Flight Of The Rumble Zee
Words & photography: James Webber
When Ford released the Zodiac in 1950 it was billed as an executive car, and the largest passenger car in the range until their replacements came in 1972. What Ford didn’t say was that, with a bit of fettling you could still have that executive, four-door car but with a 300+ bhp V8, take your family up the quarter mile and still go and do the weekly shop after. That’s what we have here with Steve Harrison’s model. Although he didn’t do all the work, he finished it off and is fully intent on cruising and racing the car. If the name is familiar, Steve used to own the ‘Anxious’ Pop and regularly crews with Steve Wright and the Fugly Pacer car. I first saw the car on one of the pre-lockdown cruises that took place down here and loved the whole aesthetic of it: four door, full interior, tubbed rear, big V8…Steve takes up the story, “The car was an on/off project started first by a guy called Arthur, who owns the ‘California Dreaming’ Ford Pilot and ‘Misdemeanour’ Ford Pop. It then moved to a chap called Ferge but not much happened between them. Then on July 1st, 2017, talented and prolific Pop builder, Rick Hooper, got his hands on it and work began in earnest.”
See the rest of James’s feature in the PDF soon
Talk up your brand.
At Easter, way back in mid-April, there was a taster of things to come when Santa Pod enjoyed a weekend of gorgeous sunshine for the season-opening Festival of Power. This is the event for which all the Pro and Sportsman teams had spent a full six months of winter preparing, so that when Easter finally rolled around, they’d be ready and raring to go.
Not all teams, of course. While the Top Fuel teams rolled in in their 40-tonne articulated race trucks, days early, and began preparing, others were still thrashing away in the garage doing work that they still hadn’t got around to despite having had a full 29 weeks since the National Finals 2021.
James Murray, in Top Speed Automotive Street Eliminator, for example, who rolled up so late on Thursday night that they wouldn’t let him in, and he spent the night in the camper van on the wrong side of the ticket barrier. Then, on the morning of Friday 15th, when he finally got in, he spent so long dicking around unloading and getting set up that he missed the first round of qualifying. See, this sort of shite just doesn’t happen to John Force…
See the rest of this in the forthcoming PDF
Melbourne Again
Words & photography: Dave Smith, Toni Fisher
The last weekend in July was a bit special in many ways. Firstly, it was the 25th anniversary of Trevor Duckworth’s Straightliners organisation, the champions of motorcycle drag racing and speed record attempts, and they’d be celebrating their silver jubilee at this event.
Second, after record high temperatures and blistering sunshine just a week or so earlier, Britain decided that we needed to be reminded of where we lived by delivering a load of rain.
Third, after having done sweet FA with my Mustang all year, I was finally going to take it for a nice long run out to the event. The reasoning behind this was James, who has been elbow-deep in Cortina since May, saying that we needed to get out there and do stuff and see people because, once again, another summer was pissing away and we’d done nothing for months.
So, on Friday evening, we’d arranged to meet at Tibshelf services. When he called and said, “I’m setting off now,” I replied “Cool, so am I!” I threw all my rubbish in the Mustang, fired up the motor, pushed the clutch in (which required both feet) and… nothing. The cable had seized with the clutch disengaged. So I quickly transferred all my crap to Jean Claude Damned Van, the old LDV, and headed off making about the same amount of noise as the Mustang but with about a fifth of the horsepower and half the cruising speed.
See the whole report in the forthcoming PDF
And there’s more…
We’ll also have some news and whatnot, maybe a little spot of tech, some progress reports from the garages and driveways (such as Ryan’s Quick Brick, right), hopefully a few snaps from the NSRA Hot Rod Supernationals and the Melbourne meet from May, plus anything else I can scratch together and, if there’s a lot of space to fill, a giant photocopy of my arse.
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