Racing with street cars is amazingly exciting. Look at the film franchise “Fast and the Furious” who glamorize street racing. Watch “Pinks!” on the Discovery Channel if you want to see street performance. Or look at the drifting phenomenon to see that young people, horsepower and a certain lack of brains is a thrilling, but potentially dangerous confluence.
Every year innocent bystanders get killed by street racing. Street racing crashes are almost always at high speed, usually fatal to at least one person and cause significant damage to the rest. The Canadian Federal government has brought in legislation that makes street racing a Criminal Code offense, with up to 14 years in prison for killing someone while street racing.
The Deity knows I love performance cars, hot rods and sports cars. There is something indefinably beautiful and perfect about the Dodge Daytona in Petty Blue. Or a ’49 Merc lead sled that has been slammed and shaved with frenched headlights and lake pipes. For those who just said “Wha??” type those terms into your favourite search engine and see what I mean.
I’m not coming down on those who peel out, or burn out, or lay a patch at the local Burger Hut parking lot in their muscle car. Amish kids probably compete to see who can get the horse-drawn buggy out of the meeting house parking lot first. It is normal. Dumb, but normal. Racing is something else.
The only place to actually race is on a track with a helmet, firesuit, rollcage, competition belts and a full safety, fire and ambulance crew on site, ready to go. These things are needed when, not if, an amateur driver exceeds their imagined driving talents.
Some provinces have or are considering banning nitrous oxide injection systems on street cars. It is essentially the same nitrous oxide your dentist would feed you, except in a car engine, it does amazing things.
Take a Ford Taurus, Built With Pride in Chicago by Ford. From the factory it has 155 horsepower. Apply $1,000 for the nitrous kit, a day and a half of a mechanics’ time and you have a 250 to 400 horsepower Taurus. If that can’t get you to the IGA in half the time, then you’re not trying. There are no legitimate technical reasons for nitrous oxide injection on a street car except for street racing.
I would like to see what I call a “Pinks!” law passed for street racing. It isn’t Zero Tolerance, but it sets reasonable standards for those who want to own a hot rod or a performance car, which is perfectly legal to own and enjoy.
A “Pinks!” law works like this. If the cops stop you for suspected street racing, there are two checks.
First, is there working nitrous on the car? This is not hard to spot with two or three hours training. Cops have rudimentary automotive technical training: They can seize your plates if your car is judged unsafe. Running nitrous? Lose Your Ride.
Second, how fast were they going? If the vehicle was more than 49 kilometers per hour over the speed limit you Lose Your Ride.
I don’t mean lose your ride for a week, or thirty days or three months. I mean you Lose Your Ride. On the spot, no negotiations, no tearful appeals, hand over the keys, Insta-Justice. Show up at the court date and fight the charge. If you win, you can have it back, otherwise it belongs to the police.
It would take, oh, maybe three confiscations for the word to get out: They Ain’t Kidding.
If you want to drive your high performance street rocket to a race track, I have no problems as long as the vehicle is legal and you obey the usual laws, speed limits and stop signs.
At the track you can sign the waivers, hook up the nitrous bottle, put on the racing slicks and whip out your badboy attitude. Race until your brain is fried and your wallet is flattened. I’ll even come and watch some summer night. Run what ya brung.
I do appreciate the run what ya brung ethic, performance cars and street racing.
In 1972, some people, whom I may or may not know, believed very deeply in run what ya brung. What they brung was an A/Fuel Altered to Carling Avenue in Ottawa.
The car was called Bad Science and it ran on a combination of liquid nitromethane and Sunoco 260 gasoline. It was no where near vaguely legal to be on a city street. There were no front brakes, limited rear brakes, no lights, no signals, no mirrors and no speedometer.
It did have a tubular welded steel chassis, one seat, M/H racing slicks and a parachute. Other options included a 427 cubic inch Chevy big block with a 6-71 Roots supercharger. From each cylinder, the exhaust pipes were as big around as a coffee can. There were no mufflers.
It is rumored that someone I may or may not know, put a mixture of chlorine bleach and gasoline under the rear wheels. The driver, it is alleged, spun the rear wheels in the fluid, igniting it in a ball of flames and smoke to warm the tires before the start of the run. This would have purportedly happened in the parking lot of the Fairlawn Plaza, but I wouldn’t know about that.
I would also suspect that several hundred people in the neighbourhood, trying to sleep, with the bedroom windows open on an August night, sat bolt upright in bed thinking the World Had Ended. A fuel car in those days would make a noise like 6300 artillery cannons going off in your bedroom every minute, with about the same amount of flame and smoke.
It was also alleged that Bad Science left two long, smoldering streaks of rubber for 1000 feet along Carling Avenue. I also have no information about Bad Science being hustled into a covered trailer immediately after the run. Or the trailer being spirited away before the police showed up.
Street race? Never. We need a “Pinks!” law.
Track race? If I had the money and the car, I’d be there. Allegedly.
RoadDave 