met Jere Stahl in the early '60s when he raced at Connecticut Dragway and from that day on Jere and Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins influenced my thinking about the hows and whys of building a racecar. I began racing Modified Production in the mid-sixties in a 1966 A/MP 427 Chevelle. That car, which ran right on the national record, was sold in New Mexico on the way home from the '68 Winternationals.

Under Stahl's tutelage and with Grump's help, I built a '69 Camaro that was sponsored by Valenti Chevrolet in Wallingford, CT. The Camaro fell right into the newly formed Pro Stock category. I ran the Camaro in the late '60s and early '70s, and did pretty well, winning consistently on a local level. We had the first nine-second Camaro in the northeast, and we were running with the best of them nationally. The Camaro ran a best of 9.40, which was pretty good at the time.

I lived in California for nearly 20 years and stayed away from the dragstrips except for an occasional visit when my old friend Grumpy was in town. Then my dad became ill and went into a nursing home in 1993 and I returned to the East Coast to help my mother through a difficult time. It wasn't long before I was reunited with my old friend and many-time national record holder, Joe "Moon" DeLorenzo. Joe was notorious with his small blocks (alien to me) and one fateful day Joe, Jon Girardi and I went to the Nationals at Englishtown. I reconnected with Stahl and the story of this

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car began.

I originally wanted to build a Camaro, but Joe, being more astute about what was going on in Super Stock, ran some weight-to-horsepower numbers and said we would be much better off using a Cavalier as the platform for this venture. If we built a stick shift Cavalier, it would be the first rear wheel drive stick shift conversion in competition.

I resisted for a bit; who would want to build a front wheel drive compact conversion? Certainly not me! Then I went to a Chevy dealership and crawled around under a Cavalier and the possibilities became quite apparent.

After much discussion about who would build the chassis, I opted to go with Jerry Bickel Race Cars. I liked the way Bickel's cars left the starting line and was impressed with the level of workmanship every one of his cars displayed. I contacted the Missouri JBRC shop in July 2000 and told them what I wanted to build. Although they had never built a Super Stocker, let alone one like I was asking for, after some discussion they agreed to take on the assignment.

Joe DeLorenzo was originally supposed to build the engines, but he developed cancer and he didn't live long enough to see the Cavalier make a pass down the quarter-mile. Joe's input and help was indeed missed.

The Grump was in the middle of his Pro Stock engine development program and didn't have enough manpower available to devote to my project.