If you dive into the world of Factory Appearing, Stock Tire racing, you will find that the most brutal battle boils down to the one between Chrysler’s Hemi and the Buick 455. Which takes the cake, the Elephant or Buick’s steamroller surprise? Well…that’s an argument for another day, but the truth is that torque seems to be the factor behind the Buick being on-par with Chrysler’s legend. Torque? That’s cute. Look, the 500-510 foot-pounds that the Buick rocked was nothing to sneeze at in the least. That’s how Buick came to the musclecar war…thinking smarter, not harder. Instead of revving the balls off of your mill, let the torque wave work for you. Diesel guys have known this for years, and the current wave of hopped-up work trucks proves this point. When you can easily get to four-digit power figures with some tuning and some boost, why settle for making a hyped Skylark or a Coronet with intermittent explosive disorder behave at the upper end of their tolerances when you can go trolling people in a work truck?
At one point, this 1977 Peterbilt was a house mover. That’s it. Day in, day out, wearing WIDE LOAD gear, it worked it’s rear framerails off, dragging around whatever it was asked to move. Then it just dragged around as one of Canada’s unique offerings to the world of hot-rodded motorsports, the drag racing semi tractor. Laugh about a 16-second slip all you want, but when it’s a semi truck that is hazing off the rears like the track had a fine layer of grease laid down, all the way down the track, you might want to reconsider your humor.
Don’t worry, we’re sending someone to check on Lohnes now. We made sure that they had some phenylephrine with them.
Some of the truck racing video was shot at my home track in St. Thomas Ontario Canada.