Car Close-Up Feature
by Ian Tocher
Photos by Roger Richards
12/9/03

hree years ago, Missy Phillips' 1971 Nova was still driving on the highways of North Carolina with a lowly six-banger under the hood. Today, it sports 502 cubic inches of big-block Chevy crate motor and represents the only IHRA Stock entry to consistently run in the nines. On Oct. 16, it also carried Phillips to her career-first national event win at the rain-postponed 33rd annual IHRA Spring Nationals at Rockingham (NC) Dragway.

Brenda Michelle "Missy" Phillips, 36, got her start in bracket racing "right after high school," in a family-owned Super Stock J Automatic '69 Camaro. But since her father owned the local dragstrip near Chadbourn, NC, from the mid-1960's to mid-1980's, "I basically grew up at the racetrack," she says. In 1987, Phillips graduated to her own car, an A Automatic Super Stock '67 Camaro, then progressed through several rides until she now wheels both a 1971 Nova in IHRA Stock competition and a 1992 Trans Am in IHRA Super Stock action. Phillips has a simple answer when asked to describe her favorite part of drag racing, "Winning." Then she adds, "Our family grew up with it, so it's basically a situation where we're really close, and I guess you could say racing has been one of the things that kept us close over the years. We can all go out and enjoy it together."

While her car's pedigree may be nothing special, Phillips clearly comes from good racing stock. Her brother, Terry Taylor, won the 1986 IHRA Super Stock world championship and back-to-back Super Stock titles (1997 & 1998) in NHRA's always tough Division 2, and brother-in-law Jeff Warren was the 1999 IHRA Hot Rod champion.

Phillips, an insurance company representative from Lumberton, NC, says scoring her first national event helps her feel part of the family's winning tradition.

"After 18 years of driving and not having won a national, I was beginning to kind of wonder if it was ever going to happpen," she admits. "You know, to have a brother that's won a championship and a brother-in-law that's won a championship, you want to be like them. But I don't really hope to seek a championship, I just wanted to get that first national win; and to finally get it, it was very emotional."

After several spurned attempts, early in 2001 Phillips' father finally convinced an elderly gentleman who lived just down the street to part with the car for $3,000. He and Taylor then proceeded to turn it into a racecar.

"This was built in the backyard," Taylor stresses. "Along with Jeff, we did all the work ourselves."