We’ve been adjusting to our slightly downsized show schedule this year, but one race that we absolutely could not miss was the first Goodguys Show for the year and though our Spectre Rig was not able to be present, we still were determined to get the Spectre Carbon Camaro back on the autocross track for the Del Mar event.
The best thing about the Del Mar Goodguys Show was that it was three days of intense autocross. The west coast is always fun because it brings some big names to the game including Mike Maier of Maier Racing, Mary Pozzi, Kyle and Stacy Tucker from DSE, Bret Voelkel from Ride Tech, Aaron Ogawa from Hotchkis and many many more.
The showdown in the Street Machine Class was finally determined with a shootout between Aaron Ogawa driving the Hotchkis E-Max Challenge and Mary Pozzi in her Second Gen Camaro. It finally came down to Pozzi finishing with a 7/1000 lead over Aaron, a very close and intense race. Rob Phillips took home the Truck class with his first Goodguys Autocross win ever and Mike Maier went home with the Pro Class award in his ’66 Mustang.
Kyle Newman and Newman Car Creations put on quite a show in the ’55 and the Wagon. The Wagon was a blast because of the mock spoiler and groceries in the back. At one point he even got the Cheerios box to fall out of the wagon and onto the track, and announcer Chad Reynolds swooped it up for a quick snack between runs.
Spectre Intakes also were overwhelmingly present at the Goodguys Car Show. Not only could they be spotted on the Autocross Course, but walking around the show we saw several Spectre Filters and Intakes were being used on cars.
We recently attended the So Cal Challenge out at Adam’s Karting track in Riverside, CA. Since it was right in our backyard, we couldn’t resist.
We had gone out to watch the Tuesday night racing at Adam’s before, but had never competed in an event with one of the Spectre R&D cars. This event seemed like too much fun to miss, so Brandy took the wheel of the Carbon Camaro and headed on-track.
Because it is primarily a go-kart track, the turns at Adams are slightly tighter and the track is slick compared to a car or motorcycle course like Willow Springs. Overall, the Spectre Carbon Camaro did very well.
In the bracket race Brandy did very well and won her first two rounds, but Jon Rasmussen and his ’72 Nova triumphed in in the final race. We can’t be mad, Jon has been getting better and better in the Nova and it showed as he took out the Spectre Camaro in the third bracket race. Mary Pozzi went on to take first overall, Mike Hickman took first in the truck class and Don Chemello won the street rod class. Not a bad showing for Spectre-filtered cars and trucks!
By the end of the day everyone was exhausted and ready to head out to get some rest for the Goodguys Car Show/ Autocross the next day. We all had a great time and can’t wait till we can go back to Adam’s and compete with everyone again.
Race-Mart, Inc. President and Founder, Paul Fink, drove the company’s dragster to a Quick Rod Runner Up finish during the IHRA Pro-Am race on Sunday March 25th at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Bradenton, Florida. Fink lost the final round red lighting at the start by .001 seconds to Steve Muller. This was Race-Mart’s first final round appearance of the year and was hard fought including close wins over IHRA Quick Rod standouts Gary Marshall, Otis Henry and Patrick Keene.
“This was one of the most talented fields of drivers I’ve ever raced with. Everyone was running dead on their number and all of the racers were right on perfect reaction times all weekend. We are seriously hoping there are more finals to come this year as we head to some of the largest bracket races in the country and some NHRA National events.”, Fink commented.
Fink explained, “In order to be successful in the automotive aftermarket parts business, it’s absolutely essential that we race what we sell and test some products that we want to sell. Our customers need to know that we do what they do and that we fully understand the products as well as the trials and tribulations that racers experience. We are also very thankful to our strategic marketing partners including Hedman Hedders, Spectre Performance, Titan Motorsports, Fragola Performance and Alan Pope Performance Transmissions”.
About Race-Mart, Inc
Race-Mart® is an automotive performance aftermarket e-commerce distributor that sells racing products, street performance products, products for show vehicles, off road truck-jeep parts and truck accessories all through their website www.race-mart.com. With administrative offices in Tampa, Florida Race-Mart® ships product from sixteen strategically located distribution centers around the country.
One of our fellow musclecar aftermarket vendors in SoCal is the crew at Hotchkis Sport Suspension. Like Spectre, Hotchkis spends a lot of time at the track for R&D, and they often invite along some customer cars to join them. We were delighted to be invited to play with the Hotchkis H-Team at Willow Springs Raceway this month.
We ran a condensed version of the Streets of Willow counterclockwise which threw many of us off. It’s amazing how different a familiar racetrack becomes when you run it in the opposite direction.
It was a great test-bed though for right and left hand turns, and it was quite helpful for making sure the car was dialed in along not to mention the fun of hitting some pretty intense speeds down the hill on the straightaway!
Not only were the usual H-Team members out –including several with Spectre intakes and filters on their rides– but along with Dan Weishaar, Mike Hickman, Carl Casanova, Aaron Ogawa and Rob Phillips, Matt D’Andria from Motorator and comedian Chris Titus came out to play as well.
At the end of the day, everyone was exhausted with all the laps we got in and a lot was accomplished. We would like to thank John Hotchkis for inviting us! Hopefully we will be able to attend more of those in the future. It’s really nice to see our products in use by so many awesome drivers!
We were glad to see all our racing buddies from last year in Southern California for Run to the Coast.
There were two full days of intense racing that consisted of three events: Autocross, Road Racing and the Brake Stop Squared Challenge –which was sort of like what you’d get if drag racing and slalom had a baby, really fun!
This was the Spectre Carbon Camaro’s first official race event for the new year. This was our chance to get the Camaro dialed again with the new set of bigger Baer brakes in the rear and though we had a couple of obstacles, including a frayed throttle cable, it was still an excellent chance to work out the details and get back in the swing of things.
By the end of the weekend, the front tires were toast and needed to be replaced, but that was definitely a sign that we went all out. Brian Finch helped get the car dialed in on Saturday as he took the car for a couple laps and offered his advice. Finch has always been very supportive to the Spectre Team and we consider him family. He’s always been very helpful to Brandy as she gets more and more comfortable in the driver’s seat.
For results on this event visit: http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?p=867
For more photos, head over to the Spectre Flickr stream.
Since we never miss an opportunity to look at racecars, we took a quick tour through the NHRA Motorsports Museum while we were at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona.
We found Brandy’s driving instructor, Karen Salvaggio’s Factory Five race car, displayed right in the middle of the museum. That made Miss Morrow feel quite famous!
As landspeed fans, we were excited to see the Mooneyes Streamliner on display, but the two things that really caught our attention on this trip were the yellow race tractor (just in case we ever get into making filters for tractors and tractor racing) as well as the vintage Bobby Grim Helmet on display.
We’re lucky to have a collection this cool right nearby, and if you are in the area, it’s well worth the admission.
Once known as the Oakland Roadster Show, the Grand National Roadster Show has been held in Pomona for the last nine years. Last year our Spectre Speedliner was on display, and this year we decided to just enjoy the show as spectators. Well, that didn’t go as planned. We couldn’t make it halfway down an aisle before someone stopped us to ask where the 400mph racecar was! There were a lot of our fellow land speed racers there, and it definitely gave us salt fever. We promise, next year…we’ll bring it back out.
Every year there’s a theme to the show and this year’s show theme was “Futuristic” and one car which really seemed to fit that theme was the in-progress second gen Camaro in the Pure Visions booth. At first you would have thought it was the Spectre Carbon Camaro, but the car didn’t quite have the flares ours does. We may be partial to those cars, but we thought Strope’s build was one of the most exciting things at the show. We can’t wait till the build is done and we see it out as one final piece. Hopefully we’ll be able to help out with the air intake. After all, we sure know 2nd gen Camaros!
As always, we were excited to see some Spectre Intakes on cars, and this show always has so much potential for product awareness and growth. Gearhead Garage featured a first gen Camaro with our intake tubing and we also saw our friends Tony and Debra’s ’55 Chevy Nomad out of Sebastopal, CA. Eventually, we would like to start seeing more Spectre intakes on the Lowrider and Street Truck Community.
We plan to be back out with our truck and trailer next year so keep an eye out for us.
One of the best parts about the MPMC Conference is the Wednesday night party at the Source Interlink (SORC) Headquarters. SORC is the publisher of most of the popular automotive magazines on the newsstands, and their shop in El Segundo is like an amusement park for gearheads. The facility has lifts, photo coves, archives and a theme bar!
The party is always a car show extravaganza, and we really like seeing the magazine project cars in various stages of being built. It makes us feel better about our own projects!
Our friends over at RPM Hot Rods are involved with the small but growing World of Wheels show in Pittsburgh, PA.
We weren’t able to make it to the show, but were well represented by Gerry Kerna’s “Runt” 1967 Nova, which makes great use of Spectre products, and won an award at the show! Go Gerry!
Every January starts off with the speed dating event of the aftermarket industry, the MPMC conference in El Segundo, CA. Unlike SEMA which is all glitz and glamor, MPMC is a no-nonsense three days of meetings between manufacturers and media. We like it because it gives us a chance to catch up with friends from the magazines and other high performance companies.
Though we said we were going to keep our hotel room makeover simple this year, we still ended up with several luggage cart loads of display in our room. How does that keep happening? We blame Brandy’s layout technology.
This year we had a couple big ticket items to feature including our Cowl Airbox tray, the Over the Top Sheet Metal Plenum, the complete new line of late model intakes with filter color options: red, blue, white, and black and much more.
Some of the little features were our new custom cut-to-fit flex boots, our LS blade style adapter, and new line of throttle body spacers.
We were pleased to see that many of the other companies, and even the media outlets are finally catching on to social media. Everyone had a Facebook page, an iPhone app or a website they were promoting. This was just what we wanted to hear because our social media marketing strategies have been increasing every month. Now there are more online sources we can work with to keep our friends and customers up to date on our new products, customer spotlights and events that we attend and feature.
The days were long, but well worth it. We’re looking forward to seeing many of the projects we discussed get built over the next few months!
We get a lot of questions from Mopar fans asking us why our project stable doesn’t currently have any active Pentastar projects (We do have a Dart in the rafters, stay tuned for a closer look at that lil’ guy in an upcoming post.)
The main reason is, who wants to compete with Dan “the man” Weishaar? Seriously, look at this thing. Can we do better than that?
It’s a real 383-powered ‘68 Roadrunner and it barely weighs more than our Dart. At 3556 pounds, the blue bird seems remarkably nimble skirting the cones at a Good Guys Autocross and Dan doesn’t limit his driving adventures to nice, rubbery cone barriers.
In the last year, we’ve seen Weishaar at Optima events, at SEMA, on local cruise days and, perhaps most impressively, braving the hill at our own Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge. Perhaps our favorite thing about the Weishaar Plymouth is that Dan is never afraid to jump in and wrench on the thing, and he often includes his whole family. We approve of family automotive time.
If you want to build your own road warrior B-body, you’ll have to talk to Dan at one of the 2012 events. Luckily, his sweet cowl airbox is available from us, so at least you can make your engine bay look the part.
For more specs on Dan’s car, check out some of the following links.
