Sunday, May 1, 2016

When Your Cop Car Isn't Quite Fast Enough

Here's what you need and we're guessing ten seconds in the quarter mile, maybe better.



You may notice it's an AMX and they made a hot rod 390 AMX which some came to know and love. I think Doc may have had one but his trash cars don't seem to show external modifications.  He will put 700+ horsepower under the hood but you won't know it until he lights it up.  I haven't seen this in action but I think that's how it works.  He makes the cars look elegant and that's part of why I don't get 'trash cars' but they get ferocious when he gives it some loud.  The only reaction then is, holy shit, what you got in that thing?


In fact, the most famous Doc story and maybe The Raven hasn't heard it.  He likes the old sagas, you know.

Doc built up a Chevy II and it looked quite a bit like this one but he got the most incredible white (kind of) paint job for it and it didn't just have big rear tires but rather wrinkle slicks.  He was projecting ten second quarters for it when it got to the drag strip.  It was a beautiful machine and it shook windows when he started it.  This was a bona fide, flame throwing beast.

He wanted to take it out for a test run and he decided to do it out on the highway because he would be busted instantly if he did it anywhere around where we lived.  He towed it out there on a trailer and this was looking all out Pro Stock which was the class he intended to run, extremely fast.

The car was duly fired and we were kicked back watching because this was like a NASA launch.  The countdown had been going on for the best part of a year, we had seen the anticipation, so here was the moment to get a taste of what it could do.

Doc held nothing back and that motor flaming roared to the huge delight of all watching and then the front wheels lifted well up into the air.  Unknown what terrifying sensation this brought to Doc ... but ... the best of the story was yet to come.

When the front wheels went up, well, one of them didn't.  For whatever reason, the lug nuts were not correctly tightened and the wheel came off to go independently bouncing down the road.

In fairly short order, the wheels came back down again and Doc may not have known before that time one of them wasn't there anymore.  There's no telling what thoughts that brought to Doc but hopefully he finds it funny after all this time.

Note:  the story ends there because there was no violent smoking crash.  It was just something you seriously don't want to happen.


This wasn't the disaster it seems even when it sucked outrageously for Doc at the time.  He got it fixed back up again and it went on to race at Edgewater but I don't know how well it did.  It had to have been competitive in the class, tho.

Even if nothing else came of it, he made one hell of a yarn to tell and not one to easily top when you're swapping tales from your bar stools.

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