BILL STEPHENS “IN THE GROOVE” 7/19/10

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to call the weekend trip to Sonoma a total loss with Robert clinching hi spot in the Countdown to 1, but the winning ways of JFR which highlighted the first half of the season seem to have tapered off out west.

While it’s hard not to feel upbeat about Ron Capps finally picking up an elusive win since he is truly one of the sport’s genuine “nice guys”, the JFR gang was hoping for a strong showing on the second leg of the Western Swing, with the final stop in Denver at Bandimere Speedway coming up in less than a week. Robert and Ashley meeting in Round 1 presented the usual conundrum of knowing you’ll have a team car advance into Round 2 but knowing there will be one less teammate still on the ladder heading into the quarter-finals. You usually like seeing that intramural matchup later in eliminations, preferably in the semi-finals, since you are now assured of having one of your own locked into the final.

John still leads the Full Throttle points and with Tim Wilkerson’s loss on Sunday, John will remain—at least for another year—the only Funny Car driver in NHRA history to sweep the Swing. That’s a rather jaw-dropping stat since there have been very few drivers in any class to score that sweep in any category and the variations in tracks and atmospheric conditions that are evident between Pacific Raceways in Seattle, Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, and Bandimere Speedway in Denver require an incredible amount to tuning versatility and driver focus. JFR has proven to be infinitely blessed with both.

While the NHRA was racing in Sonoma, I was about 2000 miles to the east in Des Moines, Iowa working as a commentator on the HD Theater live telecast of the Mecum Muscle Cars and More Auction at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. It’s amazing to me—even after working on the HD Theater team for several years—how much money the cars which we bought and drove as youngsters back in the 1960’s are worth today.

For instance, in 1965, you could walk into just about any Ford dealer in the country and order a 1965 Shelby GT350 Mustang for around $4800.00. On Saturday in Des Moines, an original 1965 Shelby GT350 Mustang sent the bidding to over $200,000—and the reserve wasn’t met! (Meaning, the seller was unwilling to let the car go for that sum.) I could give you many more examples but the point of the story is one which has been made numerous times by car nuts, especially Muscle Car nuts: We all wish we knew forty years ago how much the cars we owned would be worth today. We’d all be on Easy Street!

Well, it’s silly to second-guess ourselves about that. There are still plenty of great cars we can buy, drive, and enjoy today and by the time they reach collector status, most of us will be sitting on the porch at The Home.

Frankly, I’d rather be on my way to Denver for more drag racing.