Well, we didn’t expect that. Ace photographer Mike Morgan caught this endo at the 2017 LS Fest West happenings this past weekend at the Las Vegas Speedway. Part of the festivities was this jump course set up for LS-equipped off road trucks. The Hellfire Motorsports jump truck from Canada had a rough day on Saturday, ending with this endo. But Wait! They were back to racing on Sunday, proving these guys mean business.
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Tire smoking action came from both sides of LS Fest at the Vegas Motorsports Speedway. At the drag strip smoky burnouts were the norm, as LS-equipped racers were vying for quick times, while at the other end of the Speedway drift cars caromed through the course two-by-two launching bellows of smoke and tire dust for their choreographed racing action. Check out these hazy shots to see just some of the action from the 2017 LS Fest West’s drags and drifts.
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If you think that LS-platform performance is all the rage in Chevys, Pontiacs and Caddys, you’d be right. But there are plenty of Mustangs, Mopars and imports plying the byways and highways under the power of the mighty LS. Proof was seen at the 2017 LS Fest West in Las Vegas, where we were witness to these gems dragging and drifting throughout the weekend. These owners were not shy about stabbing an LS into their heaps. Maybe there’s something to all of the LS-swap mania sweeping the land?
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Jim Lytle’s Allison engine-powered 1934 Ford sedan from 1963. One of its last showings with its original Ford body, Lytle was working on a lift-off fiberglass body to replace it. Reaching speeds of over 147mph at high-10-second squirts with the world’s first 4-disc clutch, the original body was getting torn up from the air pressure building up at those speeds. Blown-off doors and hoods were becoming common, necessitating a solution. Lytle chose a Funny Car-style lift off body chopped an additional six-inches from its already six-inch chop that was used as a mold. Lytle would now pilot the sedan from the rear with his head located above the top. Within a few weeks of running the new body Lytle was seeing low 9-second runs at over 163mph.
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We’d like to be able to identify this Freak Show special, but alas, we can’t. The reason should be readily apparent; this sucker is hammered so badly it’s a wadded up mess. But there are redeeming qualities. Take for instance the lack of overhang to be able to stab this into tight parking spaces. With the rear crumpled so high it has made for a handy spare tire mount. Hopefully whoever owns this won’t need to drive in any inclement weather, as it appears not to have a windshield. Of course with the hood wadded up so high, possibly to match the rear, it’s going to be hard to see around, but no worse than 1960s blown Top Fuel dragsters, so that’s one thing this creation has in common with a slingshot! Fortunately the owner will never be offended by anyone calling this a wreck, since for all intent and purposes that’s exactly what this appears to be.
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For some car companies always on the brink in the 1950s and 1960s, being clever with designs paid dividends. Getting more with less tooling was one way to economize car manufacturing. Companies like Checker designed its car bodies so all four doors were made from one single stamping, with holes for hinges and door handles requiring a secondary stamping process making them either left or right doors. So if you were designing for economy, this was one very big way to get more with less. AMC’s Design VP Richard Teague went even further to help spread the company’s ever-shrinking development budgets. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Teague’s specialty is styling on a shoestring.”
A veteran of Packard, GM, and Chrysler, he’s shown here with his 1965 Cavalier concept that, if produced, would have used only two fender stampings and two door stampings. The right front fender was also the left rear, and conversely the left front fender was the right rear. Same deal with the doors. The left front door was also the right rear, and right front the left rear. Top sail panels defined the rear of the top. A grille fit into the opening in the front, or a filler panel and taillights into the rear cavity. Tooling, manufacturing, and stocking savings would be bountiful with this approach. It’s hard to see how linear and clean the Cavalier was in the limited archive images we have, but the idea of less tooling eventually reaped benefits with the Gremlin—a truncated Hornet, the AMX—a truncated Javelin, and was also how AMC spread its unibody stampings across both intermediate Rebels and luxury Ambassadors in the 1960s and 1970s. While we know all of the car companies share some inner structures or “platforms” today, this took some sneaky conjuring to pull off, which it did surprisingly well.
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Ernie Nicholson’s Super Stude 1941 Studebaker coupe. This clean coupe shot in 1967 ran locally and competitively in and around Los Angeles. Nicholson, who owned Ernie’s Super Shell gas station in South Central LA and was one of the few African Americans in drag racing, ran a late model blown/injected 482 Hemi he and Tony Nancy built for the coupe, hooked to an Art Carr TorqueFlite automatic. Later the engine would see duty in his Flower Power AA/Gas Cuda. Nancy also upholstered the car, with Joe Anderson squirting the pearl blue paint, two big hitters helping to make this so nice. We love the nostrils tied into the nose of the Johnson Fiberglass tilt front end. The chassis and roll bar were all from Roy Fjastad’s SPE shop. We understand the Stude has been found and is being restored.
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He’s one of the closest things we have to royalty. “The King” Richard Petty has won seven NASCAR championships and a record 200 NASCAR races, but you already know that. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, HOT ROD had an opportunity to sit down with him and talk about his family’s Petty Foundation for giving something back, the Petty Garage, but also about racing—both then and now—with some insight into how he won those record 127 poles and more than 700 top-10 finishes. Bright and casual, with his signature dark glasses and hat that make him look ageless, Petty seems at ease with his stature, but never cocky or impressed with it. When asked how many interviews he’s done, he said so many he wouldn’t even take a guess. He made ours seem like it was a pleasure for him to do. We were told he wanted to do this interview because he doesn’t get much exposure to the hot rod side of racing enthusiasts and is always ready to spread some NASCAR gospel. You knew this was something special when the entire staff was on hand to watch, and to be honest, it was—we’re as much fans as the next person, and Petty did not disappoint. We taped the interview, which can be found on HOT ROD’s YouTube channel. It’s worth a watch.
HRM] Tell us what the Petty Foundation is and what it does?
RP] We started the foundation with all of the Pettys as a family deal, and one of the biggest things we’re doing right now is the Victory Junction Gang for chronically and seriously injured kids. It’s been open 10 to 12 years in Level Cross, North Carolina, on the backside of some property that we own. We’ve seen 27,000 kids that wouldn’t be able to go to a regular camp because of some affliction or something like that, helping them to experience the joy of just being a kid. We also do a bunch of stuff with the Paralyzed Veterans of America, as well as local stuff. We try to make the foundation be worthwhile to our customers and others rather than ourselves.
HRM] You are also involved in Petty’s Garage. How did that come about?
RP] It’s also in Level Cross, right beside the house I grew up in. Part of the Garage is the initial part my dad started in 1949 when he first got into Cup racing, and we just expanded from there. About eight years ago, we moved Petty Enterprises, which was where Petty’s Garage is now, to Moorsville, North Carolina. So we had race cars still sitting there and other stuff, and some of the guys that worked for me a long time didn’t want to make the trip back and forth to Mooresville, so I have the museum and other things that need help and race cars that needed to be upgraded and a bunch of junk I wanted rolling, so we just started in the back where Petty Enterprises was. People come to the museum and saw what we’re doing, and they want a car painted, a bigger engine, or brake upgrades, so the first thing we knew we were in the garage business. We do a lot of everything like restorations—you bring in a box of stuff and we’ll make a car out of it. We do upgrades and fancy paint jobs on new cars. We also do a lot of one-off cars for foundations and organizations to auction off at different automotive events.
HRM] How many employees does Petty’s Garage have?
RP] I think there were 50 there when I left, but I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks.
HRM] The Xfinity Series is coming up at Indy, and they’re going to have restrictor plates. How do you feel about that?
RP] I’ve read a little about it. You know as much as I do, which isn’t much, right? But that’s the wrong way to go. You don’t make racing when you have something that the racers can’t do anything with. You’ve got no power—you can catch somebody when they make a little slip, but when you get on the gas, nothing happens. You’ve got to have some torque somewhere in order to race people, otherwise you’re running the same speed as they do. It doesn’t seem to work at Daytona and Talladega, so I don’t know how they think it’s going to work at Indy because it’s a four-corner racetrack, and you’re going to have to have some acceleration to go into the corner. If you lose the momentum with a restrictor plate, you’re behind three laps before you can catch back up, so I don’t see it working. But they’ll give it a try, I guess.
I always let that guy go lead the race for three to four laps for me to find out what he had.” — Richard Petty
HRM] What’s the answer?
RP] I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re trying to do, because when you look at Indy it’s a terrible place for our kind of cars to race. You can’t change the cars because the track is not suitable for our kind of racing, so just changing the cars I don’t think will work.
HRM] Did you have a routine for each race, and did superstition enter into how you prepared for a race?
RP] [Laughs] You’ve got to remember when I started racing I was working on my own car and I helped the boys take it to the racetrack, and then worked on it while we were at the racetrack, so you had no time for any routine. Then as time progressed the guys got a little more organized and I still worked on the car at the shop, but not the racetrack, but they had the press and they wanted interviews and so I didn’t have time to do anything else. It got to where they wouldn’t let me work on the race car at all, so over a period of time, the systems changed. As far as me driving the race car, I didn’t eat anything special, I didn’t sleep anything special. We used to go to some of those races and we’d be up 28 to 38 hours getting to the track, then working on the car, then coming back home, so it was whatever was in front of you that you had to do. As far as exercise, I felt that if you were busy all of the time, that was enough exercise.
HRM] With respect to pack racing and keeping track of the cars, were you good at that?
RP] Most of the time at Daytona or Talladega, there were five to six cars in a pack and there might be a bunch of them when they’d throw the green flag, but they’d get scattered out. But the ones you really had to race with weren’t but five or six, so you knew where everybody was at all the time. We had no radio communications or spotters—you had to know yourself. You did what you wanted to do, or try to do, or had to do under those circumstances, and there wasn’t anybody telling you what to do and when to do it. I don’t think they had as many crashes back then as they do now because a lot of times when the spotters are in one place and they’re looking at it from a certain angle and they don’t know how fast those cars are going or gaining on each other, if you’re in the car you know. So a lot of times the drivers will blame the spotters when it’s really the driver’s fault.
HRM] So are spotters causing more accidents?
RP] When we first started, the spotters were there to keep you abreast of what was going on in front of you like if there’s a caution flag coming out or a wreck in the first corner, directions to go high—something like that. Then as time progressed, they got more involved and now they’re telling you to turn left, clear, guy coming up, whatever, and I have not driven under those circumstances, so it would probably confuse me to do it now. If that’s how I learned, then it would be OK, but I didn’t learn that way, so it would be confusing.
That still bugs me that me and Pearson wound up running into each other.” — Richard Petty
HRM] You once said you should have quit racing five to seven years sooner than you did. What was different about those last few years?
RP] The big deal was that when I decided to quit, I started looking back. Equipment-wise with Petty Enterprises, and with the way I drove the car, if I had quit in 1984 or 1985 then I wouldn’t have had those six to seven years where Petty Enterprises was kind of going downhill sponsorship-wise. Plus, at that time, you had people like Penske, Roush, and Hendricks that were bringing in monetary deals like ad sponsors from outside, because they could wheel and deal. When we were running, you had Petty Enterprises, Woods boys, Bud Moore, Junior Johnson—we would go out and try to get sponsorships. We’d say, “Hey, here’s our record, here’s what we’re winning,” but we couldn’t get the attention or have situations to put the pressure on the sponsor. With a Hendricks, you go into DuPont and say, “I want $20 million for my race car,” and they say, “What are you going to give back?” Well, [Hendricks] had 100 dealers and every one of those shops will have DuPont stuff, so it was a no-brainer for them. We didn’t have that kind of operation, so I was going downhill, but my car was going downhill also. Age caught up with me and I got more cautious. But the big deal and the reason I stayed as long as I did was that driving a race car was my hobby—it wasn’t work. When I got in that car, I would turn the radio off and I was by myself. I did my own thing, so I really enjoyed it, and I had to change some things when I got out. It just took a long time to give up my hobby, I’ll put it that way.
HRM] So do you still want to drive?
RP] You know, sometimes when I get up on the truck and I can see these guys running, I think, “What are they doing? Don’t they know better than that?” Then about that time you see one come in on the end of the wrecker and you say, “That’s the reason I’m not out there.”
HRM] You’ve been quoted saying, “He’s a good driver, but not a good racer.” What does that mean?
RP] OK, when we started racing and there were 40 drivers out there, 40 are pretty good drivers or they wouldn’t have made it there. So then we take those drivers and say, “OK, who knows how to race?” A lot of people can get around a racetrack by themselves and maybe do a better job than the guy that wins the race. But knowing how to race and who to race with, those guys stay out of trouble and they wind up winning races. At any given time in NASCAR—30 years ago, 10 years ago, now—there’s only six of them that I look at that are racers, and the racers end up winning races. Good drivers and the ones that sit on poles and run fast laps during the race, they’re good drivers, but not a lot of them win races.
HRM] Who’s a good racer today?
RP] Jeff Gordon was a good racer—he knew how to race. Jimmy Johnson is a pretty dag gum good racer. The Busch boys, they’re not too bad, either. They’ve been there and done that and they know what they’re doing. The deal is now we’re getting a new crop of people coming in and there’s about five to six guys that are taking a bunch of Jeff’s deal and a bunch of other guys, too, so there’s a new crowd coming in. They have not been there long enough for me to make a decision as to who is a good racer and who is not because most of these guys coming in have got cars that are capable of winning races, if they are good drivers and there’s good situations. So it’s going to be basically two to three years with the new guys. Even though one might go out and win three or four races, he’s going to have to do it over a period of time for me to look at him and say this guy is a real good racer. In the past, you look back and see some guys that have won four or five races one year and never won anything before and never won anything since then. That’s the way things work
HRM] Who was a good racer when you were racing?
RP] Well, I thought all of them were good. [David] Pearson, he was always right there. Bobby Allison was always right there. Cale Yarborough was always there. They were the people that you really had to race with because they were racers. A lot of times, you had some other guys that came in and they’d race with you for a few laps and maybe they’d wind up winning a race, but the next race you didn’t know where they were at. These guys were consistent year in and year out—won big races, won championships, little races at small tracks, big tracks, road courses. Those are the people to me that had plain raw talent and knew how to win races.
HRM] Did you have a strategy for the race?
RP] Every race I ever drove, I drove because of the circumstances. What were they giving me, what was I giving them. Every race was different, whether we ran 20 races or 40 a year, it didn’t matter. Your competition is a little different. Some days you’re better than you were last week, but somebody else is a little better—and you know that before the race starts. And sometimes they are way better than you are, and then you have to sit down and say, “OK, how do we figure out how to beat these people?” Then other times you are a lot better than they are and you say, “OK, how do I keep this thing together for the whole race because the car is capable of winning the race?” So I don’t think I ever sat down and really had a strategy going into a race. I know a lot of times one of my deals was if I sat on the pole or outside pole and a guy would be beside me, I always let that guy go lead the race for three to four laps for me to find out what he had. Once I found out what he had, sometimes he’d run off and leave me, but most of the time if I found out what he had, then I knew how to race him and was able to beat him.
HRM] If you could go back to one race, which one would that be?
RP] Probably the 1976 Daytona 500. That still bugs me that me and Pearson wound up running into each other—or I ran into him, he said, or he ran into me, as far as I’m concerned. That could have been prevented if you knew that was the way it was going to wind up. I got into the same situation in 1984 when we won the 200th race against Cale—exactly the same situation. Yarborough passes me up the backstretch, but the deal was, as I went into the corner to go in and cut under him, OK?
HRM] Did you have 1976 in mind when that happened?
RP] No, it just came up and I knew what mistakes—and I’ll call them mistakes because I got beat, I knew what the circumstances were and what the situation could be. The deal with Cale was I didn’t clear Cale, but I thought I had cleared Pearson. If I knew what was going on in 1976, then I would have had a better chance to win it. With the next race, it wound up I got up beside Cale and it was just a deal of who gets to the start/finish line. The cars were pretty even because of the aero drag on both of them, so being that I was on the inside and we went through the dogleg, it was just a shorter distance by about this far from one grove to another, and that’s how much I beat him.
HRM] This NASCAR season with the race stages and postseason, how do you feel about all of these changes and breaks?
RP] I guess I look at it that you wave the green flag and race until it’s over. The deal of having a couple of breaks like quarters or halftimes in a football game, I can live with that because that gives me a chance to adjust my car or do some other stuff because I know how far I can run, and I can get a strategy for how far my gas gets me and how my tires are doing, and then we can sit down and not have to make a pit stop for adjustments. As far as giving points and stuff, I can’t keep up with it. I don’t think the fans can keep up with it. Who ran third in the first segment, or who was 10th in the second segment, or who won it. When you really get down to the end of the thing, it’s confusing. But the guys that have the best season, they are going to win the championship, and they’ll be up front no matter what—I don’t care how you count them or how you run the thing, the cream rises to the top. That’s what’s going to happen, no matter how they count everything. To me it seems like it must be confusing for the fans, and maybe over a period of time I’ll even learn them. It doesn’t change the field at all, it just changes the positions when you make a pit stop, and it puts cars closer together. Basically, it’s not a bad deal from the TV’s standpoint because we get to see more green-flag laps now. Most times when you’re watching TV, just as the commercial comes on, something exciting happens. They’re trying to eliminate that and put all of the commercials close together so we have more time for the racing. From that point, it’s a good strategy.
Fast Facts
Won a record 200 NASCAR races.
Won a record 127 NASCAR poles.
Has a record of more than 700 top-10 NASCAR finishes.
His father, Lee, was a three-time NASCAR champion.
Won the NASCAR championship seven times.
Has lived his entire life in Level Cross, North Carolina.
The post HOT ROD Interviews “The King” Richard Petty appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
What might just be HOT ROD’s greatest coup ever is in full glory in the July issue. We have the exclusive exclusive on the Dodge Demon—the quickest production car on the planet. Ever. And to celebrate we’ve got a cool Demon pull-out poster inside, as well as the full skinny on every detail of this 9-second, street-legal, bat-outta-hell. But that’s just the start—we have info on the travelling vintage Pro Stock revival currently touring the US, along with features on SpeedKore’s Carbon ‘Cuda, Holley’s wild 1966 Mustang “Corner Horse”, and Bruce Leven’s chopped and sectioned shoebox Ford. Also, there’s the usual great Marlan Davis tech, and a great read on adding twin-turbos to new Mustangs, plus a how-to for adding a power steering pump to former electric power-assist Gen V LT-series engines. There’s more, but you’ll need to get the July issue to find out.
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We always admire crafty builders that modify their cars and trucks to suit their needs and budgets. Such is the case here with the Chevy Suburban ‘Burban. When you need to carry 4×12-foot plywood you can’t have it hanging out the back of your ‘Burb, nor can you lash it onto the top. But here’s a handy tip when faced with such a dilemma; just add on another truck—and try to at least match the make of vehicle as this crafty fabricator has done. But don’t plan on the existing chassis to be able to carry that extra weight. You need to spread the load, so besides bonking a ‘burban back onto your sub, why not add the frame and rear axle for handling and weight transfer nirvana. What would have made this a perfect match would have been if he could have just found a red back to match the front. Oh, well, it’s still a striking marriage of two ‘burbs into one functional and fancy-free workhorse.
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“Build don’t buy” has always been the HOT ROD mantra. Staff projects are the cornerstone of the magazine, and even today all of the HOT ROD staff is either wrenching away or is in between projects, sniffing around for another. In 1995 project euphoria is what led to the entire staff driving from our Wilshire Boulevard digs to the HOT ROD Power Festival in Norwalk, Ohio. Editor Jeff Smith’s Malibu, David Freiburger’s Dart, Karl Brauer’s GTX, and Rob Kinnan’s Ford Fairlane are missing from this image of one stop along the way. At the head of the line is Publisher John Dianna’s 1935 Chevy sedan delivery, then Gray Baskerville’s perennial Deuce roadster, and in the foreground is Will Handzel’s “Budget Beater” 1931 Ford roadster. Besides the staff’s heaps, eight intrepid readers showed up with their cars for the beginning of the 2,000-mile trip to Norwalk, with others joining the progressive power party. From these humble beginnings the HOT ROD Power Tour was born.
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Larry Watson’s recently completed 1958 Thuderbird custom at the Renegades Car Club Rod and Custom Motorama at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in 1958. Watson was a prolific custom painter in the Los Angeles area for years. He ordered one of the first 1958 Thunderbirds sold in LA, and immediately started customizing it, mainly with paint. This started a trend where the now more wildly styled offerings from Detroit were only lowered and custom painted to be considered a wild custom. Gone were the days of chopping, leading frenched headlights and custom taillights, and other difficult mods deemed necessary for a true custom. Watson went on to build a series of custom cars in this vein for himself, and painted a gang of finned and flashy custom cars for customers before easing into acting with bit parts in TV movies and shows.
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A former World Champion AHRA Super Street and NHRA Super Gas drag racer with time on his hands and wanderlust led to the most unlikely outcome of road tripping through Europe in a 1973 Plymouth Roadrunner. Three different times. Al Young didn’t start out thinking he’d joy ride in Europe and former Soviet Bloc countries with a muscle car when he started his quest for a simple project.
The now-retired school teacher from Seattle never liked idle time, especially those three months during the summer students and teachers typically enjoy, which led him to campaign a 1970 Challenger running AHRA and NHRA Northwest division Super Comp, Super Gas, and Super Street. The Challenger started as a drive-to-the-track car, ending up as an 8-second full tube chassis racer over almost 30 years, progressively running faster classes, ending his driving career with an AHRA Super Street World Championship in 1981, and three NHRA Pro ET Division Championships.
With retirement came more idle time, but a plan. He loved his old 1973 Plymouth Sebring Plus daily driver even more than his Challenger. He always wanted to build his own car, a car he knew inside and out, where everything is modified and improved to perform better. Also, he and his wife Vicki wanted to see the USA. As he says, “Driving to national events you never see anything.” When a beat 1973 Satellite became available he put his plan together.
The Original Plan
Vicki and Al wanted to see the USA in a muscle car. Al specifically wanted to take a long road trip following Route 66. His retirement funds were limited, but his imagination wasn’t. The car needed to be bulletproof, with backup for the electronic ignition, fuel delivery; both clutch and electric fans, and the electrical had to be easily accessed, which meant it couldn’t be hiding under the dash. Redundant components and electrical systems would keep repair times to a minimum on the road. Vicki had a couple of requirements of her own. Air conditioning and not a typical hard bench seat were her conditions. Since this wasn’t going to be an all out performance car, Al wanted to stay away from big block, long stroke engines which typically create more heat. Says Al, “It couldn’t be so exotic that I couldn’t find a part in Tulsa.”
The Car
The 1973 Sebring Plus he found in 2007 fit his budget. “It originally cost $500, and I overpaid,” says Al. “It was hammered—a drunk must have liked to hit guardrails with it.” But he could fix the roached parts easier than he could step up for a more expensive alternative. “On a teacher’s salary I didn’t have a lot of money so between parts I had and my own skills I felt I could make it nice,” he says. Al also wanted it to be a Roadrunner clone, and so he started collecting what he needed to begin the three-year process. “Ever since I was a kid I always wanted to build my own car, and this was perfect because it was a heap,” he adds. “I could rebuild it the way I wanted.”
The Engine
Al is quick to say this is not your typical engine buildup. He’s been fast and had quick cars. His Roadrunner would need to be something else. Says Al, “It had to be bullet proof, and my bracket racing really helped. The biggest thing was a solid engine and trans.” He stared with a standard bore 318ci engine he’d pulled out of a Duster 30 years before. “It’s odd to build a motor so that you can’t hurt it, but that will also perform,” he says. The 318 has thicker walls than a 340, making for a sturdy foundation. But he did use 340 iron heads, ported and polished with 2.02 intake and 1.60 exhaust Manley stainless valves by DG Performance. Compression is 9.2:1. He’s running a Comp Cams hydraulic 252H cam with .425 lift and 252 duration. “If I put Harland Sharp rockers in it, what’s going to happen if I break one,” he asks? “A stamped rocker is much easier to fix and I can find a stick welder anywhere.” Intake is an Edelbrock Streetmaster topped with a 600cfm Holley 4160 carb. Says Al, ”Headers were out. You’re going to bottom out somewhere.” So 360 Police Pursuit exhaust manifolds ceramic coated by Performance Coatings handle exiting exhaust, with 2 ½-inch dual exhaust tucked tight and Flowmaster mufflers.
Drivetrain and Suspension
The automatic transmission was custom made by friend Pat Blais of Blais Torqueflites, “The best in biz,” says Al. “We used a 904 instead of 727 because it has less rotating mass with a 2.76 first gear set to it. It’s made into a ‘999’ with Kolene steel plates and Raybestos Hi Energy friction discs.” It’s finished off with a Mopar factory hi-stall converter and a B&M Mega Shifter. With 2 5/8-inch U-joints and an 8¾ Suregrip rear with 323 gears, the rearend is stout. For insurance Al carries extra bearings. All the steering is by Firm Feel out of Vancouver, Washington. Heavy-duty torsion bars, sway bars, and Bilstein shocks take care of the suspension. Says Al, “We actually wore out a set of Bilsteins going thru Albania.” Brakes are factory 11.75-inch drilled discs with factory 11-inch drum brakes in back.
Building
As the Roadrunner came together Al found some Chrysler Crossfire 6-way heated bucket seats, and purchased a Nostalgia Air AC system because it mounts under the dash for easy access. While he banged out or replaced some of the sheetmetal, Skeeters Auto body in Seattle did the final finish and paint. 17- and 18-inch Ion 625 wheels with Hankook V12 Evo tires round out the rolling package. A Champion aluminum radiator and InduraPower lithium ion battery found space under the hood. The redundant systems incorporated into the Plymouth are a switch-controlled ignition and backup ignition, with two MSDs, two coils and two wiring harnesses; electric and mechanical fuel pumps; electrical and mechanical fans; and stock through-the-dash electrical and bypass electrical systems to avoid working upside down under the dash in 100-degree heat.
Rubber Meets the Road
After the Roadrunner was finished, Al hammered it to beat on weak components and fix the bugs. “I raced the car for a year before taking a trip,” says Al. “I blew 200-pounds of nitrous through this motor trying to blow it up.” He admits he was having second thoughts about the 318 block, thinking he might build a 340, so the little 318 was expendable to him. But guess what? This engine is bulletproof. “I was determined to blow the motor up so I continued putting nitrous thru it,” Al says. In the end it has been a reliable engine that Al feels really woke up from the modifications.
Seeing the USA
In 2011 the Young’s and their Roadrunner were ready for a long road trip. “That was my big dream to build something for Route 66,” says Al. “We went down to New Orleans, across the Dakotas, and cut down following the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, eventually tying into Route 66.” Total miles travelled: 8000. Problems were reduced to percolating gas in hot weather, and a melted shift cable nestled too close to the exhaust.
The next year Vicki and Al travelled to a nephew’s wedding in New York from the southern route through Nashville, Montgomery, Atlanta, up to Niagara Falls, before heading home to Seattle. Total miles travelled: 8000.
The third trip in 2013 was 7000 miles down the coast from Seattle and back through Glacier National Park in Montana and British Columbia. “Then we ran out of places to go,” says Al.
Europe or Bust
What would have seemed far-fetched a few years earlier was now being seriously investigated. “Europe sounded great, we had become accomplished road people,” says Al. What seemed like an exciting extension of Al’s original intent to travel Route 66 quickly iced over when he discovered the tab to ship the Roadrunner to Europe. “It costs $11,000, and I just can’t afford that,” says Al. He adds if it weren’t for the cost of shipping, travelling Europe by car is the absolute cheapest way to go. “We ended up going to 34 different countries and I tried to figure how much it would have cost us to fly to 34 countries and it would have been astronomical any other way but driving your own car,” says Al. “Travelling by train you have to live out of a suitcase, but with a 1973 Plymouth trunk big enough to hold five people we never worried and just threw stuff into the trunk.”
The New Plan
When Al was drag racing his sponsor for 30 years was Bardahl. Remember Bardahl? They’re an additive company like STP or Justice Brothers. Still based in Seattle, a determined owner and fights with the Feds over distributorships led to Bardahl reducing US sales to become one of the leading lubricants in over 90 different countries. Many new cars built outside of the US contain Bardahl products. Bardahl founder Ole Bardahl (1902-1989) was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2014.
Al contacted Bardahl, ran the idea of driving the Roadrunner throughout Europe stopping at distributorships here and there as a sort-of promotional tour, and guess what? They loved the idea. So Vicki and Al pulled out a map and Bardahl’s list of distributors and put together a proposal for touring Europe in a 1973 Roadrunner muscle car. “We wanted to go to all of these countries and it ended up being 8000 miles,” says Al. “We didn’t even plan on it taking 45 days, either. It just turned out this way to hit all of those countries. Plus my wife didn’t want to spend every day in the car; she wanted to see the Vatican, the Prado Museum in Spain, and places like that.”
Al’s wife is part Scandinavian, and she also wanted to visit where her ancestors were from. It so happens that Sweden is the home of the Power Big Meet, the largest American car show in the world. Like 20,000 cars large! Located in Vasteras, it seemed the perfect blend of cars, culture, and clan. The plan was to fly to Amsterdam, then take the train to where the Roadrunner would be waiting in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the largest port in Europe. At the port they’d load up the Roadrunner, fire it up, and drive off. Shipping would take 45 days, stopping at many US ports from Seattle before going through the Panama Canal, headed for Rotterdam. “I planned it so that in every country there was a distributorship I could stop into or drive by,” says Al.
How Is It Travelling in Europe With a Muscle Car?
“The car was the ticket,” says Al. “When we came into a town it was like the circus was in town. Every hotel wanted us to park in the front, in front of the Lamborghinis; and at every restaurant there was no parking but they made space for us, it was crazy.” Vicki and Al’s safety net was the distributorships in every new country they entered. “I had hosts,” says Al. “Unless you have a reason they won’t let you go to all of these different countries because they suspect you’re going to sell the car and they won’t get their tax. We had to get a Carnet, which is a passport for the car stating the reason why you’re travelling around with this unusual car. Bardahl provided us with the reason for having the car go through all of these countries.
“Most all of the gas in Europe is 100-102 octane so my motor loved it. I’m only running 9.2 compression so the fuel was good, and it usually ran from $7-$9 a gallon. Gas stations were everywhere and very clean, but you do pay a Euro or two to use their restrooms. Rest areas are very clean but not as frequent as in the US. Burger Kings are everywhere, though we always ate local food and it was so good. American companies are everywhere. Everyone was very nice and they always wanted to sit in the car, and were always polite to ask if they can take a picture. It made a lot of peoples’ day and really made our day. In the 21st century it’s the universal language to have a hot rod.
“The small villages are small villages, and the big towns are pretty cosmopolitan. Once you’re past the border, police are always curious about the car. Most of the time they just want to stop you to look at it. In the eastern part of Europe—Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, the Carnet came in handy because the border guards are still Soviet bloc. With an American muscle car all eyes are diverted to the car and there was never a problem. I’m Asian, so if you look at me to try and figure me out you’d probably be 80-percent wrong, but if you look at my car and try to figure who I am you’d probably be 80-percent right because when you see my car you see my soul. If my car stereotypes me you almost would hit who I am perfectly.”
Our HOT ROD map shows the routes Vicki and Al took, and that’s the other curious thing about this caper, there was more than just a single European trip. The first, in 2014, went so well that Bardahl asked Al if he’d do it again in 2015. “Bardahl asked us again to go—it’s very hard to turn this down,” says Al.
The 2015 Trip
So a second trip was launched for 2015. This one would take Vicki and Al into former Soviet bloc countries which today, just two years later, would be a bit dicier to do. “I didn’t bring a gun, and didn’t bring nitrous with me because they would think it was a bomb,” says Al. “If they saw two 10-pound bottles they’d be running. In all it was really safe driving these three years. Day or night there would always be a crowd around the Roadrunner, so I never worried about theft because it was just too high profile, plus I disarmed the MSDs. Freeways are good, the Autobahn is overcrowded.
There was always the potential for a little drama crossing through former Soviet bloc countries, but luckily “situations” were rare. “As a favor to one of the distributors as we were leaving Serbia I stopped by one of his friend’s residence,” says Al. “There was a car club there, with a Shelby Mustang and some really cool American cars. We made good friends, and as I was leaving one of the guys says we’re about 30 miles from the Hungarian/Serbian border, and if I have any problems just give them his name, Igor Javanovich. I thought it was kind of weird because normally you don’t worry about leaving a country, it’s getting in that might be a problem. So we get to the border and this Soviet bloc guard sternly asks for my papers. He starts asking lots of questions and demands we get out of the car. He wants my insurance card, passport, drivers license, everything. He makes us wait in this office where there’s a woman behind a desk that is just as severe. She kept asking what I wanted, and I told her I was just trying to cross the border. So finally I tell here I know Igor Javanovich, that I was a guest at his house. With that said, she walks out to the border station and there’s some sort of altercation with the other guard. Then she comes back with all of my papers, puts them in my hands, and says, “Go!” I was rescued by hot rodders!”
One More Time
With the success of the second European trip, Bardahl was interested in another in 2016. So were Vicki and Al. Says Al, “We went to the American Speed Fest in Brands Hatch, England; Scandinavian countries, France, and it was just great. We drove a little less at 6800 miles total. In Norway we went to fjords half way up into the country, and it was so beautiful.
“One time we exhibited the car near Paris and it sat right next to a Lamborghini. The crowds are all around the Plymouth and no one is by the Lambo. The locals explained that they like the Plymouth much better because they could work all of their life and never get that Lambo, but work a couple of summers and you could buy a Roadrunner as a teen and blow the doors off of the Lambo. We are so lucky as young people in America to be able to build a car that’s fast. In Belgium it’s a few hundred dollars to race a car, but here for $30 I can take it to Bremerton or Seattle to the racetrack and go as fast as I can go in the quarter-mile all day long. We’re so lucky.”
So are the Young’s. They plan on taking life easy this year, but Al is already talking about more road trips to come. “I love to drive, and Vicki has shown me the world through her knowledge of the great places to visit—she’s the tour guide and I’m just the driver.”
What was the most frequently asked question? Do you know Vin Diesel?
Essentials for road trippin’:
GPS by TomTom
Cruise Control – aftermarket Audiovox
A/C – aftermarket underdash by Nostalgic Air, Sanden type compressor
2005 Chrysler Crossfire 6 way, heated, buckets
Dodge Challenger 2010 side view mirrors
Bilstein Shocks (front and rear)
Firmfeel: Torsion bars, front and rear sway bars, tubular control arms, tubular tie rods, Stage II steering gearbox, custom rear springs.
Radiator: aluminum 4 core (Champion)
Spares: distributor, alternator, regulator, starter, fuel pump, water pump, thermostat, hoses, belts, gaskets.
Emergency reflective triangle, aluminum floor jack, compact spare tire, Fix a Flat, large tool kit, Bardahl oil additive and stop leak (both for oil and coolant), silicone, zip ties, wire, and duct tape.
The post Travelling Through Europe in a 1973 Roadrunner appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
You never know what will show up at the HOT ROD Power Tour, but there’s something for everybody—even those with freakish tendencies. Yes, there’s some really cool-but-odd stuff cruising around Power Tour each year, and to prove it we’ve compiled a gallery of some of the strangest stuff participating on Power Tour over the last few years. Do they get attention? Yes! Are the owners having fun? Of course! Should you dare bring your own freak of a hot rod to the next Power Tour? We hope you will, and hope this will motivate you to come out of your freak closet/garage and enjoy the largest cruise-in in the world.
The post HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 – Gallery: Freaks of the Past appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
Not every Freak Show Friday need be freakishly bad, or ugly. This is George Reese’s “Long and Lean I” 1964 Corvette from 1967. Running in the supercharged class of Experimental Stock or XS, this was an early class of what became Funny Cars. Basically a stretched and narrowed Corvette body jammed onto a dragster chassis, it was actually the first of two Long and Lean racecars from Reese. Run out of his George’s Corvette Shop in Hyattsville, Maryland, the Vette ran in the low-8s at Cecil County, powered by a 301ci-supercharged Chevy on nitro. There were a number of these conversions of dragsters into Funny Cars, as there were from Fuel Altereds. Most all ran on the match race circuit, which the Long and Lean I was a favorite on the east coast.
The post Freak Show Friday: When is a Dragster Also a Corvette? appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
Probably the coolest Elvis memorabilia ever is up for auction at GWS Auctions https://connect.invaluable.com/gwsauctionsllc/auction-lot/Elvis-Presley-s-Personally-Owned-Private-1962-Loc_C3F431389F/. The 1962 Lockheed Jetstar was the King’s personal jet he co-owned with his father Vernon. The current owner says Elvis had a hand in designing the décor, which features acres of red carpet, red velvet seats, gold hardware (of course), and inlayed wood, and is in the condition he left it in many decades ago. Even the red with silver stripes paint is per Elvis. The only things missing are the twin engines, which were removed 35 years ago, and if you’re planning on stabbing some engines into it and flying from its digs in Roswell, New Mexico, forget it. The cockpit would need to be brought up to current specs before flying the friendly skies of Aero Elvis with Viva Las Vegas blasting over the speakers. This is the only privately owned Elvis jet, with the other two owned by the Elvis Museum in Memphis. Current bid is low $20,000s, so this is definitely within the reach of many HOT ROD enthusiasts. Just promise us the staff gets a ride once it’s air worthy.
The post You Can Own Elvis Presley’s Personal Jet appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
The sonic boom of Power Tour invading cities across America creates havoc and also giddy participants eager to show the street what they’re packing. We’ve captured some of these street and strip shenanigans, and contributions to the environment with our burnout contests and record attempts and present them herewith to get you ready for the onslaught of town takeovers in less than a month as the 2017 Power Tour revs up. Heartland hot rodders and residents, come out for the biggest travelling car show ever, starting in Kansas City, then onward to Iowa Speedway, Davenport, Iowa; Champaign, Illinois; Gateway Motorsports Park, Indy, and ending in Bowling Green. We’ll be looking for you!
The post 2017 Power Tour Gallery: Street, Strip and Smoke Shenanigans From Past Power Tours appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
Gleaming for the camera is Richard Graves’ Jet Black 1926 T Touring from 1971. Graves’ T was considered quite state-of-the-art rod construction in the early 1970s. Exceptionally finished with late-model running gear including wheels out of a wrecked Ford Torino, its stance and attitude made it a much-admired symbol of what hot rodding was becoming. Enhancing the raked look of the T was its non-stock top, which was a stretched T-bucket top, with no bow interruption front to back. A member of the Early Times Car Club, the Long Beach club was known for leading many street rod trends, helping to propel the hot rod renaissance happening around the corner from HOT ROD at Rod & Custom magazine. Graves went on to open a shop in Long Beach, California, where he still knocks out cars today. The touring was later upgraded by a new owner, with full independent suspension, chrome wire wheels, and other changes, taking it still farther from a stock Model T. But we will always like this earlier version of a hot rod classic.
The post Turn Back Tuesday: Richard Graves’ 1926 T Touring appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
Kenny Youngblood is a complicated guy. He’s most recognizable as the premiere motorsports artist. You’ve seen his work even if you’re not into art, because he’s done race-car graphics for more than 50 years, including a lot of early Funny Cars needing an artist’s touch to mimic headlights and grilles on flopper bodies. His art, posters, and prints have been around for decades, and you probably have some framed in your house. He also drove A/Fuel dragsters in the 1960s. He has managed numerous racing teams, including a couple of Top Fuel efforts. He started a Christian counseling ministry called Always An Answer. He says, “I love the Lord, but you’d have to knock me out and drag me to get me into a church.” See what we mean? He’s represented major companies with his hand-drawn, personalized, giveaway drawings at many races and events. He most recently put his online Fuel Coupe Magazine on hiatus, a project he churned out monthly for two years. And he’s an author. He’s finishing up his first book on relationships and has more on his list. He’s got lots of stories from the golden age of drag racing, too, so we’ve included a few along with how he ended up being the Michelangelo of Motorsports.
HRM] Let’s start by asking about your first dragster in the mid-1960s, an A/Gas dragster…
KY] A/Fuel! A/Fuel, please! When I started building my first dragster, I thought it would take a while, so I thought I’d start with A/Gas. It took a year or so to finish, so in my mind I’m going faster and faster, so by the time I finished it had to be with nitro.
HRM] Were you any good?
KY] I believe I was great at driving, but not so good as a mechanic. Deep down I knew it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I felt like the kid with his hand in the cookie jar, but there was nobody else to drive the thing and it was like being in the Army—I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again.
HRM] But you love drag racing—isn’t driving the ultimate?
KY] Yeah, but that’s not what the good Lord wanted me to do. I got out of it in 1969. But I had another opportunity; with my partner from the 1960s, we built a beautiful nostalgia dragster in 2002. I was fitted for the car and it was tempting, but all along I knew I shouldn’t do this and Tom Poindexter drove instead. There’s nothing like stepping on that tire, putting my legs down into a slingshot, and sliding down into that seat with my legs over the rear end—it’s a real sensual experience.
HRM] That sounds like you feel you should have stuck with it?
KY] To me, there’s three kinds of drivers: there’s guys like me having fun and doing a good job. I really didn’t care who won or lost, and if they beat me it didn’t bother me; then there’s guys that want to win but don’t have the talent or the money; and then there’s what I call killer-instinct drivers, the Parnelli Jones, Shirley Muldowney, Don Garlits of this world that have to win. Second Place means nothing. They have a need for speed and an intense desire to beat the other guy, and that certainly wasn’t me.
HRM] What was your first dragster like—maybe a little crude?
KY] I found a used, sturdy Pete Ogden chassis with an Eddie Potter aluminum-tailpiece body, 150-inch. It didn’t have a motor plate, it just had a piece of body aluminum, which I thought was unusual at the time, but I left it that way. I’d go to Blair’s Speed Shop and buy parts and pieces. My technical knowledge came from advertising and articles I read in HOT ROD. If a product had a name I recognized, I’d buy it, but my enthusiasm far exceeded my knowledge. Unbeknownst to me, I was buying either the wrong parts or junk parts for the engine I was putting together.
HRM] Were you and the car any good?
KY] With the help of my partner, Fred Smith, we got the car running pretty good. One day we go to Irwindale and Fred had her tuned even better, and I knew we were going to go 180 mph. But not only did I not have a motor plate and had junk parts in my motor, back then fire boots weren’t mandatory—you had to have aluminized fire suits like a cooking bag, but I had on street shoes. I got to half-track pulling hard and I’m thinking about 180 mph and—wham!—the rods come out of the block, cut the pan in half, and I’m engulfed in flames. When it blew up, it was like, “What do I do now?” I waited until I got to the finish line and hit the parachute and it burned off. Then I hit the brakes and they’re hot Olds’ drum brakes and they didn’t work. Fortunately, I wasn’t going that fast. When you’re in a fire, it burns and stings like hell at first and then goes away because it burns the nerves. So with no motor plate, the fire is coming right at me like a chimney blowing up my pants leg. I get the thing stopped and skin is hanging from my sleeves and hands. The safety guy runs up and tries to unzip my fire suit and the zipper is hot and burns his fingers. Anyway, my ankles are cooked with third-degree burns. Steve Gibbs was the track manager at Irwindale and he came over to see me in the hospital and visited a couple of other times the week I was there. Back then, unlike today, your pit pass was your insurance policy, and it paid for any medical bills you incurred. About six months later, I’m healed up, but God works in miraculous ways because I got drafted to go to Vietnam in 1967. I had scars on various parts of my body, but the bad ones were right around both ankles, and they told me I couldn’t wear boots, so they wouldn’t take me. I believe the good Lord made that happen to keep me from going to Vietnam. If I had a motor plate, boots, or good parts, nothing would have happened—all three of those things had to be in place. But we weren’t done.
HRM] You didn’t stop after that?
KY] No. I think I hold the record for the longest start-to-finish run without crashing with no steering. While I was in the hospital, I designed another car. I couldn’t afford a Woody Gilmore car because that was top of the line, but a friend had a Woody chassis. I measured every tube and angle and did a blueprint drawing. I had Fred Crowe’s fabricator build the car from my drawings. It handled like a dream and we started racing again, although this time I got the best fire suit and boots, and if anything went wrong on a run, I’d shut it off faster than anybody because I didn’t want to have problems again. My inexperience almost got me again, but I dodged another bullet. This time I bought all the nice stuff, but I’m a bit of a fabricator myself. I needed a steering arm to go on top of the spindle to connect the draglink, so I made one out of 1/4-inch T6 aluminum to save some weight. But because the axle is laid back so far, if you turn hard left or right it slowly twisted the little steering arm I made. I didn’t know until I made the turn around to stage at Irwindale—the arm cracked and fell off. The draglink was laying on the tie rod. I dumped the clutch and, man, it took off, but started wandering around. I’m correcting and correcting and it’s not responding. I get to half-track and it starts taking a move to the guardrail. I’m correcting to the right and nothing is happening, so it was either get out of it or hit the fence. I lifted and it corrected back to the right, because we had the torsion bar tweaked to the right to compensate for the engine torque. Letting go of the steering wheel would slowly make it turn to the right by itself. I think I’m correcting it, so I hit the hammer again and go through the lights at more than 180 mph. I’m wandering through the lights going side to side wondering what is wrong. I hit the parachute, kill the motor, yank the steering to the right, and it just spins in my gloves. I got out of the car and my partner comes down and yells at me, “Why did you lift, you’re always lifting.” I pointed at the tie rod sitting on the ground and said, “Because of that!” He looks at it and says, “Well, Prudhomme wouldn’t have lifted.”
HRM] That was finally it for your racing career?
KY] Well, those incidents and a few others led to me thinking Fred wasn’t a good tuner and he thinking I wasn’t a good driver, so we split up. In the meantime, my buddy, Greg Messenger, had a B/Fuel Desoto dragster that belonged to Bob Brooks and he asked me to do the lettering after Dick Olson painted it. I painted a little hippie on the cowl because it was the late-1960s and dope smoking was cool. When he took it back to Dick for the clearcoat, Dick told me he was tired of waiting in line at Tom Kelly’s for lettering; at the time, Kelly was the man—still is, in my opinion. He asked me to do lettering there. That started everything for me. They did fiberglass repair and regular repairs, but did race cars, too. They built the “Beach City Corvette” and other cars right there.
HRM] Had you done lettering on the side before?
KY] I hadn’t taken any sign-painting classes, so I’m learning the hard way, watching guys like Jack Burr at Blair’s and Steve Fineberg, but things went well. One day there’s a call and the guy says, “Hey, it’s ‘Jungle.’” So it’s Jungle Jim and he wants me to letter his car, but I had to do it at his shop. In those days, lots of racers match-raced and then came out to the West Coast for the winter and worked on their cars over by Disneyland. They were building Liberman’s car at Jack “Bear” Green’s shop, and those two were both shaky characters. At Bear’s shop is Jungle’s old, beat-up Nova body and next to it the new one. He tells me he wants it done exactly like the old one with the big Jungle Jim in gold leaf. Tim Beebe and Tom McEwen show up—their shop was right across the street, they called it the “cave.” That day a bunch of drag racers were playing cards at the cave. They’d got paid in cash for match racing and they had wads of cash. So Jungle started playing cards and every 20 minutes or so he’d check in to see how I was doing. I got done and it came out beautiful—Jungle walks in and says, “You’re going to have to take that off.” I ask, “How come?” He says, “I told you I wanted it to be just like the other car.” I said, “It is.” He says, “No, it’s a quarter-inch too low.” On the side of the body, there was a break line in the door and the bottom of the “J” on the “Jim” on the old car was right to that break. Sure enough, on mine it was a quarter-inch below that line. Technically, he was right, so I say, “OK, you’re right, I’ll take it off.” I get out the paint thinner and start taking it off and he whips out this giant wad of cash and says, “Here’s for your gold leaf that you’ll need” and hands me more than I was going to charge for the whole job. I tell him I’ll get more gold leaf and come back Monday and redo it. So Monday I go back to the shop and walk into the office. He’s leaning back in a chair with his hands against his head and sees me and just about falls backward. I say, “Hey, Jungle,” and he says, “I didn’t think you’d come back.” I don’t know whether he was testing me or what, but if he was I must have passed because he became my new best friend. He’d call me all of the time and in the middle of the night.
HRM] You did a lot of lettering and airbrush work at different shops, then what?
KY] About 1970 Don Kirby, another painter I did work for, wanted me to meet Bob Casner. Bob was a marketing genius and had a great idea. He wanted to put a creative group together under one roof to service motorsports. A racer could get a proposal, photography, press kit, rendering, all of that. He rented a place in Long Beach and I was his artist. It was called Racing Graphis—Bob was German and graphics in German is “graphis.” Everybody always corrected us telling us graphics was spelled wrong. Bob knew everybody, Mickey Thompson, Parnelli, all of the big racers. He was my mentor and taught me how to collect on bad checks and important things like that. I had two jobs for a long time; I’d get up early and go to Racing Graphis, then go to Kirby’s race shop and letter cars in the evenings. In the morning, I’d do the same thing. I knew at some point I’d have to make a choice, and as much as I liked painting cars—and I still love the smell of a paint shop in the morning—my artistic talents would be better spent on the drawing board, so I told Don and soon he brought Nat Quick in to take over for me. I moved into my own studio in Santa Ana and there have never been enough hours in the day to do what I like doing. I guess I was the first fulltime artist doing art and graphics for motorsports.
HRM] When did you start doing the limited prints and posters?
KY] In 1978 I started doing the paintings. I had done some paintings in the 1960s and never had a problem selling them. I thought there was this popularity of motorsports and drag racing that if someone had a choice of what they could hang on their wall it would be a race car instead of a flowerpot or landscape. I started making prints of some of the paintings of cars I lettered. I had done the art-gallery thing and thought it sucked, so I started a mail-order deal selling direct to the customer. It was great and the more time I gave to it the better it did. Finally, when it started to trend off a bit and the economy changed, I sold the print inventory I had in the late-1980s and moved to Vegas.
HRM] That’s when you started the personalized art for corporations?
KY] I came up with the idea to get corporate sponsors to use my art as giveaways. John Ewald was working for Firestone at the time, and they were doing 18 to 20 shows a year. I showed him my idea for doing four or five prints with Firestone on the tires, and then go to shows with markers, personalize it for each person, and give it to them. I started doing that and people lined up out the door waiting to get my drawings. Everyone liked that I was giving somebody something personal. I call it the “ultimate marketing tool” because people take them home and frame them with the client’s logo on them. It appeals to all ages, and even though people don’t know me, they watch me do it for them and it’s personal. So far I’ve worked for three of the top companies in America: Toyota, Firestone/Bridgestone, and PPG Paint. I still do paintings for affluent clients, what I call “Monuments on Canvas” (MonumentsOnCanvas.com). They’re expensive, and it’s tough finding customers for expensive stuff—you’ve got to find the guy that can afford it, but also likes art, and they’re becoming few and far between.
HRM] And you have a counseling ministry?
KY] Yes, I’m a drag-racing Jesus freak. It’s called Always An Answer (AlwaysAnAnswer.org). I’ve been counseling for 40 years. That’s the one thing on my bucket list, to get the good information out there. In this computer age, you can reach the world, so I want to take advantage of that.
HRM] You’ve been involved in drag racing for decades, so what would you do to make drag racing better?
HRM] It’s a simple answer and it amazes me that this is the last thing they’ll do, but the first rule of business is the law of supply and demand. When you give people what they want, the business thrives. It’s the same thing for racing: Give people what they want. Unfortunately, it seems like the last person racing organizations think about is the person who paid the money to sit his butt in the stands, so that’s the general problem. This is why we’re seeing the tremendous resurgence of nostalgia drag racing, because it’s what people liked in the beginning that is lost—Cacklefest, push starts, cars that look like real cars, Fuel Altereds, Gassers. It’s giving people more of what they want. When you look at drag racing now, they have taken away so much of the things that made it so great. A few months ago, we did an interview with Don Prudhomme in Fuel Coupe magazine, and I asked him what he thought about modern-day nostalgia Funny Cars. He said, “Yeah, it’s good, but they need to be putting on more of a show like we used to do, like doing dry hops.” Back in the day, there were no rules about how many burnouts you could do, so Funny Cars came up and did a long, smoky burnout and they backed up and did a dry hop. You had two cars doing a dance, and that was part of the entertainment. Then it went away. Did it go away because NHRA got letters from fans complaining? No, they did it because they wanted to get home sooner. Same with Fuel Altereds. Were fans sick of them? No, they took them away because they said they were unsafe. Well, everything out there is unsafe.
HRM] Can it go back?
KY] Sure! Will it? Doubtful.
HRM] Why did you stop doing your online magazine, Fuel Coupe?
KY] Fuel Coupe was a labor of love. I did it for two years and loved it. It was paying for itself and making some money, but the reason I stopped was because it took a week out of my month to put together, and also because I hate deadlines. I put myself under a deadline every month, and that pressure for me is just no fun, so I did it for two years and that’s that.
HRM] Is there a certain team or driver you like today?
KY] I’m a huge Don Schumacher fan, and I know he’s hard to love. I tell people I’m his only fan, but I love and respect the guy because he’s a great white shark, he’s a total business man. He wants to win and dominate. When I was crew chief for Gillman, I realized there was a higher goal than winning. If you go to a race, everybody out there wants to win. But there’s a higher goal, and that’s total domination. That means not only winning today but winning every race forever—you win everything. That’s total domination. You can say, “Well, that’s not going to happen,” which is true, but I believe if your goal is total domination you’re going to win more than the guy whose goal is just to win. The first person I heard use that total domination phrase was Austin Coil. I believe when the dust settles, if he lives long enough, Don Schumacher will be the last man standing. Nobody wants it more than John Force, but Force is too emotional, whereas Schumacher is strictly a business machine. Force is an amazing guy and I have great respect for him and nobody wants it more than he does, but my money is on Schumacher.
HRM] Finally, what words of encouragement do you have for young artists interested in drawing or painting cars?
KY] First thing I tell budding artists is there will always be a place for hand-done, traditional artwork, and if that’s what you want to do, keep doing that. Today almost 100 percent of everything is digital, so you’ve got to know Photoshop and other digital software because that’s how things are done today. For a guy that has a good eye, even if he’s not great at art, the computer becomes your tool. Just because you can’t draw doesn’t mean you don’t have an eye for it—a lot of people that can’t draw a straight line know good art. That’s why I always listen if somebody has a critique about something I’ve done because they might see something I missed. I also tell them the creative process is fixing what’s wrong. When you start a painting, it’s completely blank, so you start drawing things onto it. I believe the good Lord tells us to darken this or highlight that, so we start fixing what’s wrong, and when we can’t see anything else wrong, we say it’s done. So the bottom line is the artist must always look at his work critically because if they don’t they won’t see what’s wrong and can’t get better. I look at my work critically and know the parts I don’t like. Practice makes perfect and every time you do a drawing it’s an aggregate of everything you’ve learned. People tell me they want to get into doing art and I’ll ask to see something they’ve done, and they’ll say, “Oh, I don’t want to show you, it’s not very good.” I’ll look at it and sometimes it is good, and they have talent and they’ve been looking at their work critically, which they should. You need to keep things in perspective—you’re always going to find people that can do things better than you, but there’s more that can’t do it as well as you, so you need to remember that.
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You may have noticed that some 1970 Camaros are designated 1970-1/2. The 1969 Camaro production ran well into November 1969, months after regular 1970 Chevrolet production began, which is typically August of the previous year. What happened?
Things had been right on schedule for the all-new Camaro body stampings at Fisher Body, when during what is called “final die tryouts” right before production stamping begins, the quarter-panels kept wrinkling and splitting. The body dies required too much draw for the sheetmetal to cooperate. Fisher decided to reconfigure the draw dies, which are the two halves needed to pound out a fender or panel from flat sheet stock. This required a short delay. Unfortunately, the resulting quarter-panels stamped from the new dies were worse than the previous attempt. What to do? Chevrolet delayed the intro for the Camaro—again—while Fisher created entirely new dies.
Having to extend the production of the 1969 Camaro also created its own problems. From having to fill the parts pipeline with more 1969 components when suppliers were well into 1970 Camaro production was one issue. In some cases, completely different suppliers made components post-August 1969, from those original, earlier manufacturers. Stockpiling 1969 components when facilities were already stocked with 1970 parts was another. And, of course, all intro plans—marketing, promotion, and advertising—had to be postponed. In fact, Chevrolet advertised the 1969 Camaro alongside 1970 Corvettes, Chevelles, and Novas as part of its early 1970 muscle-car lineup. In the first quarter of 1970, dealers were selling both 1969 and 1970 Camaros side by side. An additional 42,803, in total, 1969 Camaros were produced from August through November that would not have existed had the delayed 1970 production not happened.
On February 25, 1970, the new Camaro was finally introduced to incredible fanfare, being heralded as possessing European styling and handling, with American performance.
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