It has been 29 years since this video was filmed and throughout that time there have been some pretty amazing advancements made to high performance cars, drag racing, and the technological mashup of the two. The footage you are going to see below originally aired on ESPN and it is from the 1993 Fastest Street Car Shootout which was held in Memphis. These events were the progenitor of things like the Pump Gas Drags, Hot Rod Magazine Drag Week and as of last year Drag Weekend along with Rocky Mountain Race Week and other smaller regional events that have popped up. We can say that because unlike today’s events where competitors drive 1,000 miles or more over the course of a week, this was a 25 mile drive within the confines of Memphis Motorsports Park and several of the cars could not even do that!
Ok, we should be more specific. The cars appeared capable of making the drive but there was one thing that killed a few of them. That was a stop/start challenge that required the cars to come to a complete stop. Shut off and then restart. Some drivers flooded their stuff, some had other issues, but it took out the likes of Danny Scott, Rick Dyer, Monty Berney, and others.
A really neat competitor was NBA player Tom Hammond who was there racing his first generation Camaro. Hammond would continue to have a close involvement with drag racing all the way through his career and especially after it. Hammond spent a few seasons as an NHRA pro stock racer during the insane height of that class in the mid-2000s.
We LOVE the cars that are showcased here. Nitrous was definitely the leading power adder in use among the group with some notable supercharged entries. You can briefly see one of the very few and for the time very exotic turbocharged Mustang of Gene Deputy. Today turbos abound but back then it was really voodoo science and the digital technology that allows some of the amazing performances from those cars today was a mere dream.
As we continue to marvel at what the racers are doing in Georgia, these cars were the baddest machines on the roads of 1993. Sweet!
