A Good read Larry, Remind us when it is gonna be on. -Henry
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of W. Larry Glick Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 10:50 AM To: Air-Cooled Volkswagen Discussion List Subject: [vintagvw] A day at Firebird Raceway "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ." No, that's not right. "Call me Ishmael. ." No, that's not right either. Let's try this. "It was a dark and stormy night ." No, none of those are quite right so I'll start my own narrative.* Last Friday, the first, I was contacted by good friend, Mike Fischer, of Competition Engineering, who asked if I'd be willing to loan my car to appear in a filming, on the fifth, of a new automotive series "Burnout, The Ultimate Drag Racing Challenge". The series producer, Ray Iddings, was looking for two "daily driver" Volkswagens to be used at Firebird Raceway in the production. (Ray Iddings also produces "Pass Time" and is somehow affiliated with "Pinks.") Mr. Iddings wanted a couple of daily drivers as they would be used in a contest to see how quickly a group Universal Technical Institute (UTI) students could get into the cars. My car would be perfect for this. Mike was only able to get one other car owner, another Larry, to volunteer. Larry is the parts manager at Doug's Bugs and Bunnies in nearby Mesa. I towed my Super with my Chevrolet 454 SS truck. We were to be at the track around noon. When we got there we were asked by the Production Assistant to sign waivers and to hide our VW's. But, around 1 p.m. we had a rain delay for about thirty minutes. The twenty UTI students had no idea what the "contest" would be. They were a great bunch of kids as they were selected on the merits of their grade point average and class attendance. Little did they know that they would, as teams of ten students each, have to PUSH the VW's from the starting line to about 150 feet down the drag strip and back to the starting line! At that time the each team would pile into the cars and the first team to get all ten students into the car and shut the door would be the winner. The host of the show is Clay Millican, a top fuel dragster driver and six-time world champion in the IHRA drag racing series. At the beginning of the filming, Clay and the students met at the starting line where he explained what the contest would be and to separate them into two teams. One team would get red t-shirts and the other team would get blue t-shirts. The students would come back to Firebird in nine weeks (some time in December?) to film the final episode where each team would bring their car and have a best three-out-of-five drag race. The bad news was the losing team would have their race car crushed! Then there was another rain delay. What kind of cars you ask? I wasn't aware - nor were the students - as to what the project cars would be as the two cars were under covers at the base of the Firebird tower. The cars were unveiled toward the end of the day and right before the third rain delay, this time with hail. This much rain - and hail - is somewhat of an anomaly here in the Metro Phoenix area. The red team won the contest pushing Larry's Bug. Then the project cars were revealed. Both cars were mid-nineteen-nineties(?) Mustangs. The red team chose the silver one as it had a V-8 and a five-speed and the other team got the red car with a V-6(?) and an automatic. From what I heard later was the engines and transmissions would be replaced with high-performance V-8's and Powerglides. I also heard that each car was to run the quarter-mile in the ten-second range! I'm really grateful to Mike Fischer for arranging all this for me, he's a really good friend. I also enjoyed seeing the filming of the first episode of this new automotive series. I believe the series will debut in April, 2011. Lots of interesting stuff to see and hear during the filming. Probably one of the high points in my life. The high point for me - a drag racing fan for the last fifty or so years - was bench racing with Clay Millican for about a thirty minutes during the third rain delay. Difficult to top that! Pictures may be seen at: (For some unknown reason the time in pictures is about ninety minutes "fast".) http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a288/wlarryglick/A%20day%20at%20Firebi rd%20Raceway/ *With sincere apologies to: Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities;" Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick" or "The Whale;" and Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, "Paul Clifford." Larry in Scottsdale, AZ "Always learning" _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
