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2001 Cover

LAKES

The best thing about Land Speed Racing is the hostile environment where it takes place: it's either blazing hot sun that reflects off the salt up the leg of your shorts and sunburns your whoozit, or choking silica dust swirling into your lungs and clogging the air filters on your 3-2 setup. But for the results of the romantic write ups that appear everywhere about it, this kind of racing had been for the racers - a hard-core bunch - and a very few spectators. The spectators, in their own way, are as hearty as the racers. Now it's kind of 'en vogue' so there are more lookers. Some are real fans but the tough 'room' keeps away (most of) the Philistines

TRUTH TAKES A RIDE WITH BELL RACING

The racers have 6 meets at the lakes, 1 at Muroc and really only one, maybe two, weeks (with 50/50 odds of good weather) up in Utah each year to experiment with the stuff that has kept them awake all winter. And at El Mirage you don't get to make many passes...sometimes only one in a day. Not much opportunity for tweakin' and testin'. The moral is that the participants are real racers. There is no money reward, no great crowds of admirers, no sponsorships that matter much, and the surroundings are almost always inclement one way or another and.........they keep coming back and back and back like a frickin' Energizer Bunny.

And they have company these days.

The Greasers are there in their black and white and shades of grey cars, cruising the pits, camping out on-the-cheap, paying lots of attention to the racing and looking for all the world like a page from a Don Montgomery book. They are going to inherit this piece of the earth. Their Ol' Ladies are often with them and their little kids, too, and they are planning to race.

Jason Oberhelman is probably Crew Chief for the Kitchen (Shop Nite in Hop Up Annuals) roadster, and that can only lead to his building his own race car. Brett Reed (see his roadster in a Peter Vincent article in HU 2001) is building a car for Bonnie. He's one of that group. Brent Bell, with the able assistance of his Dad, is pulling their C/GR through the 60's and will build another motor this winter and make the 70's easily, while the whole fam damily (4 generations, if the Grandpappy - a scooter and lakes car racer from back then- dared to come out and get hooked again!) is camped out in the pits making good grub and serving cold MGD's to prospective Crew Chief applicants.

It's about the racing. It's about racing the IRON, and racing that iron is the end itself: it's the means to the end and it is the end. Most pursuits aren't as pure as this.

Bell's roadster has a prominent sponsor (The Hop Up Publishing Empire) whose role has not yet been fully-defined. The cost hasn't been determined, but we are hoping it's something like a suitcase of beer and a handful of Cubanos. That we can afford. We intend to stick around as moral support 'cuz they don't need much else. They have the tech, the tune, the look...all of it...... handled.

This is another case of the next generation getting it right while the present generation is still around to appreciate it, and among the many levels of hot rod, custom, racing pursuits, this seems to us to be the one most likely to maintain some illusion of the early days. These 20-30ish guys like the looks of the A/B/T roadsters, and flatheads and bangers and small block Chevys are still pretty OK with them.It won't boom, but, after the 'glory' of all the 50th Anniversary wears off, there will be a sustained and cool continuation of the racing.

We also hear that a handful of our own mentors are laying out chalk lines on their shop floors.......looking into their parts rooms......and...yeah. ..gonna go back to the lakes (maybe with bangers? Whoa, Daddy!) and take their kids with them. Lucky Bastard North is, in another incarnation, converting his street piece to a SR runner, probably ready by summer. Watch for right-looking cars that will merit some study. We can't wait. If you are a believer, and not a rank poser, you should go out and experience it. You will have visited the cradle.........

T n' A or MORTIFIED MODIFIED or MOD SQUAD or MILD MOD

Now, we won't belabor the details, but it was an easy fix for which there was no stinkin' time...this.....after about two months of the "Nights 'til 1:00 A.M.and Every Weekend Leave Work Early When Possible and Maybe Still Not Make It But This Is How They Did It Back Then Do It All Yourself With the Tools And Parts and Skill Ya Got-Boogie"

LOOK AT THE PROPORTION ON THIS CRITTER

But look at it, Man. A righteous home-built job from right here in River City. In fact, Mildness is President of the River City Roadsters.......for life. The Throwback Rod will probably debut at the next hillclimb (if they let him run). And he'll probably terrorize the BLM and spin some do-nuts at El Mirage and Muroc and all that 'cuz, see, he's a Hop Up Guy, and just a little edgy: not tacky, just has some mis-behavin' in his gene pool and although quite mild-mannered, when he puts that bandana on (remember that picture of the guy going to Muroc in Rodder's Journal? It's Mildness) it's kind of a Jeckel and Hyde deal. You know, like that ol' Disney cartoon where Goofy is the crazed driver.......but MM2 doesn't get mad....he just gets GOIN'.......and squallin' tars and brodies seem to be part of it. Must have the same recessive gene that Jake has.

Kinder makes you want to put a flathead banger in something just to go out brodie-in'. Hmmmmmmmmm..............................

The modified fad hasn't played out and some of the coolest are still in the box: Jess Connor's Buick 8 Inliner, The Mild Mod, Jimmy McCord's Whippet-Olds, all follow the polished, plated trimmed and rimmed models from Stroupe, the guy in Canada and most recently Jeff from Redondo, whose articulating-headlight model came to our attention at the Throttler's picnic. Expect a Hop Up 2002 feature on several of these.

So go out to your shop and lay out a Brodie-Maker. ................ we'll see ya in the dirt.

BUILT JUST LIKE THEY USTA