Hahaha Hot Rod Blog - Drag Week

[38P]

There was this insider blog too....http://bangshift.com/blog/registrati...week-2012.html

(as an FYI...that item was published 7 days before registration was closed on 3.23)

Sorry Brian, but . . .

Unlike "Bring a Trailer," BS doesn't send out prompting e-mails every time something changes on your wonderful site. And I was just too busy in March to surf on over to BS . . . But it's cool that you're apparently going to get to have some fun at 2012 DW*.

I just chumped in buying the car (which "real" rodders would want to "laugh off the premises") and scheduling vacation without closely monitoring HRM's "Crazy Ivan" registration scheduling. My bad.

BTW, I was going to run a BS sticker on my car in the show . . . .

[Brian Lohnes]

Speedy, you can sign up for our RSS feed like every other blog and you'll get the notifications.

The fact that there are guys beating on the windows to get into this thing seems like a good sign with respect to the future of the event. Will be interesting to see how may of the 200+ cars actually make it to Tulsa.

The guys at the Tulsa strip are excited to have the event start and end there. I was talking with Todd Martin at ADRL Bristol and was genuinely excited to have the event call Tulsa home.

[38P]

For the same reason that Steve Atwell running his real deal 1968 Hurst Hemi Dart on DW in 2005 is eternally cooler than someone showing up to run the event in a new CJ/Drag Pack/COPO. Atwell pulled the cross rammed Hemi apart in the parking lot of an Ohio gas station, was able to trundle along at 55mph with 4.88 gears and took on and off ramps at about 16 mph. All things that a new car would do better/faster/etc but what's the fun in that?

But I didn't say that new factory muscle is cooler than old factory muscle. One thing I like about DW* is the diversity of it. Guys running FWD Dodge GLHs, ratty old muscle cars, 455-ci Buick Skylarks with Megasquirt, and pro-built $100,000+ "unlimited" turbo cars.

Frankly, I think I would have had a great time with my new Coyote-powered, stick-shift Mustang. Sure, maybe I'd have been more like "GTO" in "Two-Lane Blacktop" than the hippies "just passin' through" in that match-racing '55 rat-gasser. I guess we'll never know.

But dadgumit, I take offense to those who drive boring, low-performance crap everyday, closet their "catalog car" hot rod in the garage, and then have the bloated "plums" to castigate those of us who are making an effort to actually daily drive something that keeps the OEM factory muscle market alive.

(Brian, I'm not saying that you're one of the "catalog car" snobs who drive "boring, low-performance crap . . .")

[38P]

Speedy, you can sign up for our RSS feed like every other blog and you'll get the notifications.

The fact that there are guys beating on the windows to get into this thing seems like a good sign with respect to the future of the event. Will be interesting to see how may of the 200+ cars actually make it to Tulsa.

The guys at the Tulsa strip are excited to have the event start and end there. I was talking with Todd Martin at ADRL Bristol and was genuinely excited to have the event call Tulsa home.

I thought I did that "sign-up" thing?

The car limit is still too low. I've seen strips run more than 200 cars.

And the fact that HRM is going to skin the spectators for a gate fee at each stop this year just adds insult to injury.

Given the historically quick "sell-out," Tulsa is obviously a great place to anchor the event. But as long as HRM reaps a handful of stories on the cheap and rakes in the money from the racers, the future of the event is secure, even if only 100 cars showed up.

[38P]

Aaarrrrgggghhhh .... He"s back !!!

Probably not for long . . . .

[38P]

I dicked around and didn't register asap .... I sent in to be an alternate, but I'm not towing clear to DW in hopes of getting in. I hope they give enough advance warning before the start ....

It does make me wonder though, what if the Larson's and Terzich's didn't get in, would they suddenly open it up to more entrants? Not complaining .... just wondering .... and I understand that those cars are the ones that sell mags.

No chance . . . Larson and Terzich are "insiders." I wouldn't be surprised if they get comped/kick-backed the entry fee.

But this "towing . . . to DW[*]" thing is problematic. Bonafide street cars don't need to be towed anywhere, unless they're broken or impounded. But then I'm just a third-class old mossbacked buffoon who dared to buy a new performance car instead of "camping out" to enter a slow pile of junk, so what do I know?

[Brian Lohnes]

Because you feel wronged by HRM it doesn't give you license to take swipes at the guys who signed up and got in. I don't think any of them were doing the Doug Dastardly laugh while hitting the "sign me up button". Those guys love their "slow piles of junk" as much as you love your Mustang (which no one would give you any shit about at the event).

Brian

[38P]

Because you feel wronged by HRM it doesn't give you license to take swipes at the guys who signed up and got in. I don't think any of them were doing the Doug Dastardly laugh while hitting the "sign me up button". Those guys love their "slow piles of junk" as much as you love your Mustang (which no one would give you any shit about at the event).

Brian

I guess I have failed in my use of the King's English, Brian, because you've totally missed my point. Some Dude earlier in this thread (forgot who) wrote that new cars and factory-backed stuff ought to get "laughed off the premises." So your claim that "no one would give you any $#!t about at the event" is highly suspect.

I don't care if somebody wants to run a rust-riddled 26-second 25 h.p. VW at DW* (after all, "you pays your money and you makes your choice"), In fact, I CELEBRATED DW* diversity. But, for ANYONE to look down their nose at me because I signed up for a brand-new performance car and thought about running DW* with it, instead of patching together one of the more than a dozen junk-piles (and a good car or two) I have at my disposal just isn't in the spirit of the sport/hobby I've participated in the past three and one-half decades.

Frankly, I'm tired of the snobbery. The events that limit entries to pre-'65, or pre-'72, or pre-'81 vehicles . . . the jerks who scoff because you don't have $50,000+ in a 9-second car. . . . The Melvins who bitch about "matching numbers" and "limited production." . . . I didn't even enter my 1998 SVT Cobra in a car show for the first TWELVE years that I owned it . . . and never took it to a drag strip or a road course because all of the snobby "know-it-alls" who would make fun of me and it. But I've pledged to myself that I'm not going to put up with that stuff anymore. I don't care if some JACKWAGON who casts his own manifolds or blows $10,000 on a Lenco or a paint job doesn't think I've got the right to be there just because I brought a new, factory-built car. They can get over it or not . . . I don't care anymore.

[Brian Lohnes]

I don't really know why anyone puts stock in what other people think in the first place. When Nutting and I were at the drags with Buford last weekend, there were people openly mocking the thing. Who gives a shit? Hell, I got the last laugh when one of the groups reveling in the crappiness of the Caprice had their oil burning Integra blow up right in front of me.

Hey, it is an important break through. Congrats!

(As an aside, I stand by my statement about no one crapping on your car at the event. I have not been out there as many times as several around here have, but there is great mutual respect among competitors, no matter the junk that any of them are driving. Look at Fowler for example....they even accepted HIM! )

[Bamfster]

Then I suggest you join or go back to the knitting club you gave up for the car thing ....

[Orange65]

I am no insider but I got signed up. No one called me and told me- I was just watching for it. As for your car- I doubt that anyone would care what year it is or body style or anything as long as it ran decent.

Otherwise, you are letting your anger make accusations and such that don't make any friends.

[Bamfster]

And why should guys with patched together junk boxes (like me) give a rat's hiney about your store bought car?

[SuperBuickGuy]

y'all seem to be accusing Speedy of having thin skin.... wherever would you come up with that idea?

[BBR]

I don't care what kinda car everybody drives, but I do think it's cool when they bolt some slicks on a late model car and let it rip.

Then again, I have a junk box. haha

[38P]

The Last Laugh

I don't really know why anyone puts stock in what other people think in the first place. When Nutting and I were at the drags with Buford last weekend, there were people openly mocking the thing. Who gives a shit? Hell, I got the last laugh when one of the groups reveling in the crappiness of the Caprice had their oil burning Integra blow up right in front of me.

I've sort of been there.

1978 -- A rich kid with an SS 454 started ripping on my GTO-engined '70 LeMans as "a homemade collection of junk."

1981 -- I've got my 1969 Grand Prix SJ at a hamburger drive-in. Some guy with a hoodless 396 Camaro starts in explaining to me that my "slow heap" isn't a true muscle car.

1986 -- I've got my new black SVO Mustang out on a cruise night. Windows down. Rolling. Some douche starts yelling crap because I've got my fog lamps turned on. Then he explains how crusin' is for real "muscle" and rods, not "girl's cars."

1994 -- A college car club asks me not to bring my 1967 Ford Falcon for the club's yearbook photo.

2001-- My boss reacts to my then-daily driver 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe: "I thought a guy that talks as much about cars as you would have a fast car." (BTW, he didn't talk any crap when I took him for a 0-130 blast in my "garage queen" SVT Cobra on another day)

2010 -- Major Ford car event -- Show registration clerk initially says I can't participate with my 2004 Mercury Marauder until I point out to them that Ford makes Mercury and they have a "MEL" class in the car show.

2010 -- Same Ford event -- several spectators wonder why somebody would enter a "grandma's car." Others question why anybody would put "big wheels" on a Grand Marquis (the 18x8 wheels were OEM) Another guy says to his friend that it's a "waste" to swap a DOHC into a "four-door LTD." None of those mopes were around when we took second place in the MEL class.

2010 -- MCA National event -- Some spectators discuss why anyone would bother to enter a "stock" Cobra (it was in a class that required stock appearance)

2010 -- Open track event -- some railbirds laugh and point when I pulled the Marauder up into the grid. One guy says "I'm glad I'm not behind that boat" (guess who I tailgated around the track during the "no passing" HST session).

2011 -- Cruise night at a major Ford event -- "gatekeeper" for the all-
Ford cruise (actually just a sit and park event, not really a cruise) motions for me to park my SVT Focus in spectator parking (notwithstanding that I showed him my event credentials). I rolled down my window and he demands that I park "over there." In anger, I just drove past him and parked in a back corner of the show field.