South Mountain Raceway – When you first spy this brightly-colored vintage altered, you can’t help but notice the brilliant paint punctuated by Tom and Jerry on the side. The next thing you might notice is the driver’s hair matches the car (she assured me it wasn’t intentional). Get a little closer, and you start to realize this is a father-daughter team just out to have a good time drag racing together.

I asked the driver, Danielle Stewart, just how her interest in drag racing got started. She replied, “When I was younger, my father took me around to different places, dirt tracks, drag races, different things to see what I was interested in and he took me to Maple Grove and I told him that is what I wanted to do.” In my mind, I was thinking this took place probably around when she was 16 and started driving. When I asked when this took place. I was quite surprised when Danielle remarked, “I think I was 8, so 30 years ago.”

For top speed, she was quick to offer, “We’ve been averaging, probably 70, our top speed is 74 mph.” To the uninitiated, 74 mph is a pretty stout number for a vintage hot rod with a vintage powerplant. Imagine going 50 mph on your lawnmower and you’ll get an idea just how fast these things would feel from the driver’s seat. Michael, Danielle’s father, was quick to jump in with the powerplant details, “Believe it or not, it’s all pure Studebaker, ‘54 Commander motor, bored and stroked to 290 cubic inches.”

This is the kind of car everyone likes to see pull up to the line. It definitely brings back memories of days gone by and it’s definitely cool from all angles. They’ve had the car for two years and this is their first season with the finished product. Mr. Stewart shared some of the car’s history, “It’s definitely all vintage old-school, it’s an old hot rod from somewhere up in the New England states, somewhere probably around the early to mid 60s. That’s really all we know at this point. It had a Pontiac motor in it [when we got it], a 4-cylinder Iron Duke motor, and I’m a Studebaker guy, so….[on the original Pontiac engine] We had trouble with it. We couldn’t keep it running right, it was leaking oil. And I thought ‘why am I wasting my time on this one?’ like I said, I’m a Studebaker guy, let’s go put the Studebaker in. That’s what we did over the winter, cut, cut and changed and welded and made it fit.” And make it fit, they did, having the engine look perfect in the car. An old Reading stock car driver did the motor and fuel injection, and being very familiar with fuel injection helped them fine tune the little fuel injection bugs. As with almost all race cars, they’re still making some tweaks to the setup. According to Michael, “There’s a couple little things but nothing major, there’s things we could do to pick up speed, but we’re consistent right now, the season’s halfway in for us, there’s no sense in touching it now, we’ll wait till the winter and then play with it. You don’t fix something that ain’t broke. The fuel injection’s a little temperamental, you gotta catch it just right to get it started and keep it running, but when it works it works.”

All-in-all, these are great people, racing a great car, with a great bunch in Vintage Eliminator. Let’s hope they keep it going so the next generation of the family can get behind the wheel of this hot rod when the time comes!