This video was shot almost 33 years ago and it shows one of the coolest cars in what we’d call the second southern door slammer renaissance in the form of Ken Regenthal’s Carolina Hooker Corvette. This car, bought by Regenthal from Don Plemmons had an interesting life as it started out as a fairly mild piece and continued to morph into what you see here. It was this car that put Ken solidly on the southern door slammer map. All that being said this Corvette was at the end of its lifespan with Regenthal. As you will hear the announcer yell during the burnout procedure, Ken already had the new car at home and this one was for sale.
We showed you some video of guys like Scotty Cannon and others racing at Shuffletown a while back and we held onto this one because it captures a single run that is about as nutty as the pro mod class was back then. Between the burnout, the wheels up dry hop, the never-lift lane change he makes, and the elapsed time that was likely somewhere in the low five second range (eighth mile) this shows you why the class exploded like it did. The Carolina Hooker was a car to be feared far and wide back in the day and Regenthal is still at it today. He has a stick shift Corvette he races that is nearly as fast as the car you see here as well as a pro mod Corvette that he uses to compete all over the south with like the Big Dog Shootout at Piedmont and others.
You can see that this engine is mechanically fuel injected and he clearly has nitrous plumbed to it but we can’t see him purge the system so we’re not sure he ran on the bottle for this run or not. While chassis technology and engine technology continued to evolve and Regenthal went quicker and faster in later cars, we think this is a coolest Carolina Hooker in the lineage of the name. We dig the announcer in this clip for his delivery, although we don’t get an elapsed time.
It is all about the show, baby!
