Drag Racing -- The Industry's Guinea Pig

1/7/05

n the Left Coast, the first event of the year starts with the excitement of the Los Angeles Auto Show. It goes way back to Autorama at the Palladium in Hollywood, I think it was held then at the Palladium or maybe SoCal’s Great Western Exhibit Center, but walking around within the new cars and rods & customs was a great way to keep up on trends in the car world until the new drag racing season started. At these shows there was always a drag racing influence, always. Even the newer shows at the LA Convention center have had drag cars such as last year's debut of Force’s “King if the Hill” flopper on the carpet in the Ford display.

So this year, 2005, I attended Media Day at the LA Auto Show, looking again for that drag racing influence. There were a few import tuner cars and one of the 2004 AAA of SoCal Mustang funny cars with Gary Densham’s name still on the body, but that was about it. There was lots of performance influence from the new Mustangs, an IRL car, a supercharged Cobalt SS, a GTO drifting car, T/A influenced custom Dodge truck, a Champ Car, a rally car, Rolex Endurance car, fast cars of all kinds, but no drag racers - not even an NHRA booth with discount tickets to the upcoming Winternationals! Shame on you, NHRA-- these are rabid car people, your audience!

The President of GM North America, Gary Cowger, introduced the new Chevy Impala and Monte Carlo. The big surprise of the brief event was the drivers that introduced the cars; some of Chevy’s NASCAR team led by Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Brian Vickers and Jeff Burton and the racing paparazzi had a field day.

Thinking about it for a minute, isn’t that great that four strong members of the motorsports community could make the jaded automotive press go nuts posing for pictures with star NASCAR drivers. Does the sport of drag racing have four drivers who would elicit that kind of reaction in the same situation? NO! Sadly John Force might be the only one.

So I went looking for any example of drag racing’s influence and it wasn’t far off. The beautiful new Nomad concept car sat in the Chevy area with a turbocharged Ecotec 4 cylinder engine. Over the last couple of years I’d heard stories about the Ecotec engine from GM sport compact racers like Steve Bothwell and Nelson Hoyos who’d flogged that engine to death, and through drag racing they found each of the weakest links on the way to over 1300 horsepower. Based upon what I saw at this years show, factory involvement in drag racing has become the extreme test bed for endurance and reliability rather than the killer-competitive Ford –vs- Chevy of yesteryear. NASCAR is so mainstream, but drag racing provides the place to perfect mechanical design for the R&D process.