Pro Street

The place we have to go right now is the 1985 timeframe and talk about a fast-growing category of IHRA drag racing known as Top Sportsman.

About the same time that Stanley, House, and Grimes were getting busy with their blown Alki cars in the '78 and '79 timeframe, IHRA started a class called Pro Street, which was a fast bracket racing class.

The AHRA had originally started it, calling the category Top Comp, and in the AHRA version, it was mostly injected dragsters kind of like this that competed in it.

The IHRA version was aimed at more full-bodied cars, and the class took root.

As far as Top Sportsman went, it was effectively all happening with nitrous, and there's an easy question to ask with that.

Why? For the simple fact that this line existed in the IHRA rulebook, quote, superchargers permitted with gasoline only on full-bodied cars, end quote.

What's weird is that when Pro Street got started in the '70s, methanol was allowed in full-bodied cars, but shortly into the class's existence, it was written out as it evolved into Top Sportsman.

This made larger and larger, more deeply huffing nitrous engines the runaway favorite combo of Top Sportsman racers nationwide, and the larger the engines got, and the better the chassis got, and the better the nitrous delivery got, the faster they went.

And, you know, so that was an interesting way to grow up.

As a kid, I, I have a vivid memory, um, during the Pro Street era in the '80s, that my dad had a '71 Corvette Stingray convertible, and he turned it into a Pro Street car.

So it had those center line wheels that were solid and had the rivets.

It had side pipes, and it had a 671 supercharged 383 with a bug catcher.

And the bug catcher, the air scoop, was higher than the, the windshield.

And he would drive me to school in that.

If you're n- you're either gonna be a car guy or hate it if that's kind of, uh, the way you're growing up, is there was definitely a lot like, uh, you couldn't be ignored in a bright red blown Pro Street Corvette getting dropped off at elementary school.

[inhales] In my case, it made me a car guy.

Puts power in the hands of people who have no business making decisions.

They had the Pro Street area in, in a big grassy area that, that was surrounded by curbing, you know, six-inch-tall curbing.

So they had laid down two-by-fours and plywood and all this stuff to get these really... 'Cause most of the cars were that low on coil springs.

There was a line to get up in there, so I just drove around them and I-

Oh, yeah

... uh, locally there in Jasper.

And, and at the same time, I, uh, started building a new car, a Pro Street blown, injected, um, Pro Street Mustang, '70 Mustang, and I put air springs on it.

And, um, worked out pretty good.

You know?

So I said it earlier, this is all about build for the future, but we coming from the past with the Pro Street build.

Ooh.

Oh, the Pro Street.

[laughs]

We rhyming, baby.

It's all that line, baby.

It's the Pro Street build.