Nostalgia Drags NAPA AUTOPARTS DRAGWAY

HOOKED UP AND SMOKING!

This is one of the coolest events and weekends ever!

If you love old school drag racing, hot rods and muscle cars like I do, then you NEED to get along to this! Bay Rodders Tauranga run this awesome event at the Drag strip in Meremere at the beginning of each April. This is for any old school drag car or hot rod built before 1978. But only open to vehicles with an American or New Zealand Origin. This year was extra special as not only were the Wild Bunch and FED cars smoking up the track but the NZ Vintage Gassers were in there too. This made for an absolutely full-on day of racing from some seriously cool and fast cars. I think the appeal of the Nostalgia’s is that it is hard-core grab hold of that steering wheel and hang on type racing! Seriously, these cars seem to be in a state of controlled out of controllness! That’s not even a word, but nothing describes these things! Technology does not even enter into these cars. It is fully old school from mechanical injection to good old carburettors bolted to them blowers! It takes you straight back to the days when your left leg was stronger than your right for the clutch and you didn’t shift gears in that four-speed box, you slammed them! Now don’t be thinking the old Vintage Gassers are slow either! These things fair launch. With the front wheels high in the air and that back bumper hitting the tarmac, crossing the line at 157.5mph (253.5kph), at a time of 8.993 seconds to rip down that quarter mile drag strip. Don’t be thinking you’re going to take that on in your modern-day shopping basket! The Wild Bunch are even faster tearing out passes into the low seven’s and even six second quarter miles at around the 200mph mark. They definitely look a lot more under control than the Gassers. Although this only tricks you into a false sense of controllness, there’s that word again! The FED cars bring out the class and style of the early Nostalgic drag cars. They are simply pieces of art which just so happens to have a huge blown V8 placed into them! Pulling much the same times as the Wild Bunch cars and lifting the front wheels off the tarmac when leaving the start line, these things are arrows