A wise man once said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The part he forgot to add was, “especially if you’re broke.” It’s a given that every drag racer out there has at least once circumvented a major financial expense with some creative thinking. Even I, a lowly scribe have made my way around a financial impossibility by using my noodle. During a recent conversation with my wife, I was taken right back to the summer after senior year in high school when a group of my friends and I pooled our cash and built a hot rod, like lots of guys did back in the day. We all took turns racing the car that summer and had a riot. Oddly there were three guys named Brian involved in the four man group. The fourth guy was named Dana. What a fun time that was. The whole summer was just about fun and going fast. Here’s the tale. (and some video at the end for proof!)

It was senior year of high school. A couple of friends and I had been making a weekly pilgrimage to New England Dragway in Epping, New Hampshire, on Friday nights to watch and occasionally participate in the weekly grudge racing program. It was a blast, even in my pickup truck. The three of us longed to drive something with some guts, but did not have the money to even consider building a real race car. Then a funny thing happened. One of the guys in our hot rod clique suggested that we pool our resources and try to stick together a budget beater with our combined riches, then share it.

Five guys threw in $250.00 each to “build” a race car. My parents (living saints) allowed to us use the garage at their house. We located a 1984 Firebird with a seized V6 that the owner would part with for $150.00. We then located a 1981 Caprice that was sitting in a very sketchy trailer park, but was stuffed with a 350 from an old Chevy truck. After venturing into the trailer park with my girlfriend (now my wife) and surveying the car, we settled on a price and tried to hatch a plan to get it home. Against my dad’s better judgment he accompanied me to pick up the Caprice with his truck and trailer and we brought it back to the gas station where I was working at the time. The next night at work, the henchmen and I chopped off the exhaust pipes, made a quick fix to the brakes, and proceeded to do major snow-tire burnouts. It became apparent that the transmission in the Caprice was no good, (even for gas station burnouts), but luck again would shine on us.

Our good fortune was the result of a friend’s loss. Dave Keenan had recently replaced the engine in his third-gen Camaro. He had installed a modified Turbo 350 in place of the 700R4 that was previously in the car. The TH350 had been mildly worked over and shifted firmly on the street. Dave had gone on a vacation with his grandparents to England to visit relatives, but at home malfeasance was afoot. While Dave was away his younger brother had taken the Camaro out in the rain (against strict orders from his older brother) and managed to bend it into a pretzel. No one said a word to Dave until he pulled into his driveway after the trip to find the mangled remains of his car under a tarp, like an automotive autopsy patient. We got a great deal on that transmission.

Scavenging parts for the mongrel racer continued at the junkyards. We scored a manual steering box from a Chevy van, a limited-slip rearend from an IROC Camaro, a radiator from a Pontiac GTO, and a driveshaft (to match the shorter 350 trans) from an S10 pickup truck.

Assembly commenced at full speed in my parents’ garage over the winter. Bolting our mongrel car together was not exactly to the level of precision that Jerry Haas may use while welding a chassis together (at least I hope not!) and if it were not for the expert assistance of my dad, things probably would have gone horribly awry. When Christmas rolled around I asked Santa for an Edelbrock Torker camshaft and another one of the henchmen asked for the matching intake. We took the heads off of the engine just to make sure things were not too horrible looking inside and they were not, so on went  a new set of gaskets, a fresh cam and matching intake were added and that was about it for the engine, save for some headers. A stock Q-jet sat on top and an Accel dual-point distributor provided the spark. We thought it was a fire-breathing beast. The neighbor’s on our deadend street were not impressed with the open headers and practice burnouts.

The car was hideous looking. When we got it the body panels were several shades of white, and covered in our greasy paw prints it looked immeasurably worse. Very few photos exist of the car for that exact reason. Ugly does not begin to scratch the surface. As an added bonus, we spray painted the valve covers blue because in our 18 year old minds, it was going to look cool. The windshield was broken by an errant wrench so a hastily fashioned Lexan windshield took the place of the factory glass and added a real “racy” touch to the whole package.

The last real part of the equation was the tires. Our budget was cooked and we could not afford to wait until next Christmas, so we did what any self respecting racer does when times get tough. We went dumpster diving. We visited a garage where we knew a Stock Car was run out of and scored a prime pair of used circle-track slicks. Sure, they would be horrible in normal circumstances, but we were barely making enough power to turn the tires in the water box, let along spin them on the startling line. After finishing the car at my parents house and getting my dad (who was our sole adult supporter in this whole adventure) to tow the thing to the track for us we were officially in the racing business. The other guys drove the car during the week on grudge nights and my dad and I ran the car at the Sunday bracket races. I drove and he played crew chief.

The car would run in the high 13s or low 14s depending on the heat, but we had a blast. We all called it “Cheaper than yours” because people would often look at the thing and laugh, but it was able to hang with late-model Camaros and Corvettes. It was a lot of fun the squash the egos of smarmy racers on grudge night and even more so to win a couple of rounds during the bracket races.

The car was a one-year wonder because we all went our separate ways after that summer. Two of the guys are now successful diesel mechanics/fleet managers, one is an accountant at a major insurance company, yet another is an electrician, and I’m here logging all of it for history. I’m also the only one left that still spends a lot of his summer at the drag strip.

After that car, dad scored a ’70 Nova that has progressively gotten quicker from its 12-second beginnings. That car has since been replaced by a full tube chassis Nova. Evolution, baby! Dad races every possible weekend in the summer and I am normally off doing something at a track in another part of the universe.

I guess the point to all of this is that sportsman drag racing is as expensive as you make it. It’s possible to race on peanuts and have a better time than anyone else at the facility. If five high school kids can stick a car together by begging, borrowing, and (maybe or maybe not) stealing for less than $1,500 bucks, it only stands to reason that an adult can accomplish that same goal. It was one of the best summers of my life and that hideous Firebird still remains (and probably forever will) the best car I’ve ever driven.

HERE’S SOME VIDEO OF THE CHEAPER THAN YOURS CHEVY POWERED PONTIAC IN ACTION — GOOD TIMES!