The Mopar business I have been involved with for longer than I can remember, off and on since 1963. I have raced Dodges and Plymouths in drag racing and road racing ever since. Our experience in racing covers everything from drag, road racing SCCA & IMSA, Indy cars, Le Mans, 4 years doing F1 and just finished up doing 4 years in NASCAR. I seldom drive; I’m unusually in engineering doing R&D. The main point here is to tell everyone that high performance is our business and if some one wants polish and chrome, well that’s alright with me but we don’t do chrome and polish. We use to have a saying in high school, if it don’t go, chrome it! Again, there’s nothing wrong with chrome and polish, it’s very expensive to do, but we just concentrate on the performance end of hot rods and fast cars. In 1974, NHRA, a drag racing origination, outlawed the Hemi engine by means of making it or any car with a Hemi carry a lot of extra weight. The reason I was told at the time was that the Hemi was just too fast. Mr. Wally Parks said he would do anything to get a Chevy and a Ford together at the starting line for a final race at the national finals. If this means including outlawing the Hemi as to get the other two there to race, so be it. Well, that ended my drag racing days, I thought. At the time I have to say I really swore off drag racing forever. That changed the day I hooked up with Greg Fernald. Greg talked me into helping him with his orange 1968 Hemi type Dart. This Dart had a 440 wedge in it and everyone said that this car will never go faster than mid 12s in the quarter mile race. I had been away for a long time and it was a steep learning curve (still is), but learn we both did. This car I have to say was a real street car, Greg drove it to work every day. Full interior, radio with air conditioning. Yes it was featured in several magazines. Well, a few well learned tricks and this Dart was doing very low 11s on pump gas. By the way, this was a 3600 pound car in 1997, I have an old timing slip to prove it. Today I’m sure this would be a low 10 second car and by the way, no NOX! Next is an owner who was thinking of a Lamborghini Diablo, but it has a passenger problem. Like Al said, what can be as fast as a Diablo, especially top end, is as safe and stable plus carry 3 passengers. After some thought plus the help from his wife, how about a 1969 Daytona Charger with a Viper GTS-R drive train plus front suspension, electronics, cooling system and brakes all around? A full NASCAR type roll cage but a full leather interior. This thing pulls at 150MPH like a Diablo and that is only 3rd gear. The car is almost no fun to drive because it’s so good and easy to drive, even when driven fast. Next Al decided that a 1965 Dodge Cornet low 9 second car would be fun. Of course, again (everyone) talked about how this would never happen because 3600 pound big box Dodges just can’t do this. Well, 9.3 and 141MPH and that is without getting traction and launching at 3000RPM to boot. I believe with just a little work this Dodge will do very low 9s, maybe kiss the high 8s, and close to 150 MPH. Plus, no nox in any engine I do, all motor because that’s all you need. Yes sir, Mopar is spoken here and often!

Mopar
68' Charger R/T