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A Late night street racing story.

So I turn onto the main north south blvd. Heading north. Enjoying my ‘73/4spd Cúda powered by a 360, it was a fairly potent street ride for the day able to run an about a 12 flat in the 1/4. As it’s nothing over the top to brag about, it was used everyday at times for an 80 mile round trip commute.

I pass by a ‘71 Cutlass while down shifting to stop at a light close to home to wrap up the night of watching a bunch of back street alley racing. I think nothing of the sudden appearance of the car but it was nice. The rear view mirror told me it was a Gold and a convertible.

He rolls up to me at the next light and ohhhhhs and ahhhs with his buddy over the Cúda, which IMO; is a pile of crap and rust. Trust me, I paid $600 for the car, it’s a pile……

His friend starts to have diarrhea of the mouth running it a little hard. I look at the driver and asked if he was going to shut up his friend or am I going to embarrassed to both of you and shut you both up? The look on his face is semi nervous and excited. I’m not sure which way he’s going to go with this, until, he accepts the challange with a “OK! Let’s go.”

I perform a 60ft side step of the clutch burn out, lock’em up right at the cross walk line and wait. And wait as he slowly rolled up. I looked over and said, “I’ll meet ya at the next light.” Which was about a thousand feet away.

I completely hand out a rather proper pasting to this guy. He rolled up and said he wanted to try again, which was absolutely fine by me since the next light was a bout the equal distance. Where I completely pasted him again. But it was a green light so I relaxed and leveled it off.

He catches up and is WOWed by the cars performance against his. I’m burning rubber very well in 1/2&3 years, chirping 4th.
He wants to go again. In retrospect, this must be his first time out on the street late late night fooling around. He was super excited and totally stoked! The streets are 100% empty for this.

I oblige him with the same line except this time, the next light is an easy half mile apart. We are leaving the populated part of town. As before, I row through the 4spd as if big money is riding on this and let the engine rev out to 6800. Finally getting to use all of 4th gear in full. The tach spins up and I let off of it taking it out of gear. Then! All of a sudden, but just a moment slips by and he freight trains past me at a speed that creates such a ruckus of wind my whole car starts to yar pretty hard. Man! I really mean to tell you that guys was MOVING!!! I was doing about a buck-twenty when it glanced and BOOM! He went by.

This same scenario repeats 3 more times until we start to get into the next populated town due north of where we started. Each time I’m mid way through 3rd gear, I’d check the mirror to see where he was at. At each glance that now turns into a stare, I watch his headlight grow larger and larger and LARGER! I said to myself, “Holyshyst! This guy is freakin moving!”

When I finally catch up to him at the next light, he asks why I keep letting off. That’s when I explained the car has a narrow job it’s built for, the 1/4 mile only and since some of these lights are greater than, I’m all done and there is no sense pushing the car beyond its design duty.

I asked him what powered the car. Then it all made sense to how it went down. His Cutlass was a 455 auto w/3.55’s. Slow on the get go, a total freight train up top on the big end. We played a little cat and mouse for a minute where I then realized, CRAP! I’m at least 20 miles from home. Is almost 3:30am and I’m toast. I honk and bail out off the north bound side to head homewards, south bound. He honks back and I’m double surprised to see 4 hands pop out of the car, he had their girl friends in the back seats, who also waved as they cruised by. The hand differences were most obvious to note.

I think they had a great night myself as the driver was all smiles and the hand waves were certainly the big happy hand wave kind.
I’m had fun for sure. I never seen the fella again or the Gold colored convertible Cutlass, can’t say I seen that one ether since that is not exactly the cheap & popular set of boxes to click.

While it’s not a thrashing race track story, it’s more favorite tail to be told.

I don’t favor street racing. But this night was into the wee hours with NO ONE AROUND on a 3 lane wide road. Not justifying it, just saying NO ONE WAS AROUND EXCEPT US.

The track is where it’s at and I will only duke it out there.