The Caprice wagon you see in this rather poor photo from about ten years ago was my first attempt at a demo derby car. The good news for the Caprice is that it never saw a demo derby.
The whole thing started on a whim. I happened to see a flyer stapled to a telephone pole announcing a local fair hosting a smash-‘em-up derby. That same day my friend Jess mentioned that her parents were looking for someone to take their old family car, the Caprice wagon, to the junkyard, as it had been living in their driveway for far too long and no one wanted it.
I offered them 50 bucks and the promise to have it out of their driveway by the end of the week. It was, as everything I take home, not running. On the way home dad and I grabbed a cap and rotor, plugs, a battery, carb cleaner, and some ether. We zipped the tune-up parts onto the motor, gave it some juice and a zap of ether, and the wheezy 305 sprung to life. We were going to be in the derby business!
The next week or so was spent removing the gas tank, stripping the interior, removing all the glass, welding up the doors, chopping off the exhaust, cutting a hole in the hood (per the rules) and horsing around with the car. Living on a dead-end street, dad and I could get away with hijinks.
My girlfriend (now my sainted wife) did the lettering job; we called the car The Blue Bomber after the nickname Jess and her parents had given it when she was growing up. My wife painted a big bomb on the side of the thing, some flames on the hood, and some custom “seek and destroy” lettering on the front fender.
About a week before the derby I was goofing around with the wagon, doing burnouts in front of my parents’ house. At the end of shredding tires the motor had a slight knock to it. Nothing major I thought.
The day before the derby, my dad and I went to load the car on the trailer and things went rapidly down hill. Milliseconds after I started the car it became readily apparent that we were in copious amounts of trouble. The motor sounded like John Henry himself was trying to hammer his way out.
When my dad popped the hood, I could see fuel actually being barfed out of the Quadrajet. I inched the car forward and tried to drive it up the ramps onto the trailer. It was not making enough power to even do that. I did the sensible thing and floored it causing a massive bang and silence.
Since the car was halfway up the ramps it was easy enough to see the connecting rod jutting through the pan.
We winched the car onto the trailer and towed to straight to the wrecking yard, ironically the same place that was dragging all the smashed up cars back to their operation for final crushing. One funny thing was that when we made left hand turns and the oil in the pan sloshed toward the hole, we kind of left a trail. It was ghetto version of the James Bond oil slick on demand.
I laugh when I think of someone coming up to that car in the junkyard with all the paint and stuff on it. It was obviously a derby car, but every piece of sheet metal on it was straight.
Hopefully it met a peaceful end.
