This great piece of video shows extinct race cars running on an extinct race track: Modified Eliminator at a 1981 NHRA Divisional hosted at the long dead Connecticut Dragway.

Modified Eliminator in the late ’70s and early ’80s was a kind of poor man’s Pro Stock class that featured high-winding small-blocks and manual transmissions for the most part. It was a well populated class that had lots of appeal from the Sportsman fan base but that population of racers would begin to dwindle as evolution, rule changes, and increased costs associated with building the cars began forcing some racers out.

Who wouldn’t love a car leaving the starting line with a little small-block measuring under 300ci wound up to 10,000 RPM? The NHRA, that’s who. In one of the most historically lamented (by racers and fans of the class) decisions that the sanctioning body ever made, they killed Modified Eliminator in the early 1980s. Famously the Modified racers staged a protest at the US Nationals holding signs and driving up the return road in front of a capacity crowd. A final act of defiance.

Connecticut Dragway was one of the premier strips on the East Coast and completed a match racer’s dream trilogy of money making. Lots of guys ran E-Town, Connecticut, and Epping, New Hampshire, on the same weekend during the barnstorming match race period of the 1960s and 1970s. The place was top shelf, even by 1981 standards; you can see a nice wooded setting and what appears to be a well maintained facility. Consumer Reports now owns the land and does its vehicle testing on the hallowed grounds of what used to be the strip. Every now and again rumblings of reviving the place pop up, but are usualy just that, rumblings.