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Up
Front:
Many
of you won’t like the subject of this editorial, but I hope you’ll nevertheless
read through it. Drag racing is likely to go through major changes in
the next five years, changes that we won’t like, but will have to learn
to deal with. None of the negativism our sport might face in the years
to come will be the fault of either the National or International Hot
Rod Associations. It will, when all is said and done,
Shortly
after I joined the staff of Car Craft Magazine in January of 1973 – long
before many of you were born – the face of drag racing changed
dramatically because of the then ever-expanding gas crunch. If you’re
too young to remember it, let me assure you that your parents spent many
an hour patiently – and sometimes not so patiently – waiting their
turn at the pumps, where they saw the raise they just got evaporate like
the fumes from a spilled gallon of the precious liquid. It
was not a pleasant time for car enthusiasts, and that certainly included
drag racers from Maine to California. As
the already fabulously wealthy oil sheiks from Saudi Arabia and the other
oil-rich gulf states (better include Venezuela in the mix) continued to
stuff their bank accounts while building ever more opulent palaces -- with
most of their people living in abject poverty--Americans whined about the
seemingly endless gas price increases to no avail. Our political leaders
were powerless against the oil cartel, a situation that continues today,
despite rhetoric to the contrary. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t Anyone
who naively thinks we should just take over some oil-producing nation is
not paying attention to the facts. With most of our military might
committed to Iraq and Afghanistan there just aren’t enough troops left
for such an ill-advised adventure. Besides, if you think we’re already
being reviled in much of the world because of the current situation, that
would seem a trifle if we were to expand our military objectives to
include the takeover of an oil-rich nation without provocation. Even Tony
Blair would bail out, leaving us to go it alone, and in the modern world
that’s just not possible. But
enough of the political rhetoric. As the early 70s gas crunch deepened,
and more and more commentators and writers began decrying Detroit’s
propensity for building gas-guzzlers, Washington responded by first
proposing a national speed limit of 55 MPH, which, despite the best
efforts of car enthusiasts, resoundingly passed. Unless you lived through
it you have no idea of how tedious even the shortest journey became, and
if you lived in the west, where speed limits were often 75 MPH, it was
even more frustrating. Some states took advantage of the new speed limits
and lined their coffers with the fines coughed up by the thousands of
drivers who simply had no experience in driving that slowly on highways
designed for speeds 20 or 30 miles per hour faster than the law allowed.
The
Big 3 auto makers also responded to the gas crunch, because if there were
two things they wanted no part of it was governmental interference, and a
loss of sales to the gathering storm of import manufacturers (if memory
serves me on this, none were yet building cars in the States). To
avoid further dealings with Washington, Detroit began building smaller,
more fuel-efficient cars, hence the Pinto and similar offerings. It was a
desperate move, with some of the cars being obviously hastily designed and
assembled. When I next went to Detroit for what was then known as a round
of "long-lead previews," so-named because these took place in
July, and most magazines were working on their October issues, I was
totally unprepared for what I saw. The
Mustang appeared to be – and was – anemic in both looks and
performance. The Camaro was no better. Now, before you start e-mailing,
consider that these models, no matter your personal loyalty, are aligned
only by name to the legendary models we all know and love from Detroit.
What I most remember about the Chrysler program was a news conference in
which an executive attempted to deflate the attack made on one of their
models by Consumer Reports Magazine. The publication claimed that if you
were driving in a straight line and violently yanked the steering wheel a
full 90 degrees and then let go the car would tip over! a
d v e r t i s e m e n t So,
what does this have to do with drag racing? With Detroit effectively out
of the performance car business, their support of motorsports began to
dwindle, and that certainly impacted drag racing in a negative manner.
Factory support effectively dried up, although a few back door programs
continued. Without
the active and aggressive involvement of the OEM manufacturers, racing
suffers, because no form of racing, from NHRA to whatever alphabetized
organization you care to name, can thrive without it. This is true
worldwide, believe it or not. I
arrived in Indianapolis for the NHRA Mac Tools U.S. Nationals on
Wednesday. The first thing the rental car shuttle driver told me was that
gas prices had gone from $2.54 per gallon of regular that morning to $3.09
per gallon that afternoon. By Thursday morning CNN was reporting $6 per
gallon prices in some areas. Better than 50% of the car buying public are
behind the wheel of gas-eating SUVs. Congress is making noises about more
fuel-efficient vehicles. In recent months numerous commentators have
become outspoken in their disdain of America’s taste for ever-larger
vehicles, most of them gas-guzzlers. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t Ostensibly,
the "blame" for this unconscionable price increase is Hurricane
Katrina. No one is going to downplay this major national tragedy, one
we’ll all be affected by for years to come, but it’s hard to fathom
gas prices spiraling out of control like this in a matter of mere hours
due to a perceived, projected shortfall in supplies. And the increases
we’re seeing now may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. A cynic might
suggest that the gas companies are once again taking advantage of the
public’s lack of knowledge and understanding of the petroleum industry.
If
gas prices continue to rise or even remain at their current post-Katrina
levels we’ll see the impact in the form of smaller fields of competitors
and fewer spectators, simply because many of them won’t be able to
afford the fuel to get to the track. It could take our sport years to
recover, and I can only hope I’m wrong about this. If
the OEM manufacturers begin touting alternative fuels vehicles, and Hummer
ads fade from your TV, we could be in for another cycle of low-performance
vehicles and decreasing factory support for motorsports, drag racing
included. I’m not being the harbinger of doom, but don’t be caught off
guard if it does come to pass. Let’s
hope drag racing’s management is paying attention to the news rather
than the number of spectators in the seats in front of them. They should
be making plans for what could be a very different at least short-term
future for drag racing. |
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© Competitionplus 2005
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