PRINTReasons they race
Legal and physical risks aside, Columbia street racers throw caution to the wind whey they line up on summer nights. It's not for the money or the fame; it's for the pride
Alex Lewis
Panda's black and white 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX sits on the top of Hitt Street Garage. Panda does all the mechanical work on his car, which can hit more than 175 mph.
April 17, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Motors hum. Exhaust fumes fill the air. Cars wait patiently for their turn to race down the straight country road. The flagger signals; the first two racers hit the gas and accelerate to more than 100 mph. At the finish line, spectators take bets on which engine will outperform the other. The cars near the end of the strip, and the drivers will soon find out if they have won the respect they have worked so hard to earn.
Street racing is resurfacing on the weekends now that temperatures are warming up and tires have more traction on the roads. This nighttime event would be expected in bigger cities such as Chicago or New York. But some mid-Missourians have made this illegal activity their pastime.
Aftermarket
Replacement parts and high-performance products market. The design and selling of custom parts for automobiles.
Dig
Racing from a complete stop to a set speed, gear or pre-arranged point.
Drifting
The rear wheels slip at a greater angle than the front wheels. The rear end appears to chase the front end around a turn; the front tires control the direction of the car.
Dynomometer
A stationary device that measures an engine’s torque to determine horsepower.
Get the break, kick, or move
To start the race without the flagger. A system of handicapping that requires one car to wait until they see the
other car start to move before they are allowed to leave the starting line.
Jump
To leave the line before the flagger has started the race.
Roll
A race that starts at a non-zero speed and continues until only one driver is left. Three honks usually signal a countdown.
Roll Cage
Reinforced steel compartment that encloses the driver.
Set out lengths
Allowing a slower car to start the race a number of car lengths ahead and requiring the faster car to catch up and pass the slower car.
Turbocharger
A type of forced induction system that significantly boosts an engine’s horsepower by compressing the air flow into the engine without significantly increasing its weight. Each explosion in each cylinder creates more power.
(From left) Berlin sits in the driver’s seat of a car while Hopper looks through ...
Hopper cleans out the interior of his Nissan. Almost every aspect of the original car ...
Panda enters the Hitt Street Garage with his Eclipse. He has another car for everyday ...
Jim Berlin looks under the hood of Jason Hopper’s 1992 Nissan 240SX. Hopper had been ...
Drivers can put thousands of dollars into transforming cars from manufactured states to speed gods whose main purpose is to outperform the guy next to him. Race cars can include models from Nissans, Hondas and Mitsubishis, to muscle cars such as Corvettes, Mustangs and Camaros.
Getting Into Trouble
Five guys in blue jeans and baseball caps lean against their souped up cars in the middle of a Schnucks’ parking lot. They aren’t there to buy a late-night snack. They are there to talk about their latest performance-part upgrades on their project cars. They are there to show off the car modifications. They are there to ride.
Street racing is illegal in all 50 states. Racers can earn thousands of dollars in fines and even jail time depending on what state they are in during the offense and the ordinances the police enforce.
Sergeant Timothy Moriarity is the supervisor of the Columbia Police Department Traffic Unit. He says he doesn’t get a lot of reported street races.
“It’s mainly 16- to 25-year-olds who spontaneously pull up to a stoplight on Business Loop 70 and try to prove themselves,” Moriarity says.
Consequences of these actions are usually tickets, according to Moriarity. This could mean tickets for speeding, wrongful passing and careless and imprudent driving. He says the final one doesn’t favor well with most judges and can result in fines up to $500 and a maximum of six months in jail.
Despite these potential outcomes, the roads are still home to many racers.
A stout 23-year-old man with a bald head and gauged ears stands by his black Nissan 240 SX, or what he calls his “weekend warrior.” Known to Vox as Godzilla, he has been ticketed for speeding four times in his daily car. He says the main reason for street racing in mid-Missouri is that nobody will build a drag strip in Boone County.
The nearest speedways or legal places to race are found in St. Louis and Kansas City. Southern Randolph County, 20 miles north of Columbia, will be home to a $45 million dollar project that includes a drag-racing strip, motocross dirt track and a race car track. This development is predicted to take up to five years to complete.
“Once the track is built in Randolph, I’m gonna get a trailer and park it there,” Godzilla says. “People will be like, ‘Where you going?’
I’d be like, ‘Home.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Drag strip.’”
Trying to be Hollywood
In 2001, The Fast and the Furious hit movie theaters. In less than two weeks, it made $80 million with high-speed race scenes and elaborately painted cars that created a storm of street racing enthusiasts.
Sitting in the theaters watching Paul Walker drive his green turbocharged 1995 Eclipse through downtown Los Angeles inspired a 16-year-old Hickman High School student, known to Vox as Panda, to teach himself the ins and outs of cars.
“I do a lot of reading, tinker with stuff, pull it apart, understand it, research it and go read on the forums about it and then put it back together with a little bit of Voodoo magic, and it works,” Panda says. Now 21 and driving a black and white Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX he calls Panda, he does all of his mechanical work by himself.
“No one else touches my car except me,” Panda says. “No one. I know my car inside and out, and if anything ever happened, I know exactly what it is.”
Panda and his car buddies in the area like to meet up on weekends for car chat and for the occasional race. They usually go in small groups to country roads to avoid attention.
“We want to go to the races and leave,” Panda says. But another group of people can ruin it for everybody. “Looptards,” as he calls them, race up and down the road all night in imitation of The Fast and the Furious. Looptards race in traffic, upset the cops and get the “good guys” in trouble.
Copycatting the Hollywood film was not a rare occurrence after the movie’s release, and it certainly took its toll on the road.
The San Francisco Chronicle published a story in 2003, “Police Gear up for a Summer of Speed and Reckless Driving.” Authors Chuck Squatriglia and C.W. Nevius said that officers arrested six street racers going more than 120 miles per hour down Redwood City’s Interstate 280. They each had movie ticket stubs for The Fast and the Furious.
In San Diego County, Calif., where the movie was filmed, 15 people were killed in street racing-related accidents within a year of the its release, according to a Newsweek article in 2002.
“The Fast and the Furious is not really related to reality,” Panda says. “The movie is Hollywood. Someplace like Columbia is nothing like that because you don’t have that many cars. But bigger places, like St. Louis, Kansas City, Texas, Chicago, could definitely have some of that stuff in the movie happening.”
Racers in mid-Missouri network via word of mouth and online. Panda says he meets up every Friday and Saturday around the same time and place with other car enthusiasts to talk about cars and their upgrades. They then decide then if they want to race one another or not.
Others use street racing forums to schedule their races. A local forum gives car enthusiasts a place to talk about cars, meet drivers and share information on other racers. There’s even a place to challenge other drivers they want to race.
Adding Up the Costs
Back in the Schnuck’s parking lot, the guys stand around and trade car stories for two hours.
“April 13 drag show, I’ll probably be the slowest one there,” says Batman, the driver of a Dakota R/T.
“Dude, you’re driving a f---ing Dakota truck. What do you expect?” Godzilla asks.
Parked next to five high-performance street cars is Batman’s 2002 Dodge Dakota R/T ... a truck. This is not just any truck. The black beauty is fully stocked and loaded. Batman has modified his truck to include a new exhaust system, a nitrous system and a new transmission, to name a few of the $3,000 worth of additions.
“I drive a truck because it’s something different,” Batman says. “A lot of people are surprised by how fast it really goes. You don’t see a lot of racing trucks.”
Three thousand dollars seems like chump change when compared to what Jason Hopper, a 35-year-old Columbia resident, spends. Hopper started learning about cars after he opened his own shop, Azattik Motorsports. He sold that after three years and started his own construction business.
When he’s not running his company, he is rebuilding cars. His latest project involves rebuilding a Nissan 240 SX, which he started two years ago. Hopper has put at least $100,000 into cars. He used to race for money but hasn’t accepted a bet for the past two years.
“It’s an honor thing,” he says. “When somebody respects your car, it’s massive. I’ve done so much work to so many cars in this town from a pink Cavalier to a bright orange pickup truck. Everybody knows that I’ve built that. You can’t put a price tag on admiration.”
Is it Worth the Risks?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 804 street racing-related deaths between 2001 and 2006 and an increase in street racing-related deaths from 2005 to 2006, according to an Associated Press report in February. Despite the numbers, drivers continue to race and rely solely on seatbelts and airbags.
Panda repeatedly, though perhaps sarcastically, reinforces that everything he does is safe and legal ... except driving down College Avenue one night at 120 mph ... or when an oil line popped off his car and caught on fire. “That’s when you need a fire jacket,” he says.
The race tracks in St. Louis and Kansas City require drivers to have a roll cage built for their cars that protects the driver during a rollover. Street racers usually find this inconvenient when they’re on the street. For Hopper, building roll cages is just another modification to his car. Safety is first — or at least it is now.
Hopper will always have memories of street racing because of a broken right arm and two broken collarbones — the results of racing, wrecking and falling throughout the years. Add to that list a previous broken left arm, two more breaks in his right arm and two 7-inch rods and six bolts in his spine, and it’s a wonder he’s still standing, let alone racing.
“I love to drive,” he says. “You have to drive. If you build a car, you want to drive it. I remember my first race was in Dinwiddie, Va. Your first time on a drag strip is kind of like your first kiss or first love. You always remember it.”
As the temperature drops, signs of an early spring fade away. The five guys in Schnucks’ parking lot begin to realize the night is coming to an end. Nobody has volunteered to race because it’s too cold for their tires to have proper traction on the road. Panda pulls his North Face jacket tighter and calls it a night.
“I race for the thrill of it,” Panda says. “The passion.”
