- 2 years ago
Larry Larson has done the impossible
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00:00 Today in Hot Rod Unlimited, we're outside of Kansas City, Missouri at the race shop
00:03 of Larry Larson, the five-time Unlimited Hot Rod Drag Week champion.
00:07 We plan on finding out how he won those five titles, how he plans on winning a sixth, and
00:11 what else he has going on in this great race shop.
00:20 So Larry Larson opened up shop here in 1997, and quickly he made his name because he wasn't
00:25 afraid to take on projects that other chassis companies weren't interested in.
00:28 If it rolls back out the door here at Larson Race Cars, you're going to see it once and
00:32 probably remember it for the rest of your life.
00:34 I know you've got a bunch of cool stuff in here, but the rumor is there's like a brand
00:37 new Camaro that you guys have already taken the heat wrench to and cut to pieces.
00:41 I don't know if we've got the blue wrench out yet, but we've definitely got it apart.
00:45 This looks like it's a ZL1.
00:48 You're correct.
00:49 It is a brand new '13 ZL1.
00:52 How brand new is it?
00:53 How many miles were on it before it showed up here?
00:55 This thing has got 36 miles on it.
00:57 Come on.
00:58 You've got the full Larson Race Cars treatment as far as back half and a big cage.
01:02 You're going to keep some of the modern stuff.
01:04 I'm looking at spaghetti wiring here.
01:07 He wants it to look like a factory ZL1 other than the big tire in the back.
01:11 It's going to be a pro street style car.
01:12 We're going to try and keep all the creature comforts that it had in it, AC, backup camera,
01:17 all the factory stuff that we can.
01:19 He wants to run 750s and have the AC work and drive the wheels off of it.
01:24 That's something else.
01:25 It's amazing that he decided to start with the ZL1.
01:27 More power to him.
01:28 Yeah.
01:29 Wow.
01:30 As cool as the Camaro was, we walked past what I think is one of the best looking door
01:32 slammers in the world today.
01:33 That's Steve Matuszak's Mustang that has the classic snake and mongoose paint job.
01:38 Obviously, you and Steve have a long relationship, had a lot of success together.
01:42 I think one of the coolest things about Steve's car is he got permission from Tom McEwan to
01:46 put this paint job on the thing and the big snake and mongoose movies coming.
01:49 What was the response like?
01:50 The response was unbelievable from the young kids to the old guys.
01:54 It was really cool, but about a week and a half after we got back from Gainesville, Steve
01:59 received a cease and desist order from Mattel.
02:02 Are you kidding me?
02:04 No.
02:05 That's why now it has the stealth on the side of it.
02:07 Steve kept the stars and stripes over the hood and kept the mongoose too on the front
02:12 and all that.
02:13 That's still pretty protective of that stuff.
02:15 Who would have guessed?
02:16 Yeah.
02:17 Well, even in modified form, I think it's still probably the best looking pro-mod in
02:19 the country.
02:23 The unique '57 Buick that Larry's working on for one of his customers is going to be
02:27 a drag week car.
02:28 Whether it's going to be a 2013 or 2014 drag week car, it's still kind of up in the air.
02:33 Like every year, the thrash comes right down to the wire.
02:35 It's going to depend on whether in this last month or so, they can put in the time and
02:39 the work and get all the parts and pieces they need to finish this machine, which will
02:42 have a big block Chevrolet with twin turbos on it.
02:45 Everything we do is different.
02:46 We're not like a Bickler or a Haas that everything's a cookie cutter pro-stock pro-mod car.
02:50 For us, it's a quality issue about trying to make everything as best we can, but yet
02:54 everything takes longer because everything is so worn off from one vehicle to another.
02:58 Absolutely.
02:59 It's very cool to see because a lot of guys have made their name, like you said.
03:03 Maybe they build sportsman dragsters or they build pro-stock cars or whatever, and you
03:06 definitely have the reputation of, if you can dream it up, go talk to Larry.
03:11 You can probably figure out how to make it work.
03:12 Yeah.
03:13 The thing is that we've also got a good reputation for the drag week part of it, which I enjoy.
03:18 I still enjoy doing the pro-stock and pro-mod stuff also, but the drag week part of it,
03:24 we've got a good reputation for just because I've done so well in the last few years about
03:28 making everything live and not over-complicating things.
03:31 Absolutely.
03:32 Yeah, we definitely want to talk about that because old ladies don't win church bingo
03:36 contests five weeks in a row, and you somehow managed to win drag week five years in a row.
03:41 You've done it in that Nova that's back in the corner, so we really want to take a look
03:44 at that.
03:45 Get us back there to that home.
03:46 Absolutely.
03:47 The Drag Rob Magazine's drag week is the ultimate test of man and machine, especially in the
03:51 realm of drag racing.
03:52 Over the course of a five-day period, racers compete at four different drag strips, and
03:57 between them drive their cars more than 1,000 miles.
04:00 Each day, a competitor hands in his or her quickest time slip, and at the end of the
04:03 week, the average of those time slips determine who wins each category.
04:07 The Chevy II that Larry Larson races first appeared at drag week in 2005 as a blown big
04:12 block Chevy, a 555 cubic inch Chevrolet big block with a 1471 roots blower on top of it.
04:19 In 2008, Larry stepped to a 565 cubic inch motor but added twin turbos and got rid of
04:24 the blower.
04:25 The 565 inch twin turbo combination remains in the car today.
04:30 The things I think that endear people to this car are the fact that it's steel, it's 3,500
04:36 pounds, and it's, in comparison to some of the other stuff we're seeing show up for Unlimited,
04:41 this thing is a Sherman tank, man.
04:43 Yeah, there's still a couple cars bigger.
04:44 I mean, Lutz is 57, Joe Barry's 56, Mike Roy's Monte Carlo is huge, but in comparison to
04:51 what some of the guys are starting to build now with the lighter weight fiberglass stuff,
04:55 which I'm not really in agreeance with, but...
04:57 We'll get to that, Larry.
04:59 We'll get to that.
05:00 It's okay.
05:01 It's like I tell all my customers.
05:04 They're like, "Well, what would you do?"
05:05 I said, "It sits in your garage.
05:07 You're the one that has to go outside and look in the garage and be happy with it."
05:11 And I'm not gonna change it.
05:12 I've got a couple customers say, "Well, why don't you lighten it up and do this?"
05:15 Nope.
05:16 Yeah.
05:17 First guy to go 200 on Drag Week, first guy to make a six-second pass on Drag Week.
05:32 And as long as any of us will live, those are the biggest performance barriers that
05:36 this contest will see.
05:37 You're not gonna see a five-second Drag Week car.
05:39 Well, we're above ground anyway.
05:42 Or somebody going, whatever, 250.
05:44 So I mean, how big was it for you personally to have those two big kind of performance
05:48 barriers in your name?
05:49 It was huge.
05:50 To me, there's only one other thing left to do, and it's what I was trying to do last
05:54 year, averaging the sixes, or run a six at every track all week long.
05:57 And I had a good start on it last year with that 694 at Tulsa, and then, like I said,
06:01 we got to Dallas, and I had it hopped up too much, and it just went out and shook the tires
06:05 and didn't wanna go down.
06:06 I thought last year was definitely an opportunity for someone to finally do the six-second average,
06:10 but I think this year, even more so.
06:11 Yeah, absolutely.
06:13 Last year, they had really good tracks, and like I said, it should've got pulled off last
06:19 year, didn't.
06:20 Will it this year?
06:21 I can't think that it won't, but in the same token, it's Drag Week.
06:25 Anything can happen.
06:26 694 in the corner, and eight miles an hour, a grand slam, all one at the bottom of the
06:41 night.
06:42 Larry Larson has done it again.
06:44 We've certainly seen a lot of cool stuff here at Larson Race Cars, but really, this is the
06:47 centerpiece of the program, the infamous or famous or notorious, depending on who you
06:51 are, 1966 Chevy II Nova that Larry has raced so successfully.
06:56 Owned this thing since 1988.
06:57 It has gone through several different iterations, from blown big block Chevrolet, and now this
07:01 giant mountain of aluminum behind me, 565 cubic inches, twin turbochargers, and a new
07:07 set of turbochargers heading on this engine for Drag Week 2013.
07:11 There's a whole lot more that makes this car work than just this 2,500-horsepower engine.
07:15 The brains of Larry Larson are the major part of the program to make this Nova so successful,
07:19 but even there's a lot more to it than that.
07:21 Larry's got some great stories and some cool history with this hot rod.
07:31 I've had this car since '88.
07:34 It's always been an enjoyment or a release, something I could go drive on the weekends
07:39 or whenever I wanted to.
07:42 So it's always been a street car, always been something I drove.
07:45 And when a friend of mine told me about Drag Week in '05, I got to checking on it, looked,
07:50 and I thought, "Man, the pro street classes that NMCA and some of the other organizations
07:53 had in no way fit what I was doing."
07:56 But this deal, Drag Week, that was right up my alley.
08:00 To put Drag Week into words is really a hard thing to do.
08:02 Some people race their car, some people drive their car, but it's the combination of both
08:07 that makes it so hard on you mentally and physically because you go out and you try
08:11 and race the car and go as fast as you can, but then when you're done that day, then the
08:15 car has to be in good enough mechanical shape to drive 200, 300, 400 miles to the next track
08:21 or the hotel or whatever.
08:23 Not only does it have to be in good enough shape, so do you because if you've been up
08:27 all night the night before or mentally drained from problems going on, it just wears on you.
08:34 And by the end of the week, if you've had very many problems, it just constantly, I
08:39 mean, after five days, you're just like, "Man, I want this to be over."
08:42 You can't wait for it to start and you can't wait for it to end.
08:45 The two biggest keys to success, I believe, is one, I've driven the car for ever and ever.
08:50 I've owned the car since '88, always driven it.
08:55 And probably the other thing that instills everything to keep winning and going and have
09:00 repeated success is, for one, I do this during the week and that's my job, building cars
09:06 and tuning cars, but it's also the ability to, for lack of better terms, MacGyver stuff.
09:13 You have to figure out a way to get things done when it seems like there's no way possible.
09:17 The Unlimited class, when it started, nobody had any purpose-built cars.
09:23 Everybody had a car that they drove, like I did, and since then, there has been a number
09:28 of cars that have been purpose-built just for Drag Week, even though there's no actual
09:33 purse money involved in this thing.
09:35 It's all about bragging rights and a jacket, for the most part.
09:39 To have the fastest street car in America, you don't get a penny for it, basically.
09:44 But there have been a lot of guys go out there and build a purpose-built car just for Drag
09:49 Week, which it didn't start that way.
09:51 If there was one thing I could change about the rules for Unlimited, it would have to
09:54 be an original car that came off the assembly line and not a race car, fiberglass car, however
10:01 you want to look at it.
10:02 Once again, they fall into the rules, that's the way David set the rules up, but to me,
10:07 we're all about the fastest street car in America, not the fastest pro-stock car in
10:11 America.
10:12 To me, it needs to be an actual car that came out off the assembly line with a real VIN
10:16 number, with steel roof and quarter steel, and resemble a real car and not be something
10:21 all cut up that was a race car.
10:23 What we've done, we've done it in a way that it should be done in, and we've not cut any
10:28 corners and we've not trailered and we've not took a trailer and we haven't hauled a
10:33 generator and a welder and an extra transmission and all the stuff that some of the other guys
10:37 have.
10:38 We've done it like I felt like the rules were intended when David first set them up, and
10:43 you know, when somebody asked me, well I think it was David back in '05, he said, well, you
10:47 know, you're not taking a trailer, I said, trailers are for wusses.
10:49 I said, you know, last time I went street racing, 25 years ago, I said, I didn't take
10:55 a trailer out there, and I said, I'm not taking one now.
10:57 The
11:18 thing that's different about drag week from a competitor standpoint is that everyone wants
11:23 to see everybody else do well.
11:25 Yes, it's still a competition, and yes, everybody wants to win their class, but it's like I've
11:31 told everybody, when I go to drag week, that's like my vacation.
11:35 I go there to have a good time, meet up with some friends I haven't seen in a year.
11:40 My priority is to finish drag week.
11:41 I mean, we have every year that we've went, and that's my biggest priority.
11:46 The next thing is to try and do as well as we can, but you can be sitting in first place,
11:51 and if you don't make it to the last track on Friday, you didn't do anything.
11:56 There have been discussions over the last few years about, you know, could I go out
12:00 and build an end all car to take care of drag week that would go 6.20s?
12:04 Yeah, I think I could.
12:06 I don't think that's in the spirit of the event, and it's something I won't ever do
12:10 because of that.
12:11 Could I build something faster?
12:12 Yeah.
12:13 Do I really want to?
12:14 No, it's because it's still the same car that I built to go have fun with, and to go out
12:18 and build a purpose car just for drag week, yeah, I could do it, but that's not me.
12:35 Drag week for me, I guess, has meant a lot of things.
12:36 It's helped my business.
12:38 It's gave me some notoriety with people in the industry.
12:42 I've made a lot of friends, a lot of good friends.
12:45 It's been a lot of things.
12:47 It definitely separates those who want and those who can, that's for sure.
12:52 So at the end of the day, it's something that if you want to do bad enough, you'll figure
12:59 out a way to do, and after you do it the first time, you'll want to be back.
13:07 Drag Week 2013 will present different challenges to Larry Larson than he's seen in the past.
13:12 He'll see new competitors, he'll see new combinations, and he'll see new racetracks.
13:15 While it's impossible to predict Larry's success or failure, looking back at the record books,
13:20 success probably in the cards.
13:21 I think it's going to be a great year.
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