Obviously the Australians are crazy about their skid cars. It is a pretty fascinating scene because we don’t have it up here. The guys at Street Machine Magazine recently profiled a car called MadSam. It is a neat 1971 Ford Capri with a Dart based 408ci Ford engine topped with a monster blower. The thing is injected on alcohol and is topped with a bad mutha looking carbon fiber injector hat. Basically if an American hot rodder laid eyes on this car they’d immediately tag it as a drag machine. But it is not and there’s not a damned thing wrong with it!
The guy who owns and operates the car is Sam Surace and he’s also the deficit narrator of this video. Not surprisingly, the car WAS a drag car in a former life but Sam really does not care about what it runs in the quarter. Instead he loves the skid scene and that’s where this thing is really going to shine. His reasons for building the car (in seven months!) were pretty good because he wanted to show his kids that there’s a right place and time to burn tires and it is in competition, no on the streets. Basically the equivalent here of a dad giving up street racing and taking it to the track. Pretty neat.
The one thing that cracks us about about these cars is that when they enter the skid area you can’t even see the tires! Obviously you do not cook the good ones, you put some junk on there. They look weird at first but once you hear the blower motor and see the clouds, it is all good!
