Grown-up boy racers

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Deep in an Auckland suburb, hidden at the back of someone's nondescript garage, safely tucked behind a moveable screen you will find it: the boy racer's ultimate dream.

No, it's not one of those pneumatic young ladies straight off the tyre company calendar. What we're looking at, in all its yellow, white and logo-covered glory, is one of the fastest drag-racing vehicles in New Zealand.

"This is probably the most famous car in New Zealand," boasts Graeme Macdonald, manager of the Croydon Wholesalers Racing team, watching the modified Nissan Skyline GT-R as it is pushed into place for a photo.

"It's the quickest GT-R in Australasia and it's been on the cover of Performance Car magazine. It's a bit of a West Auckland icon," he enthuses, recalling how they were recently asked to bring the car, nicknamed Godzilla, to a local kindergarten for show and tell.

Macdonald and his cronies, Glenn Suckling, the car's builder and driver, and Nick Jenkins, the owner of the car and CEO of Croydon's, a motor vehicle sales firm in Henderson, do not look like what most would consider to be stereotypical drag racers. For one thing, they're clearly a bit older than the average 18-year-old hoon.

And although they're based out here in West Auckland, traditional home of the bogan, they are wearing a tidy team uniform of bright yellow polo shirts and dress pants. Suckling's hands may be slightly greasy from working on an engine, but there's not a black T-shirt with a Jack Daniels logo in sight.

In fact, they look a lot more like the kind of older car enthusiast that one would traditionally find at a fancier racing circuit. They look, well, pretty professional.

This is because the Croydon team is competing in one of the newest classes of drag racing in New Zealand: the pro-import class. This division features the fastest and often most modified, therefore most expensive, of the imported cars that drag race in New Zealand.

For example, Croydon's Godzilla is the result of several years' worth of mechanical experimentation and a couple of hundred thousand dollars, which is why it is kept in a secret location under tight security. Other pro-import cars, usually modified to increase the engine's power and then altered further so that the rest of the car can handle that increased power, have cost similar amounts in either time, money or both.

A drag race is defined by one encyclopaedia as a "controlled test of pure automobile acceleration" where two vehicles race over a traditional quarter-mile (because the sport originated in the US, miles are usually used as measurements).

Perhaps because it originated from illegal street racing in the United States, drag racing has always been seen as the naughty younger brother of other forms of motorsport.

It's the sort of thing most daily drivers associate with macho posturing, the pouring of diesel or soap on to public roads to encourage skidding and burnouts, the annoying revving of oversized engines outside your house past midnight and mayor John Banks' ranting about getting boy racers off our city streets.

Until relatively recently, drag racing was also associated with British or American muscle cars. Remember the muscle car? You know, those big grunty-sounding V8 Fords and Holdens that the coolest boys in high school drove, albeit 40 odd years ago, the sort of vehicle you would see in movies like Grease or American Graffiti.

However these days your average boy racer is far more likely to be driving a modified Japanese car. People used to laugh - a nickname for them in the States was "rice rocket" - but those garish Japanese cars, with oversized spoilers, stickers and air vents, as seen in movies such as The Fast and The Furious, have been replacing the traditional muscle car as the drag racer's ride of choice for quite some time.

Having said that, the Croydon racing team and the new pro-import class appear a world away from the late-night police chases, gang warfare and impounded cars that entertain moviegoers. And it seems that besides becoming the legitimate face of drag racing, pro-import is also quite possibly a big part of the future of local motor racing.

There's no doubt that overseas import racing, or sport-compact racing as it's also known in America, is huge. In the US there are magazines, websites and organisations devoted to it. It is covered by mainstream media and legal betting on races was recently introduced.

In New Zealand pro-import is into its third year and the field of cars has doubled each year. At the Four and Rotary National championships being held tomorrow at Meremere Champion Dragway, most of the dozen or so pro-import cars in the country will turn up to compete. Another five or six are being developed for next summer.

The crowds these drag racers draw are huge - and getting bigger. As one driver, who preferred to remain anonymous because he didn't want to cause friction between the old and new schools of racing, said: "I went to the Friday night drags at Meremere last weekend and the place was packed. Then on Saturday I went to the V8 meeting and the carpark was only half full.

"In my experience with the V8 racing there seems to be a lot of nobby older guys who have a lot of money. It's a bit more uptight and you also find the V8 drag teams keep to themselves.

"Having said that," the driver went on, "the crowds at V8 meetings are often tamer, whereas the ones at the drags are younger, noisier and can be nastier."

"It's a young person's sport and it's just getting bigger," confirms Gina Bullians, who, having just done a quarter-mile in under 10 seconds, is the only woman competing in local pro-import racing. Bullians and her partner run Speedtech Motorsports in Wellington, and they modified the Nissan Pulsar she drives.

"No, they're not bogans," she says. "Most of the people in pro-import are really different sorts of people - you couldn't classify them. The one thing they're all into is the cars."

In fact, the growing popularity of import drag racing with a younger crowd is part of the reason why the Croydon team started. Jenkins bought Godzilla as a marketing initiative for his car sales business - he wanted to sell more Nissans, but the sport has become his passion and he now believes import racing is taking over. "Younger people are just not as interested in Fords or Holdens any more. And I think it's just a natural progression, a recognition of mechanical excellence."

It also has to do with the fact that Japanese cars are so widely available in New Zealand. But it does seem slightly bizarre that the enthusiasts should mention a Toyota Corolla or a Nissan Pulsar - the sort of car your mother might drive to the supermarket - in the same sentence as a quarter-mile done in under 10 seconds; a car that's going so fast it needs a parachute at the finish line.

But as Macdonald says, this is all part of the appeal. The spectators can relate. They probably have their own Japanese car.

"Even though the average car has about 70 or 80 horsepower and a car like ours has, say, 300," Macdonald explains, "they have their favourites and they'll be screaming for them.

"And when those guys in their $6000 Nissans go to race at the drags on Friday night," he says, referring to the Night Speed Drag Wars - the races for all-comers regularly held at Meremere in an attempt to get boy racers off the streets - "for a second they can feel like Glenn".

All of which makes you wonder: the pro-import class clearly represents the grown-up side of drag racing - but will it stop the boy racers? Or will it just make them worse?

"These cars are the fastest and the most impressive and they certainly pull the crowds," says Bullians, "and I think it can give the younger guys something to work towards.

Macdonald adds: "And they won't be racing on the street because they'll be focused on getting their cars as fast as they can, and you wouldn't want to be racing something like that illegally."

Even though it is warranted and registered, a car like Godzilla, he explains, will never be driven on the street - it's simply too valuable.

"A lot of people in pro-import used to drive their cars on the road," notes Suckling, who was one of them "but now they just have a car to tow the race car."

Then he laughs and you can tell he's speaking from experience: "Because you can't lose your licence or get nasty tickets in a tow car."

* The drag-racing nationals will be held tomorrow from 9am at Meremere.