BS Friday

Welcome once again to BS Friday. Try to figure out if this story is true or a big, fat, juicy pile of BS. This one is called "But It's Just A Vega!"


One night a few years ago I was out cruising with Christie Lee. Christie Lee wasn't a person. She was my 1963 Chevy Impala SS. She was my best friend at the time. I named her after that Billy Joel song "Christie Lee".

Anyway, the town where I lived has what was called 'the circuit' (older folks called it 'the peanut circuit'). It was a stretch of maybe 2 miles of Main Street that you could cruise straight down then turn left one block, turn left again and go back the opposite, parallel direction on 2nd Street to return to Main Street and do it over again. It was the perfect cruisers circuit. All the younger people would hang around the circuit on weekends, watching the hot cars race, watching the hot bodies hanging out and hopefully hooking up.

This particular night I had already won 2 seperate races and was feeling pretty cocky. I had smoked a 1970 LeMans and a 1969 Chevelle. I had built Christie's engine myself and she was pretty fast. So I get to this light and this dude in an early 70's Vega wagon pulls up beside me and starts gunning his engine. It had a good sound to it, but there was no way I would be intimidated by a Vega. Please! Naturally, I took the challenge. We both sat there, revving the engines, causing mega amounts of noise pollution, waiting on the green light. Finally, it came.

In a huge cloud of white smoke and with the sound of tire tread being brutalized, we both took off. I initially took a good lead and started to feel pretty good about it when all of a sudden this little Vega wagon just flashed by me like a bolt of lightning. As hard as I pushed Christie, I couldn't catch up either. I was shocked.

I watched in the distance as super Vega got too much into it and the inevitable happened; someone pulled out in front of him. He headed straight for the slow poke at what I thought had to be pushing 90 mph. I saw the guy whip to the right and his back tires let go. He slid sideways, then the car returned to the left, sliding that way, then back to the right and didn't stop. He ended up sliding in a half circle and now was facing me. As I slowed down and approached him, he stomped on the gas and with tires smoking he whipped around, back into the right direction and headed back down the circuit. It was cool to watch!

Later that night I met up with the guy and checked out his car. He had taken the entire front end of that little Vega and filled it with a hopped-up 350ci Chevy V8. He said it was really hard to fit it in there, but the results were great. Yeah, no kidding. That little car with all that hoursepower? Sheesh! No wonder I couldn't catch up.

I never under-estimated anyone like that again. Unfortunately, the town put a stop to cruising not long after that anyway. Something about the crowds and noise and the unsafe drivers. I don't know what they were talking about. ;)