This explanation for my blogging about building a tire shredding beast will be somewhat of a scatter-shoot. Most of you reading this have similar stories. Mine is unique, only in that it is mine.I’m sharing this because we all have a common bond: A passion for horsepower, speed, and our rides. At some point during our wretched lives, we realized that a bad-ass car was our goal. Seeing one, being around one, owning and driving one was… well… The Shit.
I was born in Chicago in the late fifties… Growing up in the suburb of Oak Park, I can remember being about seven or eight years old, walking home down Linden Avenue from a friend’s house. It was the dead of winter and brutally cold. Etched in my memory is the image of a few guys in a driveway, wrenching on a white ‘55 Chevy Bel Aire. It was snowing and these dudes, sporting crew cuts, were in t-shirts, smokes in their mouths, working on a car together, evidently oblivious to the snowflakes swirling about. They were, in my estimation, (even at the age of eight) bad-asses… From that point on, whether consciously or sub-consciously, I dreamed of being as cool as they were and having a car like that ‘55… I was hooked. Dudes with fast cars have something other guys don’t… Hard to explain it but, suffice it to say, there is a primal thrill derived from g-force and speed. I’d rather eat shit than drive a Prius.
Fast forward some 45 years or so… My buddy, Bill Olson and I re-connected after a few years of radio silence… Bill invited me to meet him and his buddy, Jim in Arlington for the kick-off of the 2013 HOT ROD Power Tour. Bill was putting finishing touches on his ’72 Plymouth Duster and wanted me to see his baby blue Mopar with a late-model Hemi and all sorts of other impressive enhancements. I jumped at the opportunity and ventured north to see what all the fuss was about. Needless to say, Bill’s Duster is very fucking cool. The morning he embarked on the week-long Power Tour road trip, I followed him to the starting line, so to speak and felt as if I were missing out on being a part of something. A month prior to hooking up with Bill, I had made a commitment to myself to finish an eighteen year project, My 1972 Olds Cutlass Supreme… The gathering at the starting line was a spectacle… It was also the catalyst for my verbal commitment to Bill and Jim that I would join them next year. I further cemented that vow with a cocky and self-assured diatribe on Bill’s blog , promising to join him and what might be a growing posse of gear head pals for the 2014 HOT ROD Power Tour. This blog will chronicle PROJECT BEDLAM and my preparations for the Power Tour.