Drag Racing Blog

VW drag racing from the Outlaw Turbo class, which is also run at the Irwindale Drag Day races. There were ten VW drag racers qualifying for an eight-car field. These cars were really getting with the program, there were three race cars that qualified in the five-second range. Racers in attendance included Roger Crawford from Heads-Up Performance, in his nitrous-powered Karmann Ghia, Hector Urias(R.I.P.) running his VW Beetle with the Type 1 transmission, Eric Calabrese in the Red Baron Pro Mod VW, etc. Kudos to class sponsor Marty Staggs from M-SpecMotorSports.com, and all of the Outlaw Turbo VW drag racing class sponsors, as well as Rich Kimball and the Bug-In crew!

There are also a couple of license passes in this video.

PRA ’94 from Ocean Street Video starts off with a look at highlights from the 1993 VW drag racing season. This compilation of Super Street video clips opens up with Greg Brinton in his Heads-up Performance ’63 sedan, taking on Gary Berg. Gary and his dad Gene Berg were dominating the VW Super Street scene in the early ’90’s. About the only way that you were going to beat the Berg machine was at the tree, because they were making good power. There is a classic Gene Berg sighting in this clip, of him walking next to the Berg sedan, wearing that famous blue hat. The huge guy blocking the shot there is Hotshots photographer Bryan Robinson, one of the preeminent shooters of the day.

The Pro Racing Association VW Super Street class was intended to be a less expensive class of drag racing, and was therefore based on the stock VW pan structure, instead of a tube chassis. It was a pounds-per-cubic-inch class. However, as in all racing, it quickly blew up into a serious money class. There were plenty of participants, running in the eight-race PRA Super Street series, but if you wanted to win, it was going to take a lot of work. It was the entry-level class for heads-up PRA racing, and privateers like Chris Tool and his dad, Bruce Fordyce, and others, were a force to be reckoned with. There was a hardcore contingent from Japan, who also raced in their own PRA series over there; Shin Mukai and Mr. Watanabe come to mind. Announcing duties for most of the PRA events were done by “Dyno” Don Chamberlin.

The original PRA ’94 videotape was divided up into an event-oriented structure. Creating this Super Street-only video required re-editing it, so some things are repeated, and there are some mistakes.