Shop Tour - Hardcore Drag Racing

            Veli Koivula is from Finland, and he has drag racing in his blood. He builds some of the most unique cars in Europe, like this one. This was intended to be a an affordable kit car, it's a replica of a Ferrari from the1970's -1980's. The body was intended to be mounted to a small rear engine Fiero or V.W. chassis, but Veli had other plans.     He turned a pile of fiberglass into one of the most unique drag racing cars on the track. It's a mix of Italian style with a high-horsepower American power plant. Underneath the light-weight body is a fully custom built chassis built by Veli himself, It has been SFI certified to 25.1K Specs. Extra features include a double funny cage.  During the fabrication stage   The engine is a General Motors Gen-4 LS 6.0 liter V8 with a Gen-2 Garrett turbo, it specs out at 98 mm. Other goodies include a billet Callies crankshaft and Wiseco pistons.   The engine runs exclusively on Methano...

  Mark McGuire has been a truck driver for over 40+ years, currently he hauls heavy equipment. In the past he did a 10-year stretch driving a transporter for Dick Simon racing and he was also on the pit crew. Mark was just a child when his father was drag racing and said that's how he got hooked on racing. Mark was just 19 years old when he bought his first race car, it was a 1969 SS Chevelle dirt track car. He was lucky enough to land a sponsorship from a local California radio station 99.1, which helped with expenses.  He had fun, but after three races he realized that asphalt was for racing. He went on to race circle track cars for the next 30+ years, from street stocks to super late-models.      The Nova wagon didn't start out this pretty, this is a before photo of what this killer looked like in a previous life.           With help from Gilbert "Mel" Meltvedt the car was transformed, the Nova was named "The ...

                                                                 Wicked Willys                                                              I tried to the best of my ability to maintain a certain look when these cars ruled the strip. (J.Andrew Stepka)   J.Andrew's 1941 Willys was acquired from a guy in Long Island, N.Y. It was turned into a Pro-Street car during its long life but it was a steel body and that was all that mattered to him. The frame was built by The Willys Works in upstate NY, but Andrew had plans to turn this old Pro-streeter into a ground pounding gasser from the glory years of drag racing.         ...

                                                       Brad McBride is the builder and driver of this 1963 Type 3 Fastback, known as Blitzkrieg. Photo credit Jason Reiss/PDRA   Brad McBride is the builder and driver of this super cool and fast Type 3 Volkswagen. Brad has been around racing his whole life. His father owned land that's now the pit area beside Piedmont Dragway in North Carolina. His father raced a roadster and later raced a top alcohol funny car called the Starr Rider well into the 1990's. So you could say it was in Brad's DNA that he was destined to be a drag racer. We asked Brad how he started racing and what his earliest memories were. He stated the first thing he raced was 20" Schwinn 5-speed bike when he was 12 or 13 years old.  Even early on he was a fabricator and equipped the bike with wheeli...