Their Cars May Be Smaller and Slower, but They Like Competing Too
There’s a new breed of grass-roots racer burning up the nation’s drag strips: import and compact-car fanciers whose involvement in a world of four- and six-cylinder engines, nitrous oxide and turbochargers has made them no less speed-hungry than the American muscle-car racers in whose thick rubber tracks they are following.
An import drag--or, to be more accurate, sport-compact event, because domestics are also involved--is a weird cousin to a conventional quarter-mile drag race. The Hondas, Mitsubishis, Mazdas, Nissans, Toyotas, Neons and, sometimes, Saturns usually burn rubber with their front tires, roar in a much higher register than their V-8 counterparts and in many cases run the quarter in slower times and speeds.
But for those who consider what these sport-compact car racers and tuners are doing, the events take on a whole new look.
A 12.6-second 107-mph run in a car than came stock from the factory as a family four-door with a buzzy little 90-cubic-inch engine rated at about 100 horsepower is just as impressive as a 10-second 140-mph run in a muscle car that was built to appeal to testosterone-charged teenage speed demons.
Drag racing appeals to sport-compact fanciers because it is both exciting and relatively easy to get involved in.
Unlike road racing, which requires cars to be outfitted with a lot of expensive safety gear, entry-level drag racing doesn’t take much capital. Speed, of course, does cost money--for better tires, lighter wheels, aftermarket engine improvements and the like. But until a drag racer starts turning in sub-12-seconds elapsed times, the only pieces of equipment that are absolute musts are seat belts and helmets (and even helmets aren’t required until E.T.s get faster than 13.99 seconds).
That’s one of the things that makes dragging attractive to would-be racer Reiko Petzold, one of the growing number of women involved in the sport-compact performance car scene. (A recent survey by the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., the trade group for makers of automotive performance and appearance equipment, found that about 15% of sport-compact car enthusiasts are women, up from 4% three years ago.)
The 24-year-old Torrance resident, like many racers, first got involved on the customizing side of the road. But building a custom car for the import and compact show circuit involves more than pretty paint and wild wheels: Cars that win prizes must also have tricked-out engines.
Petzold, whose award-winning Honda Prelude is turbocharged and boosted with a nitrous oxide injection system, says she’d never race it because of the value of the custom paint. But having a car that could go fast whetted her appetite.
Not satisfied with winning show trophies and starting one of Southern California’s first all-female import car clubs, or crews (it is called Empress, and its dozen or so members refer to themselves as “the ladies of Empress”), Petzold now wants to win races.
“Racing is attractive because it gives you something more to accomplish,” she says. But she adds that part of her mission is battling the sexism she sees in the import arena, in which sponsors routinely hire women in scanty costumes to pose with spectators at the shows and to hand out promotional material.
“By having an all-woman crew and building some winning cars and maybe winning races,” Petzold says, “we show that women can be involved in this in a positive way and not just as sex objects.”
She now is in the process of building her first race car--she won’t say what it is, although her show cars have been Hondas, a rugged, easy-to-work-on brand often described as the 1957 Chevy of the ‘90s.
As she did in building her show car, Petzold hopes to persuade a variety of import equipment makers to sponsor her efforts by providing parts and supplies at little or no cost in return for display of their name on the finished vehicle.
The approach is one used by many sport-compact enthusiasts in outfitting their vehicles, whether for show or go, and the trend reflects an entrepreneurial bent by the mostly young car owners. Petzold says that she’s added about $30,000 worth of stuff to her Prelude, and that most of it was obtained at no cost from manufacturers she contacted at shows or through an aggressive letter-writing campaign.
“Racing takes a lot of money even though you don’t have all the custom equipment and paint to worry about,” she says, “and I’m hoping to get sponsors who will help back me. But I’ve also found that all of the racers in the sport are very supportive and open in helping out beginners like me by sharing tips and tricks they’ve learned.”
The sport-compact segment of drag racing is new enough to welcome almost anyone who wants to try it, say race organizers such as Peter Hippolito of the Import Drag Racing Circuit, in Huntington Beach. That sanctioning body recently linked up with the National Hot Rod Assn. to co-sponsor two demonstration import drag races at the NHRA’s venerable Pomona Raceway--the first, in May, drew almost 1,000 racers and about 12,000 spectators. The second will be held Nov. 27 and 28 at Pomona.
The IDRC is one of four import or sport-compact drag race organizers. Two others are the National Import Racing Assn., based in Los Angeles and owned by Emap Petersen Inc., publisher of Motor Trend and Super Street magazines; and Georgia-based NOPI-ID Drag Wars, whose series pit import brands against domestic cars.
The granddaddy of them all is Battle of the Imports, which puts on a race and car show series. It was founded in 1990 by Los Angeles-area driver Frank Choi, and is the group that began pulling import racers off the streets and putting them on the track.
