“We Build Excitement!” Who doesn’t remember that popular Pontiac marketing slogan from the 80s? Pontiac, the company, is no longer with us, but people like the husband and wife duo of Randy and Annette Peer are keeping the “Excitement” of Pontiac alive!

The car Randy races is a sweet-looking 1963 Pontiac Lemans. After seeing some impressive passes, I asked him what it used for power. His answer caught me by surprise. “[I] Got the small motor in it right now, it’s around 740 cu.in.” 740 cubes. Small. Of course, I had to ask about the other “non-small” engine. “880 is the big one, got it out freshening it up.” After that, he elaborated on the “small” engine. [It’s a] 1967 Pontiac 400 stock block. Bored 0.30 over 4.5 inch stroke, set of Kauffman 380cfm round-port heads. [It’s a] Good package, Powerglide trans, 3.90 gear nothing real sophisticated. It works well.”

Randy bought the car in 2007 and started working on it right away. He finished putting it all together in 2008 and started racing it in 2010. And as Randy says, “I’ve been racing it ever since.” With 15 years of experience racing this car, one would wonder what the highlight of all those races would be. Randy was quick to answer that question. “We go to a national Pontiac meet up in Norwalk, Ohio and it’s all Pontiacs. There’s 400-500 cars there. We finally made it to the quick 16 a year or two ago. Now, this year, I got presented with the best appearing race car out of about 400 other race cars. That was a big surprise.”

Winning a “Best Appearing” award is quite an honor considering the amount of work Peer did to the car himself. According to Randy, “I built the car. I had a well-known guy back home do the back half and the roll cage, but 95% of it I did. I painted it. It has the stock suspension up front and a ladder bar set up in the back. A guy by the name of Travis Rice did a heckuva job with this car. [It has] All factory steel, floorboards, quarter panels, wind-up windows. The temperature controls are still in the car! It weighs about 32 and some change with me in the car. [It’s] Got a couple of small fiberglass pieces in it. The bumpers are glass, the header panel is glass, the rest of it is all steel.”

As for speed, Randy replied, “[It] Runs about 9.60 in the heat of the day, the best it’s been was probably high 9.30s in the good weather at 137 mph. It’s been fun. It’s a family affair. I built that one (pointing to Annette’s Firebird) years ago now my wife races it. It’s a lot of fun.” Peer went on to explain how his wife ended up racing with him. With a big smile on his face, Randy explained, “She’s good, she’s having a blast with it. I built the car as a street car years ago, I painted that thing 20 years ago. We ran it on the street, she didn’t drive it a whole lot, afraid people would run into it and stuff like that. We thought about selling it and she said ‘I don’t want to sell it’ so I said, ‘How about we take it racing?’ She said, ‘I can do that?’ And I said ‘Sure, you can do that.’ So now, I’ve created a monster, she has a ball with it.”

Peer then went on to tell a bit more of his history along with that of his car. “A drag race family is a different family. They’re all here, any problem you have, they’re great people, no matter what track you go to, it’s still that family.” I’ve pulled parts off of my car to help somebody else. We’ve been doing it for a long time. I started street racing, of course, back in the day. I’ve got a ‘69 GTO I’ve had since 1986. I raced it on and off a little bit, but I didn’t want to break it. I built a ‘64 Catalina and raced it for years. When I got done with it, it was running 10.70s. That car weighed 3900 lbs. That was a neat car. I bought it back in Cumberland, it was 10 miles from my house, and drove it home. I thought ‘I need something a little bit lighter’ when I saw these cars (pointing to his current car), in the late 90s, I said ‘I gotta have one.’ I found this one sitting in a barn in Honeybrook, PA. It’s close to a thousand pounds lighter than the Cat.

It snowballed. When I first bought the car, we was just going to do some drive train, and that was it. The next thing you know, I was out at Travis’ house, he’d ended up cutting out the wheel tubs. I’d go out every other day just to help see what I could do. I walked in one day and he had my quarter panels cut off. We stretched these quarter panels, cut it down, took out 2 inches. I walk in, he’s just sitting there, and I ask ‘what are you doin?’ he says, ‘we need to put this big tire in there. You do body work, don’t ya?’ So I had to stitch it all back together.” And an excellent job of stitching he did. The car looks completely unmodified to the untrained eye.

Now it was Annette’s turn to give her thoughts. My first question was if she liked racing her husband. She laughed as she replied, “Yes and no. He always ends up being the bad guy, though. Because if he wins, he beat a woman, and if he loses, he let me win. We have an understanding a race is a race. He taught me everything I know, gave me the little tricks of the trade, and helpful hints along the way, and here we are.”

Annette has been racing the Firebird for three years. She proudly stated, “My car has a 455 Pontiac motor and an automatic transmission, It’s the old motor that came out of his GTO. On a good day, the best it’s done is a 12.16 at 110 mph. We’re not getting that today though.” Annette is pretty humble about her driving skills as she says, “It’s nothing fancy, do a burnout, get on the gas and go. Not good air for racing, not a good hair day.” Randy was quick to chime in, “But you’re not at work. A bad day at the track is better than a good day at work!” And it was obvious the Peers were having a good day at the track, even with the hp-robbing air. If you catch them at a track somewhere, pay special attention to their cars. Like the old slogan says, they do, indeed, build excitement!