by Darr Hawthorne
Photos by Zak Hawthorne and Reflections of Motorsports (PSCA)
6/1/04

he Pacific Street Car Association came to California Dragway in Fontana, California for the first time with the California Street Car Nationals.

In PSCA there’s a class for just about any kind of muscle car combination from the all-out, tube chassised Pro Street with speeds over 200 mph to Xtreme Street to True Street eight classes in all and a couple of index and trophy brackets. The “street” designated classes are raced heads-up and the racing is intense with over 220 cars entered at this event. The three-day event, with a Friday test and tune, brought out a large and vocal Saturday crowd standing three deep at the fence for qualifying. In PSCA tradition, Sunday’s crowd was smaller.

A couple of racers I talked with were reformed street racers who are bored with traditional dragstrip bracket and index events and found PSCA to be the only organization promoting heads-up competition on the West Coast. Some of the pits had a strong “street racing” vibe with lots of friends, families, BBQs and enthusiasm supporting strong-running, well-built racecars.

In the Outlaw Street class, Randy Normandin in his ‘69 Camaro left a sleeping No. 1 qualifier Mike Varney on the starting line. Normandin’s Hot Rod Performance-sponsored car ran 8.122 at 168.94 mph on this final run.

Qualifying in Pro Street was lead by 2003 series champ Ed Thornton’s unique Duttweiler-prepped twin-turbo ‘57 Chevy running 6.827 at 204.98.