Shop Tour - Hardcore Drag Racing

  This cool looking Gasser is based on a 1962 Mercury Comet. The Ford-Lincoln-Mercury exec’s were looking for a catchy name and they found one ! The NASA space-race was on everyone's mind at the time, so they named it after NASA’s mission “Mercury”, added in Comet for an extra nod to the space-race and you have a winner. The body was painted a classic matte-black. Throw in some old-school lettering and some period looking decals and you have a classic race car for the street.     The body was customized with the typical racer tricks of the day, the front bumper was removed & the grill was worked over by removing the inner headlights.   Poking through the fiberglass hood sits a transplanted Chevrolet 454 big-block, topped off with a tunnel ram and dual quad Holley carburetors. The motor was hopped-up with a solid roller cam and roller rocker arms.  Backing up the big-block is the heavy duty TH-400 with a high stall converter and manual valve body, the transmission shifts at

    The Wicked 1 is a 1948 Anglia two-door sedan owned by Gerard Milidantri from Suffern, New York.  He’s a general manager of an aerospace company that overhauls turbine engines and on the weekends he runs the Anglia at South East Gasser events.   The club brings back  Drag Racing from the late sixties and the cars must have period correct parts that you could buy up until 1967 and no later . No modern electronics , no automatics, no electronic fuel injection . Only open headers & a 4-speed , perfect for wheels up launches. We caught up with The Wicked 1 & Gerard at Island Dragway in Great Meadows , New Jersey.   This Anglia was hand-built in Pennsylvania in the late sixties by a fellow named GK Bernard. It was later purchased by SEGA emcee Quain Stott .   At a SEGA event in 2019 it was the first time Gerard had seen the Anglia, and it made such an impression that he sold the his Corvette and decided to pursue SEGA racing. In 2021 they struck a deal and bought the Angl