the chaperones of the sport. Drag racing, though matured, is in a special phase where you can still brush shoulders with the characters who molded it. One less will be in the staging lanes after this season, but he only competed as long as he did through the support of the NHRA community. When The Greek suited up and strapped in, it was a kind of immediate portal to the golden days of drag racing. That twilight era is now at an end, and even if we know there’ll never be another drag racer like him, we’re grateful for his six-plus decades of competition that inspired so many.

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In the first part of this series, we introduced you to a handful of the racers from this year’s Rocky Mountain Race Week (RMRW) 2.0. This kind of drag racing reads like the script of Two-Lane Blacktop, so we decided to dig into what makes this kind of automotive crazy break out of the restraints of common sense and normalcy. RMRW 2.0 entrants hit five tracks in five days. The 1300 miles accumulated between the tracks test a street car’s real-life manners as much as the races test its threshold performance. Sure, everyone has dreams of winning the $1000 best-in-class prize, or even the overall $15K pot, but these racers crawl across the U.S. in search of something more elusive and less quantifiable: a “good race.” What that means to each racer varies, as you’ll find.

Tom and Blayne Stark

It’s not unusual for sons and daughters to ride along during Rocky Mountain Race Week, but few showed the precision of Tom and Blayne Stark, who are something of a local racing dynasty around Denver, Colorado. The codriver in enduro drags is an essential element, sharing the responsibility of navigating the transit stages and prepping the vehicle for each run. They also handle crucial start-line duties, like timing the burnout and lining the car up in the groove before the staging beams. This role requires a keen eye with experience and patience, skills that 12-year-old Blayne Stark displayed from day one.

Tom Blayne has been drag racing since he was a boy; his father even “dabbled in Top Fuel” from the late ’50s through the early ’60s and worked with the NHRA for 15 years. Tom entered his son Blayne in Junior Dragsters for nearly five years, too, along with his older sister, MaCayla. Evidently, it runs in the family. “At eight years old, Blayne took apart the car I bought him,” says Tom, who was relegated to painting the chassis and body of Blayne’s Junior Dragster. Between working on Ridler-winning cars at his shop Precision Design Fabrications, Tom spends time racing with his wife and the kids. Tom and Blayne were first introduced to RMRW as it passed through Colorado’s Bandimere Raceway, where the pair happened to be racing a different event.

Together, the father and son hustle the family’s 1955 Chevrolet 210 wagon on RMRW. Less than a year ago, the long-roof was little more than a straight-six cruiser (with three-on-the-tree!) that dropped the kids off at school. “I’ve owned that car 15 years,” Tom says, “and we decided it needed to be freshened up because it was just wore out.” The Chevy fulfilled its kid-schlepping duties right up until January 1, 2020, when Blayne and Tom started dissecting it. “We jammed on it to get it ready for the Grand National Roadster Show at Pamona—I have a booth out there. We built the car in about two weeks, with Race Week being the end goal, and that’s why we did the car the way it’s done.”

They began by pressure-washing every nook and cranny under the wagon. “Ow, that was the worst,” says Blayne. “So cold!” It was northern Colorado in January, after all. They also cleaned and stripped the frame for powder coating, “We spent six, seven hours washing under the car and scraping undercoat to get it presentable,” Tom says, but he left the body as original as possible to preserve its well-earned patina.

Once frame and body were reunited, the suspension got an overhaul. While the Tri-Five uses stock A-arms up front and the original leaf spring locations out back, everything else was replaced to update it for drag racing. QA1 shocks and Wilwood brakes sit at all four corners, and the rear leaf springs were replaced by Posies Super Slide springs supported by CalTrac bars. The rear end is a beefed-up Ford 9-inch by Mark Williams with a lightweight billet center section. The engine is a relatively low-buck affair: a 6.0-liter LS block with LS3 heads built around a 12:1 compression ratio and a shot of nitrous, with a Black Magic Nex-Gen lever clutch handling the chaos ahead of a TKO-600 transmission. “I’ve tried to take some Stock Eliminator and Super Stock knowledge and apply it to this,” Tom explains. “There’s a bunch of ET in the bell housing, if you’re willing to work for it.”

Work for it they have. Tom and Blayne entered Race Week 1.0 earlier this year before returning to the second event in early October. “I consider it like baseball, which is a very strategic game—you have to make very strategic moves. You have to have a plan going in, and it’s an endurance thing, so you can’t sprint the first leg. You’ve got to be smart with every run you make, and not just make runs to make runs,” Tom says. “And you gotta be willing to sacrifice a little to gain a lot.”

As the week went on, the Stark boys became more aggressive with the wagon, throwing a little more power at it each day as the miles between their front bumper and the last track on day five decreased. The wagon’s ET crept down from the mid-11s at the start of the week to an 11.084 on the final evening at Tulsa. While the times were nowhere near the top of the Hot Rod class at RMRW 2.0, the Chevy drew consistent attention as Blayne and Tom worked in a streamlined groove each run.

To the Starks, there’s a sharp contrast between those who thrive in endurance drag racing and those who sit on the sidelines. For Tom, “There’s not a lot of guys who have a hot rod that drives 1300 miles over five days, and there’s not a lot of guys who have race cars that run five days in a row. So when you put those two together, that is an amazing accomplishment.”

“I think it’s the ultimate test of is your car reliable enough, is it a street car or is it a race car?” Blayne says.

Royce Peyton

Some machines are born purely to kick against the skeptics. Endurance drag racing typically favors turbocharged drivetrains; the combo adds power but is gentle on the equipment it supports, and most teams have left behind traditional big-tire, big-blower cars. Not Royce Peyton, though. “We wanted to do it with a Roots-blown supercharger, and everybody told us we couldn’t,” says the owner of the all-steel 1965 Ford Mustang with a blown-alcohol tower of power out the hood. “So that was the determining factor in us making it happen.”

“We built this car around 2008 as a door-car that ran with other blown-alcohol cars in a class called B.A.D. Outlaws—Blown Alcohol Door cars,” he continued. The Mustang had hung around since Peyton’s high-school days, and it became his quarter-mile canvas through the years, ultimately growing into the mental street machine that it is now.

Roots-style blowers are one of the oldest horsepower-adding technologies out there. They’re beloved by most drag racers but lack the finesse of the turbos you’ll see in modern street cars. A blower car on the endurance drag racing scene is more strained, and transitioning from drag strip to highway requires more than simply dialing back the boost, like you would with a turbocharged powerplant. “We run a different supercharger on the street,” Peyton explains, “mostly because the race blower that we run has Teflon strips, and it can’t handle [continuous miles] on the street. We have a loose [tolerance] blower for the street.” They’ve also refined the cooling system and spent some serious time on the valvetrain—which was a real struggle, Peyton says, until horsepower whisperer Steve Morris came along. Morris drew up a custom-spec camshaft that refined the ramp speed of the valve opening and closing to help the 598-cubic-inch motor live with the street miles while still serving the big PSI High Helix 14-71 blower under power.

Fuel is supplied from one of two tanks: pump gas for the street in a 20-gallon tank and methanol in a separate 7-gallon one. A Neal Chance torque converter sends power through a three-speed Lenco gearbox thanks to a Bruno drive unit that replaces the Lenco’s typical foot clutch with a torque converter, a special combo for the enduro drag racing events. Though a Gear Vendors overdrive holds down the rpm on the freeway, Peyton is among the last of the street car crowd to use the Lenco’s old-school array of levers.

Peyton had the fight against mechanical attrition largely solved for Race Week 2.0 this year, but circumstances conspired against an overall win for the blown Mustang. On the first day, the car managed to spin the tire on the bead-locked wheel, which sheared the valve stem off the inner tube of the slick. Tom McGilton, who was also gunning for the overall victory, gave Peyton some spare valve stems and they were able to get it all remounted—but not before the tire tube “shook the car so bad I could not believe it,” Peyton says. “Imagine a five-pound tube wadded up on one side of your tire, throwing it off-balance.”

Another day, at Oklahoma’s Thunder Valley, ambient conditions at the track had just crossed the dew point when Peyton made his runs. The minuscule amount of moisture that settled on the track upset the Mustang’s assault on friction and resulted in a 8.325-second pass that pulled him away from the lead. Though the Mustang was still showing some of its strongest ETs ever, down in the 7.30s, but McGilton’s Camaro stayed just out of reach throughout RMRW 2.0. Peyton’s result would win the Unlimited Class and place him solidly in third overall.

Though he first entered Rocky Mountain Race Week years ago to help support Matt Frost, a life-long friend from his street-racing days in high school, RMRW has developed a more practical purpose. “It’s a great way to test the car a week straight at different tracks and different altitudes, and you can see what other people struggle with,” he says. “It really says something for the car—how badass it is if it can go the distance and still make 7-second passes. Our goal is to go faster every year.”

His best piece of advice?

“Build something that can finish the race, because if you don’t finish, it doesn’t really matter. We didn’t finish three times, and it sucked!”

Randall Reed and Aaron Shaffer

In most classes, you’re simply trying to win an all-out assault over five days. In others, however, you must balance your fastest passes against the technical certification of your car. RMRW’s 8.50-limited True Street class is a prime example. The rules here forbid funny-car cages, under the definition of what defines a true street car, so True Street entrants are limited by the 8.50-second certification of the acceptable cages. To succeed, they must finesse their machines as close to the 8.50-second time cap as possible; if they go too fast, they forfeit the run. It’s a game of minute adjustments, and victory can often measured in less than the blink of an eye—literally.

RMRW 2.0 was no different, and the in-house rivalry between the Anything Automotive-tuned showdown between Aaron Shaffer’s 1998 Chevy Camaro and Randall Reed’s 1993 Mustang LX Coupe proved it. Reed’s Mustang is an experienced competitor at Hot Rod Drag Week, making several tours through the Street Race Small-Block Power Adder, the parallel class to True Street, where finally won the hotly-contested class last year. Shaffer’s Camaro also made the rounds at Drag Week 2018, and both builds reflect the influence of Drag Weekers Jason Doisher and John Dodson from Anything Automotive.

Their reputations in the Denton, Texas area led Shaffer and Reed to Doisher and Dodson, and each commissioned nearly identical powerplants: an 88-mm Pro Mod turbo from Precision feeding an LS-based Dart 427-cu-in stacked with Trick Flow 245-cc heads and stuffed with a bumpstick from Brian Tooley Racing, with Holley EFI pulling the reigns. From there, Shaffer and Reed’s builds begin to differ. Reed’s lighter Mustang LX uses a simple two-speed Power Glide; Shaffer’s 500-pound-heavier Camaro relies on a three-speed TH400 setup.

“Injectors.” Reed’s early lead in True Street was set early with the help of an 8.502- and an 8.503-second pass by day three, but he noticed an issue in data logs and chose to swap injectors to remedy a potential lean-out problem. “The issue is that they were a bit bigger than what we had before,” he says. While he and co-driver/tuner Jason Doisher worked on the tune during the transit stage on the road to Great Bend, it delayed their ideal 8.50 trajectory just long enough for Shaffer to make up gap in the average ET late in the week. With John Dodson behind the keyboard on the tune-up, Shaffer’s Camaro was whittling down its average to that perfect 8.500, and an 8.515-second run from Reed would bring their averages together by Day Four.

“We were changing our launch boost by tenths of a PSI,” says Aaron. “If you were a few thousandths off, and you knew the car was consistent, then all you’d need to do is leave with a little more or a little less built up.” Ideally, a car will run the same ET and trap speed over and over if it leaves consistently—when you’re chasing a few thousandths of a second, the driver must make takes razor-thin adjustments to find the ideal number.

The final evening, all four players ran with precision: Shaffer and Dodson managing the Camaro and Doisher tweaking Reed’s Mustang back to its habit of 8.50- chops at the quarter-mile. They didn’t load into the staging lanes as soon as they opened; everyone waited until the density-altitude (the effective air density at a given altitude adjusted for the current temperature) fell into a range that promised the best conditions for the highest power. Once again, the game was down to finding the precise launch boost and exact rpm for each gear—while simultaneously trying to stay under the 8.50 tech limit. It was like playing blackjack with horsepower.

The Camaro emerged victorious. Shaffer managed to bring a repeat 8.500 time slip on the final night of racing, bringing a scant victory in True Street over Reed by a thousandth of a second: 8.511 to a 8.512. (For context, the human eye blinks in about 0.010 seconds.) Together, the two Texas-based teams nudged out the boys from Oklahoma: Jerome Courtney’s gunmetal-silver “Strickly Business” pickup trailed Shaffer and Reed by just a few hundredths of a second with an 8.54. Nothing short of perfection is required to take down this notoriously competitive class, even when the guy chasing you down is your friend. If not for Reed’s freak injector issue, who knows how narrowly the victory might have been split.

That’s a slice of what makes this masochistic test of vehicular and personal endurance so grand. Some drivers are chasing personal goals, and others are looking for the winner’s crowns, but everyone seeks to prove at least one thing: that they and their machine can survive another Race Week. If you want to check out more about what makes these Race Weekers tick, check out our coverage of this year’s 2.0 event.

The post The Long Haul, Part 2: What drives endurance drag racers? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Despite stereotypes of the racing world, drivers are rarely motivated by competitiveness alone. When you spend time around endurance drag racing at grueling events such as the 1300-mile Rocky Mountain Race Week (RMRW) 2.0, you’ll find characters motivated by technical achievement and others by wholly personal goals. There will always be heavy hitters looking to make a statement by winning the whole shebang, but between the headlines are deeply personal examples of human perseverance.

Emily Reeves

“I’ve had Roxy since I was 18,” says Emily Reeves. “When you drive something that long, you feel like you just know it, and you think that it’s predictable.” Roxy is a Pulse Red 2005 Pontiac GTO that’s been around for most of Emily’s life and became the foundation of a YouTube series starring Emily and her husband Aaron and known as Flying Sparks Garage.

Though Roxy does duty as a daily driver, the car has evolved into a fire-breather thanks to a 408 stroker topped with a Magnuson TVS 2300 supercharger. Emily and Aaron built the engine with a forged bottom end that’s fed by PRC 227-cc heads and a lumpy COMP camp. The biggest upgrade for 2020 was a new six-speed manual built by Tick Performance—specifically, its Super Magnum, which stuffs the beefy guts of the TR6060 into the GTO’s original T-56 case. Together with a Mantic ceramic twin-disc clutch, the combo results in one potent street car. That rapid-fire power is sent through a Strange center section that adapts the beefy Ford 9-inch carrier for the GTO’s independent rear suspension, backed by G-Force axles.

Days before leaving for RMRW 2.0, Emily had a mysterious mechanical fault that, even after 15 years of owning Roxy, confounded her. “I was out test-driving the car with the new transmission when it just decided to stop,” she says. “It felt like I had dropped it into first gear!”

After coasting on the throttle, the car decelerated rapidly, sending everything she had sitting on the passenger seat crashing into the floor board. “I got out of the car and looked all over for tire marks or any clues as to what happened.” Nothing was obvious, and she called Aaron to tow the car back home.

Committed as ever, the couple boxed Roxy into the trailer before departing for the first day of racing. However, when she put the car on a lift and still couldn’t diagnose the issue, Emily grew wary of running her GTO that week.

“Having something scary like that happen on the car—I have to creep back into trusting everything,” she says. If the sudden deceleration happened on track, it wasn’t just her safety at stake, but that of the racer in the next lane. Other racers joked that the roll cage was there for a reason, but to Emily, Roxy wasn’t just a disposable race car.

Her first pass was soft; Emily simply focused on getting a good 60-foot time to get reacquainted with the car, lifting after the end of second gear to evaluate how the car felt after its enigmatic freeway ordeal. Consensus in the racing family held that a synchro in the transmission bound up on accident, with its clutch on the gearset slowing the vehicle down, but that WAG was only a hypothesis. Emily made a second pass, lifting once again after second, with no repeat of the freak fault.

“I had to get out of my head the visualizations of ‘what if I don’t react fast enough?’ or ‘what if it happens again at 120 mph?'” Emily says. “I had to focus on me being my best, and the car being its best, and let that prevail in my thought process. It was just kinda getting back in the car and talking to it. ‘Okay Roxy, I’m going to take care of you and you’re going to take care of me, and we’re going to do this. We’re gonna have fun.’ And we did—it was good!”

From then on, it was game on. Emily and Roxy immediately broke into the 11s and maintained that time all week. Each pass and each street mile rebuilt Emily’s confidence, and, with Aaron co-driving and helping with race and street prep, she could put maximum attention to her driving. “I hadn’t drag raced since Hot Rod Drag Week last year, so I had to relearn,” she says. Emily proved herself more than up to the challenge; at Thunder Valley, Roxy laid out its best ET and trap speed ever: an 11.262-second run at 123 mph.

Under the pressure of competition, people tend to discover more about themselves than they’ll understand in a lifetime. “Persevering through difficulties and challenges and overcoming them—I think that’s where the addiction lies,” says Emily. “Whenever you persevere and push through something that seems impossible and get through the other side of it, you want to do it again, because you feel like a complete badass.”

Mitchell Stapleton

Many projects reflect their owners’ own trajectory in life, but few drag racers and their machines have shared a path more intertwined than Stapleton and his ’13 Cadillac “LSXcalade.” First entered into Hot Rod Drag Week 2016 as a near-stock hand-me-down with an LSA blower strapped to the block, the LSXcalade became a rolling racing operation for Stapleton and his co-driver. The mission was conducted secretly, under the nose of Stapleton’s father, who had handed down the luxury SUV on the sole condition that his son not mess with it—but the secret didn’t stay under wraps for long.

His corporate communication classes at Penn State couldn’t keep Stapleton and the LSXcalade from Drag Week in 2016. To save money, he and his co-driver lived out of the SUV; his buddy built a bed on the roof while Stapleton slept inside. Stapleton even sold the factory wheels off the truck to pay for a set of slicks. The supercharged factory motor and 6L80E transmission were good for high-to-mid 11-second runs by the end of the week, but he wanted more.

“It was always fast for what it was, but it was still slower than everyone else,” Stapleton says. He set out a plan to build the whole truck for 10-second runs. A chance encounter at the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show in Indianapolis got the ball rolling; Stapleton got the discount of a lifetime on a 427-cubic-inch LSX block (an aftermarket reinforced version of the LS architecture). By the time he left Indy to head back home to Pittsburgh, he had worked out partners and a grocery list of pieces for his 10-second goal.

Stapleton loaned shop space from a friend and set up digs in an enclosed trailer next door. For months, he spent his free time fabricating instead of studying or bar-hopping, and the LSXcalade emerged wearing twin 76-mm Precision turbos that fed boost to a Holley Hi-Ram. The turbo’s hot- and cold-side piping was Stapleton’s first kit build. “When I started this, I had no idea how to weld a turbo kit,” he says.

That year, Stapleton’s hobby turned into a full-time career. He had already built a cult following on Instagram thanks to the SUV’s freak-show appearances at various street car events, and he began to share his adventures and projects on YouTube. With each video, he discovered he had more and more in common with his drag-racing, engine-building audience.

“I dropped out of college in January—it just kept falling further down my list of priorities each day,” he says. “I already had enough momentum, and my family could deal with it however they wanted to. But if I was going to quit college, I was going to spend all that time I would be in school on YouTube to make it work.”

That’s exactly what he did. His channel, Stapleton42, provides an honest look at a barn-storming drag-racing build and the sacrifices such a project requires for the average builder. He may give up a comfortable lifestyle and a typical social life, but Stapleton collects irreplaceable memories and earns a sleeper build that continues to smash each goal he sets.

One such shattered goal? That 10-second barrier, which fell on the final day of RMRW 2.0 with a rowdy 9.42-second final pass, a personal best that crushed the double-digit ET goals Stapleton had set a few short years ago. The straight-line monster sank into single digits shorn of its hood, one down-pipe hacked and re-welded into a stack after the exhaust broke below the SUV the day before. Its mid-pack finish in the Limited Street class was irrelevant; Race Week 2.0 had validated five years of blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

“People will often cap themselves,” says Stapleton. “I mean, that’s crazy. If I never sat daydreaming in class, thinking, ‘Y’know, I bet I can put 2000 horsepower in my Escalade,’ that would have never happened. I had to build it in my head before I could build it for real, and many people don’t know how powerful it is to regulate their own thinking.

“It’s no different than pulling up a data log of your tune so you can change stuff to make it better. Look at yourself—why you do things and how you’re doing them, what are your habits … that kind of stuff.”

Robert Williams

Perseverance is a term that gets tossed around often, but few environments bring out this quality like racing does. You can feel alone while all eyes are on you, watching for a great comeback.

Even when there may be no financial fruit of their labor, the simple intent to see something through to the end keeps a racer running, no matter how destructive or abysmal the situation may look. For Robert Williams and his “Weapon X” ’77 Chevy Nova, perseverance looks like three destroyed engines, of which only one survived to the end of a hellish week—and just barely kept its bottom end from scattering until it completed the event after a safe pass on day five.

“Weapon X” is an X-body Nova, the last of the traditional GM-engineered compacts before the nameplate was loosely affixed (many times, literally—the badges frequently peeled off) to the AE82 Toyota Corolla. Any sign of the Malaise Era Chevy’s roots are gone in Weapon X’s current form, thanks to a turbo 6.0-liter LY6 “truck LS” and a heap of goodies underneath. ARP main studs clamp down on Trick Flow 225-cc heads, which are fed by a Holley Lo-Ram intake with a Shearer Fab intercooler sandwiched between the upper and lower plenum halves. The home-brew LS combo flirts with four-digit horsepower and is bolted up to a Transmission Specialties-built TH400. A 35-spline Ford 9-inch backs up the driveline with 3.25 gears on a spool. All of that chaos is suspended by QA1 tubular front A-arms with DA coil-overs and split Calvert mono-leafs with Caltracs in back dampened by AFCO shocks.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans, though.

“It’s the car that’s never failed to fail,” Robert jokes with a jaded laugh. With two previous Hot Rod Drag Weeks ending early with dead motors, his goal for 2020’s Rocky Mountain event was simply to finish. Together with his son David, who doubled as his co-driver, Robert set out with modest hopes, only to have the head torch itself on the first run. “I saw it chuff a bunch of water out during the run, and knew that it had pushed a head gasket,” Robert recalls.

As the head gasket fails, combustion gasses will typically pressurize the coolant system as the gasket breaks down at its thinnest points near the water jackets. With the addition of boost, the escaped combustion gas essentially turns into a high-pressure torch, melting a channel through the motor as it escapes into the atmosphere. To say that Robert was frustrated is an understatement, but his son wouldn’t let him quit on the first day.

David wouldn’t let his father quit on the second day, either—or the third, or the fourth. The local Tulsa racing community held them get the aluminum head TIG-welded and decked, but Weapon X continued to fight them throughout the week. Still, the Williams boys kept hacking at each issue day by day, from lost trunk keys to leaking coolant steam-vent lines, battling exhaustion and stress as the days grew longer and the nights grew shorter. “I felt like we were playing catch-up all week,” Robert said.

As luck would have it, so was his competition. In the red mist of repair, Robert was hardly focused on the standings in the Outlaw Street class, figuring there was no chance to make the podium. Their pass on day two was a soft 16-second run simply to get it down the track without drama. As each day dawned, however, they began to find the speed they expected from Weapon X. They clawed into the low 9s on day three before breaking the 8-second barrier with a 8.927-second pass at Great Bend, only to be pushed back from the line several times with a tricky water leak.

By Friday, Robert was just pleased to be driving into Tulsa Raceway Park under his own power. There wasn’t much else to do but to make a final pass to seal the week, and their 9.015-second run did just that. As the staging lanes dwindled down at the end of racing on day five, they made one more run to see what the car would do now that conserving the motor was no longer a concern. Ever true to form, Weapon X scattered another bottom end during the pass, oiling down the track and closing the right lane. Robert was disappointed and apologized on the Rocky Mountain Race Week Facebook group for oiling down the lane. After pushing Weapon X onto the trailer, he found chairs for himself and his son at the awards ceremony.

Much to his and David’s surprise, Matt Frost called Robert’s name for third-place trophy in Outlaw Street. Despite near-daily struggles, the pair’s grit inadvertently paid off. “I didn’t even know I had placed in the class—I was blown away,” Robert says.

Jason Tabscott

Few situations hurt car folks more than theft. Years of split knuckles, hard-earned cash, and late nights can be lost to greed, usually for the build to be sold piecemeal on the black market. For Jason Tabscott and his family, however, the loss of their 1975 Chevrolet Camaro indirectly led to meteoric success in 2020 with a new naturally-aspirated small-block record in RMRW 2.0.

Like most folks, Tabscott packed away his wrenches when life and family took over. Tabscott fell in love with endurance drag racing a decade prior when Hot Rod magazine launched its first Drag Week in 2005, “This is me! David Freiburger invented a race where I fit in!” he exclaimed. Before there were events like it, Jason just dug the challenge of driving to an event, racing it, and driving home, “I always looked up to the street-driven race car, and had animosity for the bracket race car that could only bracket race. I would build pro-touring cars in the eighties — build a hot rod engine, but focus on the suspension and chassis. And then I got into drag racing, but I always made sure my car drove.”  But building a family took eventually priority over building the ultimate street car. As the years went on, and as the kids grew up, he returned to the Camaro. Before too long, the ’75 was ready for Drag Week 2015—and promptly stolen afterwards.

The new car, a ’70, arrived after an exhausting search for a clean second-gen Camaro. It was pricey, but thankfully, the rowdy big-block under the hood was worth its own chunk of change. Out came the big-block and in went a 427-cubic-inch Dart Iron Eagle small-block, the foundation of Tabscott’s build. Callies supplied the rods and crank, and Diamond pistons worked with the Dart 15-degree heads (ported by BES) to run compression at a “you can’t do that” level in the mid-teens. (The exact number is a part of the secret sauce.) Tabscott spent the bulk of his time on the valvetrain, using 0.650-inch T&D shaft-mounted offset rockers to relocate the 7/16th Manton upright to improve the valvetrain geometry for 9000 rpm.

This year, the motor’s power curve was shifted up via a new cam with longer duration, which culminated in this year’s ground-breaking performance. After the 8-inch Ultimate Converter Concepts 7500-stall unit, power is split by a Turbo-400 with a Gear Vendors overdrive hung off the tail, which splits gears ahead of the 4.30 rear end, a Strange 9-inch unit that spins 40-spline axles gun-drilled for less weight. Things are more conventional when it comes to the chassis. TRZ tubular suspension bits up front complement the Caltrac bars and monoleafs in the rear, and all four corners are dampened by Santhuff shocks.

The product of third-shift shuffles and late weekend nights, the new Camaro entered Drag Week 2016 to win the Street Race Small-Block NA class, a feat that it replicate four years in a row, pushing its average time deeper into the 9s each week.

“We didn’t have any real problems all week,” says the four-time Drag Week class champion of the 2020 Rocky Mountain event. His wife, Amanda, co-drove the Camaro and their buddy Robert McGinness tagged along, too, so there were plenty of hands on deck for the race-prep each day.

Oklahoma’s Thunder Valley brought the stiction at the light, grazing the eight-second barrier on Day Three with a 9.014. After making their last safe run on day five, the team switched into “go big or go home” mode. The team installed a new converter with a smaller diameter, which was tighter in the mid-range and got the revs up into the new cam’s higher powerband thanks to its high stall. With these two big changes, Tabscott let the Camaro sing at 9000 rpm before shifting, which set him up for the 8.997 blast that finally broke the 9-second barrier. Thanks to the car’s consistently low ETs, RMRW 2.0’s NA Small-Block class was a sure victory for Tabscott, and breaking into the eights was the perfect bonus to a good week of racing.

This is the first in a two-part series. Stay tuned for the stories of five more racers and their builds from Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0.

The post The Long Haul, Part 1: What drives endurance drag racers? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Leah Pruett lined up against fellow Don Schumacher Racing teammate Tony Schumacher on Sunday for the second round of eliminations at the Mopar Express Lane Midwest Nationals. Her Mopar Dodge dragster squirmed at the start, but the two racers were within .004 seconds of each other at the 330-foot mark. Shortly after, things got ugly.

Pruett’s car began to lift and the front half of the chassis completely detached. Pruett was pretty much along for the ride after that, and it seems the only thing she could do to keep the car pointing down track was to pull the chutes. Luckily, although the dragster began to roll over and yaw to the left, the drag of the parachutes did help to straighten out the shredded dragster. Once the car came to a halt, scraping and throwing sparks along the track, Pruett quickly climbed out and signaled to the safety crew that she was OK. After the race, Pruett was interviewed by Fox Sports and said, “I’m so thankful for the Don Schumacher chassis, for my entire crew, for all the safety, everything that’s ever been implemented in Top Fuel, for me to be able to walk away.”

Pruett’s crash looks surprisingly similar to a pair of crashes suffered by Larry Dixon in 2000 and 2015:

Pruett is in third place in the NHRA’s Mello Yello Drag Racing Series standings after this weekend. She’s just 80 points behind leader Steve Torrance, who’s got a close lead over Doug Kalitta. Those two finished 1–2 last year as well. Pruett needs to finish strong in the remaining three events of the season to have a chance at the championship and keep Torrance from a three-peat.

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For decades, Detroit and drag racing went hand-in-hand. The Motor City made cars and people raced them. As the city boomed, the racing scene followed suit.

Funded by proceeds raised by Detroit’s Autorama, Motor City Dragway sprang from soil in the late 1950s to become Michigan’s first purpose-built paved strip. On into the ’60s, muscle cars street-raced down Woodward Avenue and “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!” fizzled from AM radios advertising the Detroit Dragway, another Michigan strip and staple on the National Hot Rod Association tour. Big Three employees formed drag teams, like the Chrysler-affiliated “Ramchargers.” Other auto workers simply punched out at five and went to work on their personal race cars.

Names now synonymous with drag racing have roots in Detroit. Dick LaHaie, Connie Kalitta, and the Logghe family, all legends from southeast Michigan. Fast race cars and top-notch drivers rolled out of the area practically on an assembly line. And the cars, oh, the cars were supersonic works of art. The Bounty Hunter, Super Camaro, Motown Missile, Motown Shaker—some capable of cresting 200 mph down the quarter-mile.

With such a rich and vibrant drag racing history, you’d think there would be numerous strips peppering the Detroit area. Not the case. Detroit Dragway closed for good in 1996, and now, (aside from an annual rip down Woodward) the closest track to the “D” is an hour southwest in Milan, Michigan.

As a millennial, I completely missed the heyday of Detroit drag racing. Lucky for me, Milan Dragway does an excellent job honoring Michigan’s racing history. Several times throughout the season, the strip hosts nostalgia meets where vintage drag racers, from gassers to funny cars, come out in droves to rocket down the quarter-mile. Famous, local race cars like the Detroit Tiger Monza take center stage, and most competitors hail from the Mitten State. Some do, of course, haul their rides from Ohio, Illinois, or farther. I’ve attended twice this year to check out the altereds and inhale the nitro.

For those of you with an appetite for classic Detroit drag competition, this photo gallery should hit the spot. Milan Dragway’s nostalgia events are a reminder that at one time, the heart of drag racing beat not in southern California or in the fields of western Indianapolis, but pumped with fervor in the Motor City.

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As motorsports evolve and branch off each other, the machines built to dominate these new tangents often create unique opportunities for builders to think outside of the box. A popular and well-treaded class tends to only have a few solutions that are economical to run and proven to win, but when a new format grows, the room to experiment expands with it. The endurance drag racing format that Hot Rod magazine’s Drag Week pioneered allowed participants to depart from traditional drag racing builds in that some sacrifices made for the sake of weight were acceptable in order to maximize comfort or reliability on the street.

Few machines are more focused-built than Tom McGilton’s 2013 Camaro ZL1, which won Drag Week’s Pro Street Power Adder class in its debut 2015 race and took home $30,000 this year after winning both Rocky Mountain Race Week (RMRW) events. The ZL1 is the culmination of a lifetime of racing that emphasizes modern comfort with brutal performance. Beneath the stock sheet metal is a disciplined drivetrain and chassis that’s capable of chugging down the road on 87-octane while still tearing down the quarter-mile in the low-sevens—while blasting the air-conditioning, flipping through XM radio channel favorites, or even calling OnStar for a lock-out. He didn’t just want one of the fastest street cars in the world, instead, Tom wanted comfort. AS McGilton said, “I wanted everything to be just like you’re driving down the road with automatic headlights with air-conditioned seats blasting. I wanted it to be like factory.”

The transformation began when the ZL1 had less than 100 miles on the odometer. That’s when it was turned over to Larson Race Cars to become a silhouette of itself. Underneath its modern muscle car package is a Pro-Mod chassis. The front suspension was replaced by a fly-weight coil-over strut setup while the rear of the ZL1 was hogged out for a tubular chassis that could fit a narrow Mark-Williams 9-inch, which is supported by a parallel four-link and located laterally by a wishbone link. The 9-inch uses a 3.70:1 ratio. When backed by a heavily-modified Rossler TH210 trans and Gear Vendors overdrive unit, the ZL1 has an optimized ratio for making passes while also lowering cruise RPMs preserve engine longevity on the freeway.

The 540ci aluminum big-block was machined by CFE Racing and was topped with BMF heads with massive 405 cc runners. A pair of 88mm turbos built by Heart Diesel feed boost through an ice-chilled air-to-water intercooler. Thanks to the relatively low compression afforded by forced induction, the 540 can even burn 87-octane on the street tune by dialing out boost. But when set on full-kill with C16 pumped in from a secondary fuel tank, the ZL1 is a brutal test of physics. The no-compromise ethos of the interior means that this 7-second grand tourer still weighs over 4200 pounds at the start line, heavier than Royce Payton’s screw-blown Mustang by some 500 pounds, making its performance all that much more impressive.

“I’m trying to get into the sixes. I could probably get into the 6.90s pretty easily if I pulled some weight out of it, but I don’t want to do that—I want everything in it,” he challenged. “It’s all factory steel, the only piece of carbon is the factory scoop.”

This year’s second win with RMRW 2.0 was relatively painless for McGilton with the ZL1 being so well sorted, but only through its consistency did it hold onto the lead against pressure from Royce’s screw-blown Mustang along with the Supra piloted by Geovanni Castillo, who began a mid-week charge for low sevens that put the six-cylinder import squarely in McGilton’s mirrors.

“If he would have been down the sevens all week, I probably wouldn’t have won it because he was running 200 mph at an 8.0,” McGilton explained, with the relatively high speed for the given ET indicating that the Supra was capable of much more. “They said they were running in the 6.90s the day before we started. If they stayed in the sevens, it would’ve been a close race all the way through.” Payton’s maniacal Mustang also was a hot pick for the overall win, but a mid-week stumble at Thunder Valley where every attempt became a pedalfest pulled his average down, tying with Castillo for the week with a 7.6338 average. The low-drama attitude of the ZL1, with its delayed onset of power provided by the turbos in juxtaposition to Royce’s supercharged slap to the face at the line, kept McGilton safely away from anything slower than a 7.356 all week, building the buffer needed to keep his lead secured.

Despite finding new personal bests while also winning both RMRW events this year, McGilton emphasizes how relatively relaxed the event is compared to other drag racing formats. “I was just out there to have a good time,” he said. “Like Royce ripped a tire innertube and needed some valve stem parts at RMRW 1.0, I had them. He was right on my tail and if I wanted to be a jerk about it I could’ve said ‘no,’ but I want everyone to see everyone competing. Really, you’re competing against yourself, as far as I’m concerned. Is it good to win? Hell yes, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a better feeling to start and finish with everyone, especially with no problems.”

Beyond the track, McGilton’s ZL1 has become a gateway for drag racing fans, with a trove of kids and adults hopping inside for photos, even at the confusion of some onlookers. “I’ve had people ask, ‘Man, you’re letting them sit in your car?'” he mentioned as many folks were accustomed to over-protective owners at car shows and races. Having fueled his own obsession without the more typical family influence, McGilton’s willingness to share the ZL1 all adds up to the Why Not? attitude of the build.

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Several years ago, surfer, musician, and vintage hot-rod and motorcycle enthusiast Mel Stultz started writing to author Robert Genat after reading about the Carlsbad Oilers Car Club in Genat’s book, The Birth of Hot Rodding. As the two men got to know each other, Genat put Stultz in touch with Oilers founder Jim Nelson, who asked if Stultz wanted to take over what Mel called “one of the coolest racing clubs in the world.”

In 2010, the New Jersey native moved the Oilers Car Club 3000 miles east. Two years later, he brought 1940s-style competition to the Jersey Shore with drag races on the beach for period cars and motorcycles.

The first race took place in Asbury Park. Later, Stultz moved the event 100 miles south to its current home in Wildwood. He did it right, getting all of the proper permits for racing on the beach. There were no prizes or trophies, though; the racing was more for bragging rights than anything else.

Stultz wanted to make sure The Race of Gentlemen (TROG) was true to the original Oilers events, so he insisted the machines fit the era. Cars were limited to a build date of 1934 or earlier, with a cutoff date of 1949 for motorcycles. The machines would run an eighth of a mile, turn around, and return.

I first heard of TROG about seven years ago from my friend Ralph Marano, who has a summer place in nearby Cape May. After seeing the races, he called me up, breathless. “You can’t believe how great this is! We have to do this!” That year, TROG fell on the same October weekend as the annual Antique Automobile Club of America’s Fall Meet in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which complicated things for me, but I called Stultz to learn more. He offered me a drive in one of his cars the next year. “Once you come,” he told me, “you’ll be hooked.” He was right.

On my way home from that incredible event in 2014, I recalled a car I’d seen once at the Amelia Island Concours. It was a racer from the Elgin National Road Races held in Illinois before and after WWI. The next day, I visited Hot Rod Jimmy Maltagliati, who was helping me build a ’33 hot rod. I told him there was a change in plans and we would be removing the fenders, lights, and windshield to make a flathead-powered Elgin-style car to run in The Race of Gentlemen. It was the perfect entry, because 1932 Indy 500 winner Fred Frame had driven a modified ’33 Ford V-8 when he won the final Elgin Road Race in 1933.

TROG drivers and riders are expected to dress in period attire, although with increasing speeds, there’s a concession made for drivers to wear modern half- or full-face helmets instead of the leather or fabric helmets used in early races. If you’re in the pits, you’re part of a team and you need the proper clothing, all of which must be period correct. The course varies from race to race as the tide goes in and out; spectators watch from the viewing area, where there’s a big party atmosphere, complete with food and drink concessions. Each year, the crowds are bigger, with more celebrities, a large Harley contingent, and a surprising number of people from around the world, including many Japanese racers and spectators.

Just seeing starter Sara Francello jump into the air and wave the checkered flag for every start puts you in the spirit. Additional authentic touches include Hemmings’s period tow truck and huge timing stands that look straight out of the past. Like the Goodwood Revival in England, TROG is the next best thing to a time machine. Wildwood in the early fall is the anchor event for TROG, although Stultz has also held a June meeting of the The Race of Gentleman at Pismo Beach in California, plus a winter event called The Frozen Few—also at Wildwood, where motorcycles are fitted with studded tires for ice racing. No matter where or when the races are, though, the cars are loud and the spirits high, but nothing gets out of control. Otherwise, you have to answer to Mel Stultz, and you don’t want that.

Sadly, TROG 2020 has been canceled. That just gives me more time to shake down the ’33 for 2021.

The post Once you turn back the clock at The Race of Gentlemen, you’ll be hooked appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’ve introduced you to Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0 already, but for those just joining us, we participated in a five-day, 1300-mile torture test across multiple state lines, with a drag race at the end of each day of road tripping.

This kind of drag race enduro format tests the limits of street cars by pitting traditionally high-strung machines against both the toughest conditions at the track and on the street. The mission: To settle the score on defining the ultimate street car.

Rocky Mountain Race Week in many ways mirrors the masochist’s holiday widely known as Hot Rod Drag Week, which was cancelled earlier this year, taking racers across Oklahoma and Kansas, pinging between Tulsa Raceway Park, Hartland Park, Thunder Valley, and Great Bend, with Tulsa Raceway Park serving as the final day’s stop.

While there are classes in which participants can jostle for dominance (and a $15000 cash prize for the overall winner) most drivers are out here to for the joy of competition more than anything else. Of course, that didn’t stop several heated battles from brewing throughout the week. Let’s get into it.

Day 1

The sun rose over a cool and misty morning at Tulsa Raceway Park as racers trickled through the entry gates. The inflow was a mixture of tow-rigs trailering Race Week weapons, with a handful crazy enough to drive from across the country with the vehicle they were also racing, meaning that mistakes had very real consequences as far as getting home. Given the bleak outlook regarding events in general this past spring and summer, folks were happy to see their extended racing family and, naturally, newcomers were hardly strangers once they shared the stories of their builds. The morning homecoming was swift, as the compact five-day format started competition runs that first evening, leaving available test-n-tune time to the lucky few who weren’t slamming their projects together at the last minute.

Tulsa served as home base for Race Week 2.0, where drivers left their trailers while bouncing between four other tracks before boomeranging back across the countryside to Tulsa for the last day of racing on Thursday. The transit stages between tracks amounted to 1300 miles, which meant the street manners of every car were certified in spite of the unbelievably-low ETs we clocked throughout the week.

With dozens of Drag Week cars all dressed up with no where to go after the Hot Rod event was cancelled, Race Week 2.0 was like an all-star home coming for some of today’s fastest names in the street car world. The two big guns, Royce Payten and Tom McGilton, came from different sides of the endurance drag racing fence. Royce’s maniacal, screw-blown Mustang offered an interesting juxtaposition against the Tom’s relatively sedate twin-turbo Camaro ZL1 (which still had functioning A/C, nav, and OnStar).

The Race Week 2.0 field reflected that same spectrum of performance, with the dozen or so classes allowing for anything fast enough to prove its worth within the rule set largely defined by Drag Week tradition. Organizers broke out index classes for cars slower than 10.0 seconds, while consolidating many of the classes that are defined by chassis details into simpler powerplant- and tire-size-based classes. This allowed the Drag Weekers to fall into competitive classes without significant changes to their machines, and vice-versa for Race Weekers who may have ended up at the big show.

True Street is a class which allows for a wide spectrum of performance machines, splitting vehicles into ET indexes, with the idea being that you run as close as possible to that indexed time (10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, or 14.0 seconds) without going faster and breaking out of your assigned niche. Other classes, like Limited Street, are technically an index class due to the ET limitations of their roll cages; the limit is an ET of 8.50 without the addition of a Funny Car hoop to the cage, which is a vital structure for driver containment at the track. (The hoop is often viewed as a compromise to the vehicle’s usability and safety on the street, due to its closeness to the driver’s unhelmeted head. Many drivers focus on hewing to that 8.5xx edge of the tech limit in order to avoid to hoop.)

Racing began promptly 4:00 PM, with all 10 staging lanes packed full of candy-colored street machines. Given that this was the first pass, most runs were fairly conservative. At least 1000 miles lay ahead, and the wise who ran more big-power setups ratcheted the madness down to ensure endurance over the five-day haul. Many cars were making their first-ever passes in anger, however.

True Street was called to the lanes first, so that the bulk of the field could knock out their runs. Entrants spanned everything from a ’84 Mercury Colony Park woody “Family Truckster” wagon (tucking away widened factory alloys with ET Street radials) to a street-legalized no. 3 Craftsman Truck with a swapped LS, demonstrating the plethora of home-built hot rods of every flavor.

The action kicked off with only minor delays. Lanes filled up with the various class cars, staging the week’s biggest battles for Unlimited, Pro Street, Limited Street, Outlaw Street, Rowdy Radial, Ultimate Radial, Hot Rod, Gasser Stick Shift, NA Big-Block and NA Small-Block. Remember, in the mix here would be the overall winner of $15,000. There were predictably heavy hits from Royce (7.41) and Tom (7.35). Real Street’s pair of Mark IV Supras checked in with their singing, single-turbo 2JZs driven by Jared Holt and Geovanni Castillo, posting formidable runs within a tenth of 8 seconds and leading their respective classes in Outlaw Street and Unlimited Radial right out of the the gate on Day 1.

Doc McEntire posted up NA Big-Block’s best ET of 8.03 with his mountain-motored 1968 Chevy Camaro, packing 672 cubic inches. That was a mere few ticks off its 7-second potential. Cleetus McFarland’s twin-turbo Vette kart, distantly inspired by Hot Rod’s own project ‘Vette kart, locked into first place in the Stick Shift class with an 8.25—the most conservative time slip of the week for the stripped-down C5 Corvette known as “Leroy.” Another Drag Week regular, Randal Reed and his turbo LS-powered ’93 Ford Mustang set the pace in the 8.50-locked Limited Street with an 8.51, though the top five at the end of Day 1 for Limited Street would be within a tenth-of-a-second of Randal.

Day 2

Monday was the first drive day, a relatively short jaunt to Topeka, Kansas and Heartland Park. The checkpoint in Independence, Kansas was under a retired F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet that memorialized Vietnam-era veterans. They served a dual purpose of giving racers photo opportunities and certifying that they stuck to the route each day.

Heartland Park proved to be the toughest surface of the week; prep just wasn’t holding down the power that everyone was harvesting as temps dropped and the cool Kansas air became denser. After trading a few runs, Tom and Royce were within eight thousandths of a second of each other for their best ETs on Day 2, keeping the old-school Mustang’s blower square in the OnStar-equipped mirror of Tom’s ZL1.

True Street was starting to shape up, with the second set of runs showing who could buzz the index limit consistently. Randal Reed continued whittling down to an 8.504, but Aaron Shaffer had found the missing hundredths he needed to enter the fight thanks to a 8.509 pass that began to pull him from the back of the pack. Brian Havlick slid to second in the 10.0 index with his 555-cid ’67 Chevy Nova, which was being co-driven and raced in NA Big-Block by engine builder Frank Beck. Michael Swank scraped in by two hundredths with a 10.06 to Brian’s 10.08 average on Day 2. Travis Boltman and Kevin Waltman split their 12.004 tie from Tulsa in the 12.0 index with a 12.04 and 12.056, respectively.

With the war of attrition taking hold and cars more slowly trickling into the lanes, there was plenty of time for repeat runs on Day 2, with some drivers stashing 10 time slips in their pocket by the end of the night. For most, two to three runs were enough—it was still early in the week, and while several classes had battles tight enough to chase a number, others were settling into fairly foregone conclusions … assuming they could make it to Friday. Already there was one engine rebuild back in Tulsa, with “Red Hat” Scotty and his maroon Fox Mustang slamming the new long block back between the fenders during an all-night thrash before making it to Topeka. Meanwhile, Robert Williams had scrambled to repair a torched cylinder head for his turbo LS-powered 1977 Chevy Nova, with the help of some locals who had offered to weld and re-machine the flame-cut hole created as the head gasket failed.

Day 3

The next trek took our horsepower horde to Norman, Oklahoma’s famed Thunder Valley Raceway: the home of the 405. The track is known for being fast in any state of prep, and they had the track glued like fly paper. Tom ran his fastest pass of the week so far at 7.31, and Jared’s Supra dropped the hammer with a near half-second drop in ET to 7.55. This put fellow Outlaw Street competitor Doug Cook square in his sights, too; Cook had also ran his best of the week with a 7.823. Limited Street became a 8.50x bar fight between Randall, Aaron, and Jerome Courtney with a 8.503, 8.507, and 8.509, respectively. On the flip side, Royce and his mental Mustang overpowered the surface, pedaling the violence on its last two runs for a 8.325—a painfully slow time slip in the battle for the overall win.

The aforementioned war of attrition took its inevitable toll before long. Ruby, a turbocharged C6 Corvette piloted James Taal as a part of the Cleetus McFarland fleet, had a replacement turbocharged expressed shipped by Precision to the hotel, reaching the grease-covered Race Week 2.0 bellhops as breakfast was wrapping up. Valvetrains began to suffer the constant thrash of the highway with deteriorated lifters. Unexpected failures, like a pinched brake line that failed in Tom Stark’s ’55 Chevy wagon, kept the flow of incoming racers making their first runs well into the night.

Dale Gebhart, in his nitrous-assisted big-block Chevy AMC Gremlin, ran a 9.824 on only seven cylinders after a lifter wiped the cam lobe. He didn’t have time to swap lifters after arriving so late and made up for the dead hole with spray, and the car sounded horrible as it leaked compression out of cylinder one with the lifters tied up. But, it survived the hit and drove back to the hotel where they eventually made repairs.

For the most part, though, Thunder Valley was fast and sticky for racers, with several setting their best ETs of the week. Camron Thorpe’s 6.0-liter LS-powered Volvo wagon churned out a near-perfect run in True Street 11.0, with the LSA-blown truck motor hustling the Swedish brick to a 11.004. His father, Rich Thorpe, showed where the family tree came from with a spot-on 12.000 in his Pontiac G8 for True Street 12.0. In a showdown between both Real Street-built Supras, Geovanni churned his best ET of the week with a radical 7.242, taking the best ET of the week from Tom McGilton’s Pro Mod-based Camaro ZL1, while Jared pulled out the similarly brutal 7.552 with both 2JZs harmonizing into the Oklahoma country air. The night ended with a grudge race: Drag Week champion (and ET record holder) Tom Bailey, with his slammed Chevy ice cream van, got gapped by the Kona Ice truck driven by Joey Barry. (Barry’s Pro Street Firebird broke out of competition earlier in the week.)

If you’ve ever placed cash bets on an ice cream truck, please stand up.

Day 4

The longest days were ahead as we turned back north for Great Bend, Kansas, and the Sunflower Rod and Custom Association (SCRA) Dragstrip—one of the nation’s oldest strips still operating today. The ex-B29 bomber hub became home to the first NHRA Nationals championship race in 1955, but it wound down in the ’80s as major events moved to Kansas’ larger cities. We were greeted with an all-volunteer team that rescued the air field and its historical drag strip in 1993. Race Week 2.0 competition once again kicked off at a steady trickle as teams slowly funneled into the track after the 300-plus mile road trip to Great Bend.

Late in the week, some people knew who had a target on their back. Others started to figure out what number they needed to hit in order to make the next (and last) day count in their favor. The range of mechanical sympathy was all over the place with those kind of stakes. Some of the field nursed along a wounded machine while others are found their groove, pushing more and more aggressive tune-ups into the mix.

Few reflected that on-kill attitude more than the John Dodson-tuned Camaro driven by Aaron Shaffer. At Great Bend he nailed a perfect 8.500 on the tech limit of Limited Street, pulling him into a trajectory that could pull him into the the lead if Randall Reed slipped up. Like a lame hand in blackjack, Randall’s 8.515 wouldn’t bust out, but it wouldn’t win the round outright, either. That bit of daylight gave Aaron just enough room to set up for an upset victory if he could belt out another 8.5ox run tomorrow.

Oil downs were becoming more common as abused motors hit their breaking points. It’s not unusual for a drag race to have one or two scattered motors, but in endurance drag racing events like Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0, they become routine later in the week. As the sun set, the course was closed for half-hour as Royce’s Mustang dumped oil, managing to pedal through the slick trail as it ran over its own fluid, but it was like trying to close a the dam during a monsoon. The staging lanes became packed with antsy drivers looking to throw down some of their first passes, while others were starting to chase a number in order to get ahead in the class.

The Nova, driven by Brian Havlik and Frank Beck, was bitten by the lifter bug, pushing out of the lanes in a scramble to diagnose the noise and whether or not the motor would need to be uncapped so that the offending lifter could be tied up. But in a strange twist of luck, it had seuzed itself in the bore in a perfect spot that kept it away from the cam lobes, yet still in the correct spot to pass oil through the galley. They made their seven-cylinder passes and stayed in competition.

Despite having come back from the torched head and creeping up on the Outlaw Street class, Robert Williams had a tiny steam vent leak that sidelined several attempts at a second pass. It didn’t matter how big or small the issue was for racers on Day 4, tensions were high as Wednesday’s racing came to a close in Great Bend.

The anxiety was in the air as the fleet left for SCRA that night. There was still one day of long-haul driving, and while the temptation to go full-ham right out of the gate was significant, the need to post a safe and solid time on Day 5 was equally pressing.

Day 5

Lunacy is the word we’d use to sum up the feeling upon the morning of Day 5. The racing started an hour earlier so that awards could still happen at a decent hour, and there was still a healthy run back to Tulsa filled with several hundred street miles ahead. A few well-prepared folk rolled out of the hotels before the sun’s warm rays break through the morning’s low clouds, but otherwise, the beehive of choppy idles later rose almost in a panic.

While it’s hard to ever say that racers lose their humor as they wear thin, there emerged a slightly more serious atmosphere at the strip as both exhaustion and subconscious competitiveness took hold. There was also the lingering reality that hell week was almost over, and despite its challenges and stress, this is what everyone signed up for.

While it would take an absolute fluke to secure the overall win, Geovanni’s blast at Thunder Valley put him three-hundredths of a second ahead of Royce’s screw-blown Mustang, and less than a half-second behind Tom McGilton. Thankfully for Tom, he was able to keep that $15,000 dangling in front of the Supra with a 7.240 against Geovanni’s bewildering 7.367. Any mistake by Tom and the stock-block Supra might’ve taken the mighty “Why Not” Camaro ZL1, with its 540-cid twin-turbo big-block.

Still, the tired backup motor secured Tom’s second Rocky Mountain Race Week win this year with a wicked-quick average ET of 7.2816, adding a nice $30,000 bonus to the year’s earnings.

The hotly-contested Limited Street saw an upset victory, as Aaron Shaffer printed out another perfect 8.500 ET, bouncing him around Randal Reed’s 8.524 average in the final hour. It came down to the final runs of the night for these guys, who were essentially deciding their exact plans of actions right up until the start, adjusting launch boost and shift RPMs to really dial in that final number without wasting a run to a break-out. Jerome Courtney ended up just a few tenths behind the pair’s Fox and F-body, in a Silverado that compared to the pony cars was more or less a flying barn.

The True Street index classes were all within hundredths, but few were as narrowly won as Ernie Raile in the 14.0 index. He finished with a 14.0252 in his chopped ’48 Chevy coupe, compared to Brian Thornton’s turbocharged Silverado and its 14.0268. Ernie also churned out the most runs of the week, hot-lapping the green hot rod until the lanes closed every day.

There was also a host of personal bests and (loose) class records. Jason Tabscott’s ’72 Camaro in Drag Week trim became the first NA Small-Block car into the 8s, with a personal best of 8.99 at 151.1 mph. Wally, the hooptie Grand Marquis driven by James Schauer that runs an 18v Milwaukie power tools battery to bump fuel pressure to match the jerry-rigged nitrous kit, broke into the 12s with a shocking 12.988. Not that it was especially fast, but who would think that with a janky wet-spray nitrous kit, sticky tires, and an impact wrench-assisted diet of body and interior parts that a tired Grand Marquis could knock down a stock modern sports car?

All told, 173 racers finished out of the 225 who started—approximately a 23 percent attrition rate over the course of the week. Those failures and successes can’t be easily quantified by numbers alone, so we’ll report some of our favorite Race Week 2.0 tales in the week to come. In the meantime, you can catch day by day highlights thanks to 1320 Video, and BangShift.com has the entire live stream hosted on YouTube as well. But first, flip through the mega gallery of Race Week action here.

Thanks to Cole Reynolds for his photography. You can check out Cole’s Instagram here.

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Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0 has wrapped up and, once again, Tom McGilton is the overall winner. McGilton won the first Rocky Mountain Race Week of 2020 earlier this summer and was the man to beat all week. This second RMRW of 2020 was put together to fill in for Hot Rod magazine’s Drag Week, which was canceled earlier this year.

McGilton’s 7.356-second ET on the first day of racing put him in the overall lead from the get-go. A string of low seven-second passes on the four following race days sealed his win with an average ET of 7.2816 seconds. Four other drivers in three other race classes managed to average ETs in the sevens as well, proving that Rocky Mountain Race Week has no problem attracting a variety of wickedly fast cars.

Tom McGilton’s ZL1 is one part 2013 Camaro, with all its creature comforts, and one part Pro Mod drag car. Multiple Drag Week winner Larry Larson was tasked with transforming the Bow Tie from a balanced strip/track car into a quarter-mile missile capable of long-distance highway hauling. That meant a custom rear suspension with a solid axle and a roll cage to tie it all together. The car was built in 2014 and has been competing in the fastest street car events ever since.

Its current engine has about as much in common with the supercharged 6.2-liter, 580-hp LSA that was unceremoniously ripped out of its engine bay as it does with its 427-powered 1969 namesake. Like most of the fastest street cars in America and across the pond, this Camaro uses a twin-turbo big-block Chevy. Again following the fast street car recipe, power is routed through a three-speed Rossler 210 transmission (based on a Turbo 400) before it heads to a Gear Vendors overdrive unit and then to the rear axle.

For this event, McGilton was running on his spare engine, since his chief racing engine was being refreshed. The 540-cubic-inch V-8 produces around 3500 hp when spooled up and at full-throttle on the track. The beauty of a turbocharged engine is that on the street, when it’s not making boost, it’s docile. Relatively speaking. That’s key for surviving the hundreds of highway miles that these cars must travel between race tracks.

Congrats to McGilton on his repeat performance. We wish him luck as his Camaro gets closer and closer to breaking into the sixes.

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Ford is introducing the Cobra Jet 1400 to the masses this weekend at the NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indy with a heads-up race against the venerable gas-powered Cobra Jet. Before the show down, however, Bob Tasca III has been behind the wheel to get acquainted with the new-age machine. While Ford had chiseled down the Cobra Jet 1400 to an 8.27 ET at 168 mph in private testing, Tasca III has just begun to push the all-electric Mustang for the first time with the guidance of MLeR and Lane Racing, the constructors of CJ1400.

MLeR also helped to design and build 2018’s electrified Chevy Camaro eCOPO, a ground-breaking test bed that asked “What If?” for the NHRA’s showroom-inspired Factory Stock class. Last year, Ford Performance approached MLeR after the eCOPO program ran its course to help the Blue Oval develop its own driveline for the Cobra Jet. Cascadia Motion supplied four PN-250-DZR inverters (the units that flank the motor) which manage power to the pair of DS-250-115s electric motors (each is a dual-stack unit, meaning there are four motors total).

The stacks each provide about 470 hp, combining to produce approximately 1800 hp with a maximum speed of 10,000 rpm. The four inverters, combined, send 800 volts at up to 700 amps—enough current to weld practically anything you could imagine. AEM-EV, which also had a hand in the Electraliner electric land speed racer, provides the overall tuning solution for the Cobra Jet 1400’s electric driveline. Having a motorsports-level ECU is critical for getting the prototype electric car off the line as cleanly as the well-dialed-in gasoline Cobra Jet, a quarter-mile tool that has been polished and perfected over several seasons of Factory Stock competition and runs well into the high 7s.

Watson Racing—a longtime drag racing partner for Ford Performance—will join MLeR in chassis tuning. Because of the brutal power that’s available from such a low rpm (thanks to the principals behind electric motors allowing for nearly full torque from the moment they begin to spin), AEM-EV had to work closely with MLeR to develop an ideal “tune.” The motors are set up to ramp in power aggressively enough to pull the front tires, but not too early in the run when the tires are under more stress trying to motivate two-and-a-half tons from a dead stop, resulting in tire spin and shake.

What are your bets, will the gas-powered Cobra Jet with its traditional Coyote-based V-8 hold the fort, or will the electrified newcomer, the Cobra Jet 1400, take the veteran’s lunch?

With two-time NHRA Funny Car champion Tony Pedregon behind the wheel of that fuel-burning ol’ faithful, Tasca III and Cobra Jet 1400 have their work cut out for them.

The post See and hear the 8-second Cobra Jet 1400 at the NHRA U.S. Nationals appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In drag racing, there exists a line in the sand between what defines a “street” car and what defines a true “race” car. It stems from a great argument that street racers were somehow tougher than track racers. The theory? Track cars could not race on the street due to being more unreliable and only made to run round-by-round, compared street racers, which were maybe playing with less power but still could drive home in the same car after racing.

As this rivalry grew, events like Hot Rod‘s Pump Gas drags and, later, Drag Week, sought to define a street car as something that was required to be driven in daily traffic and other stressful situations for otherwise dedicated drag cars. High compression ratios meant that starters and charging systems had to be on point in order to repetitively churn a motor over, the cooling system had to scale up with the demands of traffic heat-soaking even the largest of radiators, and the drivelines themselves had to evolve away from the full-throttle-focused packages of the past and start to consider livability in all weather conditions.

Rising to the top of this debate are machines like Joe Barry’s Creamsicle, a twin-turbo, 598-cubic-inch big-block-powered 1956 Chevy that manages to hustle the quarter-mile in the 6s at over 200 mph. Not bad for an all-steel car that still weighs 3800 pounds, even with a Jerry Bickle tube chassis underneath. This car is one of the nicest cars to run in this world of duality, looking fresh out of a Sunday car show but sharing public roads with Camrys and crossovers.

Get to know Joe and Creamsicle on this episode of Hoonigan Autofocus with photographer Larry Chen, as they crawl all over the ’56 to talk about what all goes into a 3000-hp street car. You could daily-drive this beast if you needed to. We all love hyper-focused race cars, but introducing them into the most mundane situations on the road is a twisted sort of fun.

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Dodge is opening orders soon for its newest recipe for National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) and National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) domination: the 2021 Dodge Challenger Drag Pak, the fourth generation of the factory-backed track specials. With significant changes to the motor and the suspension, we’re betting this will be the quickest and fastest Drag Pak yet.

The first change you’ll see under the hood is the new 3.0-liter Whipple blower, a twin-screw unit that’s cooled by a liquid-to-air intercooler via an ice-chilled aluminum reservoir. The all-new supercharger sits atop a familiar Drag Pak-only 354-cubic-inch (5.8-liter) Gen III Hemi, beefed up by Mopar with a forged rotating assembly and a new accessory drive to further optimize its quarter-mile performance. A Holley Dominator ECU runs the operation, making tuning a breeze with a familiar suite of tools. Mopar also utilizes Racepak’s CAN Bus-based Smartwire Power Distribution Module, replacing the traditional switch panel and relay set with solid-state parts—a slick change, since it hides many of the major buttons needed during a run behind a factory-spec facade.

Viewed from below, the Drag Pak looks nothing like lesser-equipped Challengers. Up front sits a unique K-member that supports double adjustable Bilstein coilovers; out back, a four-link rear axle replaces the independent-rear setup of the showroom-standard model. Even better, the 2021 Drag Pak sports a new rear suspension geometry to help it “decimate” 60-foot times. Longer control arms help dial in anti-squat—a suspension’s ability to use the torque-reaction of the axle to fight suspension compression—and help to transfer more weight onto the tires. A new center wishbone link keeps the axle centered through the range of travel better than the lateral arc of a panhard bar ever could.

The rear axle is flanked by Bilstein shock absorbers and either a set of Weld Racing or Bogart wheels, each 15 x 10 inches and wrapped in a 30×9-inch Mickey Thompson ET Drag Pro Radial. The front end carries 17×4.5 wheels and skinny 27.5×4-inch tires.

50 lucky racers get the chance to hit the strip in an all-new Drag Pak, priced at $143,485 as a turn-key race car for NHRA and NMCA dominance. Order reservations for the new 2021 Dodge Challenger Mopar Drag Pak officially open on Sept. 9, 2020 on a first-come, first-served basis.

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The NHRA’s U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis will be the first time the all-electric Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 will hit the drag strip in public. The NHRA made the announcement earlier this week, highlighting the one-off Cobra Jet’s impressive previous performance, at a private event, at which the car netted an 8.66-second elapsed time at 160 mph.

When constructing the strip-only electric racer as a testbed for future EV tech, Ford teamed up with Watson Engineering as well as MLe Racecars, the same shop that built the all-electric eCOPO Camaro for Chevrolet in 2018. Ford’s Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 gets its name from its 1400-hp output but Ford has reportedly dosed the car with even more power since its mid-eight-second performance.

We first heard about the car back in April, but nationwide racetrack closures and event cancellations left Ford unsure of when the car would be able to make its first pass at a national event. Now we know that the wait will be over when the NHRA U.S. Nationals kick off at Indy on September 3.

If you’re worried about electric cars taking over in motorsports, the NHRA’s David Kennedy assures you that’s not the case in drag racing: “Electric drag cars aren’t here to replace gasoline, alcohol, or nitromethane. Electric drag cars are here to add to our motorsport, and drag strips are here to do what they’ve always done for passenger car technologies—make them better.”

Drag racing is a challenging environment to test vehicles, and we’d love to see some competition in this space. Because it lacks the sound of an internal-combustion engine roaring down the track, fans may be slow to warm to all-electric drag racer. On the other hand, we bet there a quite a lot of crew chiefs out there that would appreciate a powertrain that doesn’t need a tune-up every time the barometer shifts.

Good luck to team Cobra Jet 1400!

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Racing vehicles are always evolving, becoming ever-more highly specialized weapons of speed. So what happens when you take one of those weapons and put it in an arena outside its intended purpose? YouTube channel Cleetus McFarland put on a show for us to find out, with a fire-breathing NASCAR truck taking to the drag strip for a few flat-out passes.

With a set of drag radials mounted, the truck rips off a couple 11-second shakedown passes (including one where the driver accidentally rips off the shift knob shifting into second) before the nitrous kit is activated and the E.T.s start dropping. The final rip of the night is a 9.98-second pass, not too shabby for a chassis originally designed to turn left only.

When Cleetus McFarland frontman Garrett Mitchell bought the truck in 2018, it was lacking the NASCAR-spec small-block and four-speed, instead sporting an LS1 and T56 five-speed likely pulled from a fourth-generation Camaro. At the time, the truck also had one particularly interesting quirk: a street title. The project took several unexpected turns since arriving in the Cleetus McFarland family, including broken and replaced rear axles, a rebuilt transmission, and a new engine. Currently, the truck has been tuned to a more neutral chassis setup, and a nitrous-fed 427-cube LS3 now resides under the hood. According to the video, the monster motor recorded 890 hp on a recent dyno test.

There are some asterisks to note here, however. The first and most obvious to NASCAR faithful, is that despite how cool the Dale Earnhardt Sr. livery is here, Sr. never ran a NASCAR trucks series race. The graphics might be fake, but the truck under it claims to be legit. The chassis was supposedly built for Dave Marcis by Richard Childress Racing, but after that the details get a little murky. There are two different narratives circulating online, the first being that this race chassis had its one and only competition experience on track at Phoenix Raceway on October 28, 1995. Other reports suggest the vehicle never turned a lap on track.

Either way, this rubber-roasting race truck is a sight to behold and clearly a drag-strip terror.

The post How fast can a NASCAR truck get down the drag strip? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This former Canadian police car is currently up for purchase on eBay. While it used to have a 440-cubic-inch plant, it now burns rubber with a much more modern powertrain.

It’s no Bluesmobile. If Jake and Elwood had been driving this 1968 Coronet, their drive to the Cook County Assessor’s Office would have been much faster. The Coronet is a size smaller than that famous Mopar prowler, but it was truly a police car and served in Canada when it was powered by its original 440 V-8. Its cop motor, cop tires, cop suspension, and cop shocks have all been replaced. Now it’s got Viking coilovers in the front, Mickey Thompson E/T Street drag radials in the back, and, most interesting, a supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi from a 2018 Dodge Challenger Hellcat. And the sellers will throw in some police-spec tires and wheels with dog-dish hubcaps for the $55,000 asking price.

The Hemi breathes through a set of TTI headers and cutouts that can bypass the mufflers and send exhaust through the rocker-mounted zoomies. The car’s original 727 trans has been replaced by a GearStar 4L85E, giving the B-body a bulletproof overdrive capable of hard launches and respectable fuel economy. The listing promises 10-second timeslips when running slicks and 22 mpg when cruising on the highway.

Other chassis and drivetrain components include Wilwood brakes, a Dana 60 rear axle with a limited-slip differential, and a custom-made radiator. In addition to the headers, the Hellcat V-8 uses modified pulleys to spin the supercharger a bit faster and a new charge cooler to keep the increased boost from raising intake temps. Hemituner Performance has helped to keep the modified Hemi humming along and pumping out somewhere in the range of 800 hp.

Inside, the Coronet looks exactly how you’d hope a ’60s cop car would look: chock full of strange electronics, with a massive switch panel littered with toggles.

The ad notes that the car is mechanically sound even though it’s cosmetically a little worse for wear, looking every bit like a police car that’s been in service for a few years with some dings and scratches. It has survived 6000 miles since the engine swap was completed to participate in Hot Rod magazine’s 2019 Power Tour, which drove through North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. In truth, the Coronet doesn’t look like it’s been through 50 years of being beaten up, and the ad suggests it may have been repainted in the early 2000s. Like the original car, this one doesn’t have air-conditioning. If this ride is in your future, you may want to plan your drag strip road trips carefully to beat the heat.

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The title of “world’s quickest street car” has been passed around to a few notable names over the past decade or so. Andy Frost, Larry Larson, and Jeff Lutz have all piloted cars to ridiculous quarter-mile passes well in excess of 200 mph to claim the title. For now, Tom Bailey holds both the quickest and fastest pass in his street-driven 1969 Camaro.

Bailey ran a 5.99 at Drag Week 2019, making him the first ever to break into the 5-second range during the event. Earlier this year, Bailey clicked off a 5.881 elapsed time at the U.S. Street Nationals at Bradenton Motorsports Park. Then he followed it up with a 5.773 E.T. at 259.66 mph! Those passes were done on the same Drag Week engine, built using a Steve Morris SMX billet block, on a tune running 48 pounds of boost. After more than 1000 miles, Steve Morris has just opened up the engine to show everyone what it’s made of … literally.

Steve Morris is the man behind the twin-turbo big-block that powers Bailey’s car and is often Bailey’s copilot during Drag Week. At the heart of the engine is a proprietary billet aluminum block that Morris engineered. Unlike most billet blocks, this one has been machined with water jackets that allow it to survive street driving. On the strip, Bailey’s Camaro runs alcohol through three injectors per cylinder. Due to alcohol’s evaporative cooling properties, the engine doesn’t produce as much heat as a similar gasoline powerplant would, even though it is still capable of 4000 hp. A solid billet block, without any cooling passages, works just fine on the strip, but it wouldn’t last long at all on the highway.

On the street, Bailey’s engine uses a separate fuel system to provide a ready supply of gasoline to a single set of fuel injectors. When the engine isn’t making boost, it’s absolutely tame and perfectly happy cruising at highway speeds with its Rossler-built Turbo 400 transmission and Gear Verdors overdrive keeping engine speeds low.

Bailey’s “Camaro” is best described as a Pro Mod drag car that’s been built to survive the rigors of long-distance street driving. It’s participated in several of Hot Rod magazine’s Drag Week competitions, in which drivers race on the strip and then drive 200+ miles to the next venue and race again, five days in a row. If it sounds like it’s hard on cars, it is. The odyssey is even harder on drivers, who sometimes spend hours at the track prepping the cars to race and then tweaking them to survive the road.

The engineering behind Bailey’s car and this 4000-hp powerplant is nothing short of astounding and we’re still blown away that an engine this ferocious can survive on the street for so long and endure so many punishing passes. You can argue that Tom Bailey’s car isn’t really a ’69 Camaro, but you can’t argue that it’s not a real street car.

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Pontiac often gets the credit for kickstarting the muscle car explosion of the ’60s with the introduction of the 1964 GTO. The brand does deserve some credit for the proper muscle car marketing but, as a Pontiac fan, I must admit that the GTO’s recipe of stuffing a larger engine into a midsize or compact body had been done by plenty of manufacturers before. Including Pontiac itself.

Before Pontiac dropped a 389-cubic-inch engine from its full-size cars into the mid-size Tempest to create the GTO, they dropped even more displacement into the previous-generation Tempest, which was a compact at the time. These Super Duty Tempests were destined exclusively for drag racing and were not only gutted for the sake of weight savings but quite extensively modified, too. The run-of-the-mill Tempest used a rear-mounted transaxle with independent rear suspension, and some of the Super Duty Tempests kept that configuration; others were converted to a solid rear axle to handle the abuse.

That’s the case for this recreation Super Duty Tempest, which is for sale in East Dundee, Indiana. It replicates a rare wagon variety of the drag strip icon, one once piloted by Arnie “The Farmer” Beswick. It certainly looks the part.

Pop the hood of this little missile and you’ll find a pair of Edelbrock carbs, modern versions of the Carter AFBs that would normally top a Pontiac dual-quad manifold. They’re feeding 455 cubic inches of Pontiac V-8 through a set of ported #64 heads. The solid axle in this tribute car is a Ford 9-inch with 4.56 gears, a nice drag-friendly ratio that should pair nicely with the Richmond Super T-10 trans for some bang-shifting passes down the quarter-mile.

I’ve often bench-raced what kind of car I’d build if I were to enter Drag Week, where long-distance street driving is paired with drag racing. This wagon is pretty close to ideal in my book. There’s enough power to be fun, plus lots of room for your co-pilot, luggage, tires, and some spare parts. On to of that, the Tempest would look great at any track where it raced. There’s no air conditioning in this one, though—and that’s where “The Farmer” and I go our separate ways.

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The Fun Police at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office (DSCO) have opened an investigation into… well, the real police. They want to know why two of its deputies drag-raced squad cars at Yello Belly Drag Strip in Grand Prairie, Texas’ longest-running strip. During last Thursday’s test-and-tune, two Dodge Charger police cars with their light bars glowing lined up at the most infamous Christmas tree in the Lone Star State and ran the quarter-mile in what DSCO is calling an “unsanctioned” stunt.

 

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Though its popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, the saloon-lined main street has served as the (legal) venue of choice for speed freaks’ duels. With 65 years’ worth of history on its two-lane blacktop, Yello Belly Drag Strip is one of Texas’ most storied tracks. Today, it remains one of the last unsanctioned drag strips in the United States, serving only locals and cross-country rivals at the expense of hosting big events like a round of the NHRA’s nitromethane-infused carnival of speed. Essentially, Yello Belly is the drag-strip equivalent of a well-worn dive bar.

Yello Belly sits in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and, though the family-run institution has certainly had its brighter moments, it trails a complex history of racial tension in its wake. The facility was a melting pot for those of all incomes, backgrounds, and ethnicities in the area, and tensions—including those during the civil rights era—often spread into Yello Belly, sometimes erupting into pit lane violence. However, the family business never closed its doors to anyone and its managers worked tirelessly to keep the track open to racers despite social upheaval.

Several spectators of last Thursday’s squad-car match up told local news outlet WFAA that,“in the eyes of the public, we saw it as a sign on positivity, based on [what] we have going on in this country.” As of now, however, official word from the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office is that the officers’ race was not officially sanctioned. We’re hoping the cops don’t get in too much trouble. They’re just doing what they tell everyone else to do: take it off the streets and onto the track. And for a brief moment, they weren’t cops — they were racers, just like everyone else.

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With social distancing measures in place nationwide, emptier roads have tempted high-speed thrill seekers. Even before COVID-19, street racing and stunt sideshows had been on the uptick in the Atlanta, Georgia, metro area. While some lawmakers are looking to increase the repercussions of participating such illegal activity, one is hoping that embracing and facilitating a dedicated street venue would be a win-win for enthusiasts and safety advocates.

Atlanta’s CBS46 is reporting that Mayor Keisha Bottoms is floating the idea of closing down a designated road for just that purpose. During a recent City Council call, she stated that Atlanta would work “along with Bloomberg, who we’ve reached out to help us do some benchmarking and assessment of what’s happening in other cities has been to consider a designated space for street racing.”

Bloomberg Associates, which does consulting for city planning, will assist in collecting data on illegal activity while the city opens this experiment. In the meantime, however, more traditional attitudes and reactions to street racing are also taking shape.

Atlanta Council Member Dustin Hillis has put forth a bill that increases penalties related to participating in or spectating illegal racing events, with a maximum fine of $1000 with jail time up to six months. It’s more familiar crackdown, compared to the novel prospect of sanctioning a street race itself. The presence of illegal street racing and stunt displays can be evidence of a lack of local venues as folks find their own ways to test their mettle. For ATL locals, the Atlanta Dragway is more than an hour away from the city center, sitting nearly 70 miles outside of downtown. Of course, a race track or drag strip is not necessarily a one-for-one substitute for this kind of display. The street holds a unique atmosphere. If the city-sanctioned drag racing on Woodward Avenue for Roadkill Nights is any indication, no traditional track can fully replace racing on the street in the eyes of some diehards.

The challenges in Georgia’s capital city are not unique, in the sense that illegal automotive meetups in one form or another ebb and flow in cities and small towns. We embrace the idea of opening accessible venues wherever possible, which will allow people a dedicated place to explore their cars instead of endangering the general public. Such events could succeed in the long term, encouraging people to seek out similar events that are that are safer and within the bounds of the law.

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When John Eleazer bought his 1960 Pontiac Catalina, he didn’t have any plans to transform it into a drag-strip scorcher. He drove it back from the dealership into his driveway, not to a race shop, and the Catalina served its daily driver duties faithfully for five years.

Then Eleazer caught the drag-racing fever. He started tinkering with the Catalina’s 389-cubic-inch V-8. Out went the factory two-barrel carb and intake, and in went a four-barrel—and, eventually, a 3×2 setup. With more room to breathe on the intake side, he settled on long-tube headers to help the engine exhale. A drag racer was born.

If you frequented drag strips in the Northeast in the late 1960s, Eleazer and his four-speed Catalina were likely a familiar sight. The pair would race at New York National Speedway in Long Island on Friday, make quick, in-state stops at Westhampton and Albany, and be off to race at Dover Drag Strip in Wingdale, New York, all on the same weekend. Eleazer didn’t drive the race car from track to track, though; he towed it with a stock 1960 Catalina. It was a practical way of carrying spare parts, he explains: “If I broke something racing I’d take it off the car. If I didn’t break it again racing, I’d put it back on the tow car.”

Zipping from track to track on the weekends earned the Catalina an appropriate nickname: “Road Runner.” Eleazer embraced the moniker and lettered the car with the name.

Besides the quarter-mile, Eleazer and the Road Runner Catalina would race anywhere they could. Before Englishtown, New Jersey, had a proper dragstrip, Old Bridge Township had a track with a 1/16th-mile straightaway. That was enough track for Eleazer. (Drag races are won or lost at the tree, anyway.) He took any opportunity he could to line up against an opponent and launch the Road Runner down the track.

Inspired by the success of the factory lightweight Super Duty Catalinas and the Tin Indian Pontiacs raced at the time, Eleazer hoped to install a 421 in his Catalina. However, he couldn’t justify the expense of an all-new engine. So he rebuilt the 389, boring it .030-over in the process, and topped the freshened 395-cu-in short-block with the heads and dual four-barrel intake from a 421.

Mopar would later offer its own Road Runner muscle car, based on its mid-size, B-body architecture, but Eleazer still prefers his version. Despite the Mopar’s cool horn and great graphics, the Pontiac Road Runner has its own grassroots appeal. Did Eleazer’s Pontiac inspire the Plymouth of the same name? It’s hard to say, but the Pontiac was first, and it was making a worthy name for itself in the drag-racing scene.

That 421 top-end combo propelled Eleazer and the Road Runner to a United Hot Rod Association (UHRA) class record of 13.40 in 1972. Soon after, Eleazer’s drag racing took a back seat to life’s other priorities and the Road Runner sat unused for years. Around 20 years ago, Eleazer sold the car and afterwards didn’t see much of it.

Eleazer was tempted to run his 455-powered 1972 Trans Am on the strip. He also knew that if it proved quicker than his Catalina he’d soon be scheming how to optimize it for the track. That would, of course, lead him down the rabbit hole of tweaking and tuning the car so that it was no longer any fun to drive on the street. So, Eleazer decided that one drag-racing car was enough for him.

Recently, the Road Runner has resurfaced and rumbled back into the public eye. Tim Truax purchased the car from an Indianapolis collector who had initially bought it from Eleazer. Incredibly, the Catalina still had the same tires from the ’70s. Tim and his father polished and detailed the Road Runner before setting their focus on the Pontiac’s V-8. Some carb tuning, new mufflers, and new header gaskets—which, Tim noted, were “a nightmare” to install—freshened up the car. Otherwise, the Road Runner remains in its as-raced state.

Tim loaned the car to the Pontiac Oakland Museum and had planned on having it on display for six months. Considering the car’s level of preservation and its impact it during its racing career, the Road Runner is a great representative of sportsman-level drag racing and a worthy ambassador for the sport. Since the museum is shut down for the time being, Tim may leave the Road Runner in its care in a bit longer to give more visitors a chance to see it when restrictions lift. Once Tim gets the Catalina back, he plans on making it more street-worthy. That will likely include rebuilding the drum brakes and replacing the tires. However, Tim doesn’t plan on doing any racing.

“They got it running and it sounds like a real machine,” Eleazer said. “I wish I had more time to run that car.” Still, Eleazer says he’s glad that the Road Runner is at the museum where it can be enjoyed. Besides, he does have his 455-powered Firebird if he feels the need to fire up a Pontiac V-8. The revival of the Road Runner might just have inspired Eleazer, who is now in his 90s: “I’d like to get a new 455 for my Firebird,” he said.

Watch out, New York, the original Road Runner is still out there.

The post Before the Road Runner was a Plymouth, it was a Pontiac appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Don Schumacher’s team of NHRA drivers want you to know it’s Hemi Day.

Mopar and Dodge compiled a video of Don Schumacher Racing drivers Tommy Johnson Jr., Ron Caps, Leah Pruett, Matt Hagan, and “Fast Jack” Beckman to celebrate April 26 (4/26). Dodge has enthusiastically referred to as “Hemi Day.” Mr. Schumacher himself shows up at the end of the quick video to remind us that the whole Schumacher team is eagerly awaiting their return to racing.

Schumacher Racing’s drivers naturally love Hemis, it’s the engine that powers Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars to the fastest speeds of any vehicle in the quarter-mile and has earned Schumacher its share of Wally trophies.

We got to look inside at Top Fuel Hemi as part of our Redline Rebuild series.

Watch that video and you’ll see just what makes a Hemi V-8 special. Its hemispherical combustion chambers allow for its valves to be arranged in two lines, rather than the typical wedge cylinder head that places all the valves in a single line. That arrangement allows for larger valves and better cylinder head flow. An engine is nothing more than an air pump after all.

That race engine shares the basic layout of a production 426 Hemi, but features a billet aluminum block, billet heads with ginormous ports, and a monster supercharger. Of course, it also burns nitromethane. In truth, there’s not a lot in common with the ’60s street Hemi that powered some of the coolest and quickest Mopars of the muscle car era, but the DNA is still there.

Mopar’s Hemi heritage goes back to 1951 when the first Chrysler Hemi was installed in New Yorker, Saratoga, and Imperial models. The 331-cubic-inch V-8 packed a 180-hp wallop. That was quite a statement when lots of the American competition had OHV sixes and flathead-eights.

Dodge, DeSoto, and Chrysler all had their own version of the Gen I Hemi with different bore spacings. However, it was Chrysler’s, the largest of the three, that really associated the Hemi V-8 with drag racing. Chrysler’s 392 Hemi was the powerplant in drag racing until the big-block 426 took over the reins. It became such an icon that it is the de facto displacement that comes to mind when the word “hemi” is uttered. Mopar has embraced the 426 and its legacy by releasing a 1000-horsepower, 426-cu-in Gen III crate engine called the Hellephant.

If you’ve got a favorite Hemi, let us know. It’s 4/26, but we want to hear about all Hemis. It’s not like there’s a 3/54 or 3/92 on the calendar.

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Ford’s newest, one-off Cobra Jet will take on the quarter-mile with 1400 horsepower of electric thrust.

Like all recent Cobra Jet Mustangs, this is a track-only creation with a full roll cage, solid rear axle, and, from the sound of the short video Ford released, an automatic transmission. We assume that from the three-speed automatic back, the drivetrain is just like the Whipple-supercharged Coyote-powered Cobra Jet that has been setting the pace in the NHRA’s Super Stock Eliminator class.

Forward of the transmission, it’s an entirely different story. As best we can tell, twin electric motors from Cascadia, mounted in series, are flanked by an array of converters and the necessary wiring to make everything hum. It makes for an interesting sight when the hood is popped.

Ford teamed with MLe Racecars to build the electric drag racer. Watson Engineering was responsible for chassis and roll cage fabrication, and AEM EV supplied motor calibration and software on the power plant. MLe Racecars is the same shop that Chevrolet tapped for the eCOPO that debuted at the 2018 SEMA Show. Chevrolet built the eCOPO in a similar vein, delivering mid-9-second elapsed times with its 700-horsepower motor.

Ford says that the Cobra Jet 1400 will be good for low 8-second passes with a 170-mph trap speed. That means it’s either not as quick as the supercharged V-8 Cobra Jet, or Ford is sand-bagging. Given the amount of time that the gasoline-powered Cobra Jets have had to tune their suspensions and tailor their launch techniques to varying track conditions, we’d bet they hold the advantage for now. Either way, it goes to show how far off the NHRA’s 595-hp rating for the supercharged V-8 Cobra Jet truly is.

Nationwide event closures have put a damper on the Cobra Jet 1400’s planned launch, which should happen at a future NHRA event. In the meantime, you can learn more on Motor Trend on Demand’s “Hard Cell” starting April 24th.

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Prospective buyers for the most hardcore factory Camaro can now skip the previous lottery system and begin the process to purchase a COPO Camaro on a first-come, first-served basis.

As an homage to the original 1969 COPO Camaro, Chevrolet has built 69 COPO Camaros each year since 2012. These drag-race-only Camaros are purpose-built with a roll cage, solid rear axle, and three-speed automatic transmission. They also pack lightweight strut towers and a carbon-fiber hood. Their goal is to go to-to-toe with Ford’s Cobra Jet Mustang and Dodge’s Drag Pak Challenger on the strip as part of the NHRA’s Factory Stock Showdown.

Previously, would-be COPO Camaro owners would have to enter a lottery and hope for a chance at one of the limited-production racers. Just 552 COPO Camaros have been built since 2012. Their low production levels and incredibly high performance make them instant collectibles, but they really shine on the drag strip.

The “base” engine in the 2020 COPO is a naturally aspirated, 427-cubic-inch V-8. The optional, supercharged 350 V-8 is the heavy hitter, and is capable of seven-second elapsed times in the quarter-mile. The engine shares its bore with the production LT1 in the Camaro SS, but uses a shorter 3.37-inch stroke. The forged rotating assembly is topped by new LSX-SC cylinder heads for 2020 along with a Magnusson supercharger that uses the same 2.65-liter rotors as the 755-hp 2019 Corvette ZR1. The NHRA rates the 350 V-8 at 630 hp, but its time slips will surely tell a different story.

If you’re in the market for a COPO Camaro and think you’ve got what it takes to go against some of the top Sportsman racers in the country, Chevrolet Performance manager Todd Gallant is ready to hear from you. Step one is visiting the COPO Camaro page on the Chevy Performance website to download an order form.

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The Petersen Automotive Museum has once again reached into its video archives to highlight some terrific vintage racing footage. This time it’s nearly an hour’s worth of automotive clips including testing by Shelby American hotshoe Ken Miles.

The video opens with a long intro shot of a mystery custom bubble car cruising along the coastline. After the car stops, the top slowly opens to reveal Lloyd Bridges. He narrates a series of clips of gear heads showing off their strange motor-powered contraptions, from a gas-powered skateboard to singer/actor Fabian racing his go-kart.

Unless you’re a fan of vintage slot car racing, you may want to just skip ahead to the 7:55 mark on the video. That’s when Ken Miles roars in, driving a 289 Cobra at Riverside Raceway. Miles, and his relationship with Carrol Shelby, was a big part of the film Ford v Ferrari, and Miles’ driving skill played a major role in Ford’s Le Mans dominance. One look at the footage and you can appreciate just how good a job Christian Bale did, although the casting choice was also pretty on-point.

Riding shotgun for Miles’ test laps is Jim Drury, famous for his television role in The Virginian. Jim tries to narrate over the screaming small-block, as Miles takes the Cobra past 155 mph.

The video also contains wheel-to-wheel sports car racing action from Riverside Raceway, and we’re pretty sure we spotted a Cheetah around the 10-minute mark—a rare sight indeed. There’re lots of off-track driving, as cars spin out and wrinkle their now-valuable sheet metal. Speaking of car spotting, it looks like a Porsche 904 getting dented up just after we saw the Cheetah. Ouch.

Keep watching and you’ll find George Barris customs, a Cobra running in a gymkhana, NHRA drag racing at the Pomona Winternationals, and footage from NASCAR and the Indy 500, too. There’s even footage of Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons running for the outright land speed record at Bonneville. If you’re an automotive enthusiast and a fan of nostalgia, there’s got to be something to catch your interest.

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