Once the remaining 45 cars arrived at the track they had about 30-35 minutes to cool down, turn on the bottles, check the pressure in the tires and pull to the line. They then had to run three laps back-to-back. That's not easy to do under any circumstances.

It didn't take long to see that there were some serious race cars trying for the title of World Fastest Street Car. (Interestingly, speed had nothing to do with the competition as the lowest average elapsed time for the three passes decided the winner, but the treasured jackets had the words "Fastest Street Car" emblazoned on them.) 

I saw plenty of cars that easily would cost a buyer a couple of hundred grand, such as Brian Hinson's dual-turbocharged Mazda and Chad Williams' dual-turbocharged V-12

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Viper. There were also cars that were of the $30-40,000 or less variety such as Wayne Fritchie's neat '65 El Camino and Scott Morgan's blown '63 VW.

And then there was my old friend, the legendary Midwest four-speed racer "Crazy" Charlie Smith. Ol' Craze and owner Phil Cooper thrashed right up to the last minute to get their '66 Chevy Nova with a 460-plus inch small block on nitrous to the track. They spun the driveshaft out of her on Thursday testing, and then thrashed all night to fix it. They got it fixed, drove the Nova to the track and on the first lap Charlie put 'er on the bumper twice on his first pass and still ran a 9.95! He then got DQ'd -- according to the report -- for ignoring a track official after his second lap, but not before adding to his legend and really entertaining the crowd.

What was really cool for this reporter was that no matter whether the racer was bucks-up or bucks-down, they were all just racing at this event to see who had the baddest hot rod that day. Once they staged and stood on it, the money was irrelevant.

In the end, Ken Close's old school, nitrous oxide-injected '34 Ford was declared the winner with an average time of 8.853. Robin Roberts' '76 TA was second with an 8.955 average and Chad Williams was third at 8.974, setting low elapsed time and Top Speed of the meet with a final round 8.629/166.37 lap.

In all, eight of the 32 cars that made all three rounds made eight-second laps and that is a bunch of fast. . er, I mean. . .quick street cars.

If you didn't make it this year you better be there next year at Memphis for booze, blues, barbeque and bad fast street cars. With enough medication and rest, Mr. Freiburger and the rest of the HRM crew should be ready to do it again. Maybe next year they will actually drag race each other, which would be the only thing that could make this event any better.