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Slamming the Door on 2005
1/9/06
  he
casual observer could surmise the only thing that's going
on in nostalgia drag racing is the fleet of top fuel dragsters
and funny cars battling it out. The truth of the matter is
a completely different story. There's a whole heap of racers
that fork over their hard earned dough to run on raceday that
have doors on their cars just like the kind most folks open
and close to go pick up the pink box full of donuts on their
way to work. Bitchin' Chevys, fast Fords, mad Mopars, and
even oddball and unlikely jalopies with blowers poking though
the hood where a one-barrel carburetor used to be. This is
where drag racing came from. Hooligans and miscreants trying
to prove their muster in hopped up jalopies banging the loud
pedal from stop light to stop light.
This connection to the street, or delicious donuts for that
matter, is the key to the once-bigger-than-the-Beatles-and-Elvis-combined
popularity of drag racing, a popularity that for some reason
or another seems to have lost its hold on the motoring public
over the years. While the stock contraptions out on the big
time drag strip these days are plenty fast, it's painfully
easy to see why the connection to the street may be wearing
thin. Often the only real way to tell from the stands what
kind of car the one on the track once was is to squint your
eyes and try to read the letters across the place on the car
where the grille is supposed to be. Lesse…C, uhm…O…B….lemme
see….A…what the?!? Ah, forget about it.
In the nostalgia and vintage doorslammer racing scene the
connection from the fan in the stands to the car on the track
is much clearer. The cars look like the cars that they actually
are. That Camaro, Fairlane, or Barracuda motoring down the
track looks a heck of a lot like it did when it came off the
showroom floor in 1968. Overgrown and over the top maybe,
but still directly connected. The Goodguys VRA races host
a flood of doorslammers at every event. While the slower and
more numerous street classes are missed, the sheer number
of cars showing up simply overwhelmed the amount of time there
was to get everybody down the racetrack. The NHRA Hot Rod
Reunions roll out factory F/X cars and restored stockers for
the museum in motion effect.
The smart part is that it all makes sense to the fan in the
stands. The same people that are in the process of building
a '32 Ford Hot Rod or restoring a '67 Camaro Street Machine
come out to the Nostalgia drags as fans and even racers, with
some car show slots suddenly empty during rounds. Back in
the '60s and '70s Detroit understood this connection clearly,
and the winners out on the racetrack on Sunday sold a heap
of cars on the following Monday or Tuesday. Even a casual
fan that knew nothing about drag racing whatsoever knew what
car was which, and what it meant to be behind the wheel of
a winner while picking up the donuts on the way to work. Too
bad you can't go buy a '69 Plymouth Road Runner off the showroom
floor today, nostalgia drag racing fans would be lined up
around the block.
The apex of the win on Sunday, sell on Monday strategy from
Detroit came in the form of strip-ready rockets you could
buy ready-to-go from the dealer. One shining, or dull primered,
example of this way of thinking was the now legendary hemi
Dart. Walk down to the dealer, put down some money, and rumble
on out to the dragstrip in a low-cost lightweight compact
car with the biggest and most powerful engine available under
the fiberglass hood. How bitchin' is that? The thing is somewhere
along the line somebody dropped the playbook, lost the plot,
forgot what it was all about. For entertainment purposes,
one could use 1972 as a point where things started to go really
go awry.
Coincidentally this is the same cutoff point the Goodguys
have frozen in time for doorslammers coming out to play. One
look at the 1972 lineup from Detroit tells the tale pretty
well. Vegas, Gremlins, and Pintos in stock form were not exactly
barn burners when it came to performance. While plenty of
Vegas, Gremlins, and even Pintos made fine drag cars the direct
connection between fan and racer started to wear a little
thin. The same folks that would have bought an Edlebrock manifold
and Holley carburetor for their 67 Camaro and gone out to
the track thought complete engine and drivetrain swaps for
their Gremlins a bit much. Turn the clock ahead by ten years
and all is nearly lost. The once mighty Camaro was choked
down to 165 hp and the Citation X-11 was Chevy's answer to
performance innovation.
Fast forward to the present and the connection grows even
more distant. While the Cobalt is a fine little car, I don't
seem to remember seeing a rear-drive version with a large
displacement V-8 under the hood the last time I visited my
local Chevy dealer. Neither did the guy that didn't buy one
after he didn't know what kind of car that was on the TV,
before he changed the channel to the figure 8 trailer races
on ESPN37. The connection from drag racing fan to car and
driver has been lost, or at the very least is not quite as
strong as it was back in 1968.
Ironically, the only folks that seem to be building factory
racecars and putting them out on the showroom floor these
days have a big Subaru or Mitsubishi sign out in front of
the dealership. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 300HP
all-wheel drive beastie that handles like a slot car, runs
a low 13 in stock form, and can be driven off the lot for
under 30K. Performance reigns over comfort and amenities,
just as the build sheet on the Hemi Dart deleted such luxuries
as heaters and window cranks. All this of course sends a new
year's message to those running the show in Detroit. Build
a lightweight, bare bones, rear drive V-8 full blooded American
monster with the same level of engineering and price as the
equivalent bare bones Honda Civic and guess what will happen?
In the meantime, there's still plenty of doorslamming examples
of Detroit getting it right out on the dragstrips of America
to keep the legend of the connection alive and well. 
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