There was a role-reversal of epic proportions yesterday when Detroit’s Big Three CEO’s were scolded like little boys caught sneaking into a movie theater. Richard Wagoner of General Motors, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler, and Alan Mulally of Ford went begging on the Hill after arriving in their corporate jets. Big mistake and a clear demonstration that these guys just don’t get it.

No matter where you sit on the politcal spectrum, you would have wanted to hug both Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) when they didn’t cut these CEO’s any slack. Both representatives reprimanded the suits in a way that probably had some ex-Detroit middle managers or laid-off line workers cheering in their family rooms.

From the Washington Post

The Big Three said nothing, which prompted Rep. Brad Sherman to rub it in. “I’m going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial,” he said. All still at the witness table. “Second,” he continued, “I’m going ask you to raise your hand if you’re planning to sell your jet . . . and fly back commercial.” More stillness. “Let the record show no hands went up,” Sherman grandstanded.

Read the entire article from the Washington Post

Generally speaking, car care has evolved from general service shops focused on the fundamental mechanics of auto repair to state-of-the-art service centers complete with modern diagnostic equipment and teams of specialized automotive technicians designed to handle the latest in automotive technology. There’s no denying “state-of-the art” is what’s required to handle today’s homogenized and computer controlled daily drivers. This is why when I stopped to shoot a couple of shots of a 1964 Ford Galaxie outside of Val Halla’s Auto Service in Reno, NV this week, I was excited to have been invited inside by independent shop owner Dan Olsen.

In a way, a tour around his shop was a step back in time to how a general service shop probably once appeared and operated. This doesn’t mean that Val Halla’s hasn’t evolved to handle modern automotive systems and repair, but it was clear that Dan still had a finger in the past while maintaining his modern clientele. At Val Halla’s it was pleasing to see that the shop owner had allocated one lift to his own project… a 1949 Mercury. Let’s take look around.

The Val Halla signage sends a dual message of general auto repair and restoration services. Pretty rare these days.

This is the 64 Galaxie I spotted out front of Val Halla’s. A popular model here on FM. I wasn’t looking for any more than a few shots to share in the Galaxie Forums when Dan Olsen introduced himself.

A shot of the front.

And a shot of the Galaxie’s interior for those of you keen to these cars.

In the back of the shop, Dan showed me the 1949 Mercury he considers his lifelong project.

We shared commonality in that he intends to drive this thing rather than just show it.

The front clip for the Mercury is from a mid-70’s camaro. A popular set-up for intermediate level dirt track cars.

The grill was 1957 Corvette.

And the motor? Big Block Mopar. A 440. You can say Dan was not particular about any one domestic make.

This old flathead was resting in the corner of the shop.

Out back sat somebody’s treasure. You can tell me what it is.

Finally, Dan let me know he was a member of the Pharoahs car club… this explained the ‘49 Merc for all you American Graffitti fans.

The virtual world of the FM Forums collided with the real world of “face-to-face” contact and drag racing in Kent, Washington last month. Five FM members got together at Pacific Raceways to meet, race, or lend a supporting hand after coordinating the get-together through the FM Garage Forum.

Message boards can offer a great way to meet, share, and help other enthusiasts, we all know that. However, relationships take on a whole new meaning when members break through the contraints of personal computers, cable modems, and browsers. And did you know that behind all those cryptic screen names there are people with real names and faces!

Mostly coordinated by Mike Murphy (aka Murff), the recent Pacific Dragways round-up included the infamous screen names of Malodin, VincentP, Spali32, and BTLS66Coupe. Where applicable, signficant others supported the outing and even sported relevant T-shirts supplied by FordMuscle (thanks for showing your pride).

Here’s a shot of the group up against Murff’s 351W powered 68 Falcon.

Pictured Left to Right
Cassandra (Mrs. Malodin), Malodin (Alex), Mini-Malodin, Murff, Totally Awesome Missus Murff (Nancy), VincentP (Vince), Spali32 (Tom), and BTLS66Coupe (Jeff).

Here are some accounts of race day in the words of a few participating FM members

According to Murff
We load the Falcon up Friday night out of consideration for my neighbors. I really didn’t want to subject them to a 6:30 am wake-up call via the open headers. About 7:30 pm it starts looking like it may drizzle a little, so I grab some thick plastic sheeting and wrap the hat and mag to protect it. About 10:30 pm it starts to RAIN. Not a gentle NW type of rain that the rest of the country barely turns on their wipers for, I’m talking pigs & chicken rain. Well, cars already loaded and wet, nothing I can do about it.

Saturday morning, a little light fog but the skies are clear and it is looking good. Arrive at the track a little after 8:00 am and get pitted. Can’t start the car until 9:00 am so I start drying things up a bit. Friends start arriving, my nephew Gerrit pulls in with Steve Kaiser from Winners Automotive with the Fiat altered (since I’m using Gerrit’s trailer), our friend Dave arrives with his car, a 9 second ’63 Tempest aptly named the “Tin Indian”.

It’s 9:00 am, time to fire. I hop in the Falcon, spin the starter a bit for oil pressure and to draw some alky in to the lines, Nancy gives the hat a squirt o’ gas, I hit the starter and then the mag and…. no joy. Repeat the process and… no joy. A few more tries and now I have fuel dribbling out the headers and onto the wood floor trailer.

We push the car off the trailer, try to light a few more times and still nothing. Now it’s only about 45 degrees out and I know alky doesn’t like cold weather, but we’re barely getting any coughs on the gas. Pull the warm up plugs and they are all fuel fouled. Ok, new plugs.

Repeat the process, a cough, almost fires, then nada. Now the battery is getting a bit soft, a two year old Optima Yellow. Crap, no generator for the charger. A guy pitted a couple cars down with a ’66 Goat with dual batteries offers a jump. We hook up, try a few more times and still nothing. Check plugs, not wet. Had checked the mag earlier and it was nice and dry. I try again only this time I only hear the dreaded ‘click’ as I hit the starter.

Jack the car up and I discover that the cable from the battery to the starter had been rubbing the header and had burned through the insulation. It had arced enough times that it had actually burned a hole in the header.

So we are finis. We had about 20 people around the car while trying to start and if human spirit and will power would have had a hand in this, that thing would have lit up like an Apollo rocket.

Moral of the story: Never leave your race car out in the rain overnight. It pisses them off, and they can be vindictive at times.

But we had an awesome day in spite of the car. And, The Totally Awesome Missus Murff now agrees that we need a closed trailer. Yippee, I get to spend more money I don’t have.

All of us FM’rs were glad to finally meet and we all had a good time cheering each other on and yakking cars. I watched Spali run his Charger out to a 13.97 at just a tick over 100 mph, which is pretty similar to what Jeff’s Mustang was running when I saw him at Bremerton last month.

Jeff made a gear change since then, and his first pass was a 13.11 at 103 mph. Jeff’s second pass was a 12.93 at 104 mph. Did I mention this is a 289 / C4 car? Not to shabby at all. Jeff had posted earlier in the week that he was going to try and bust into the 12’s. Congratulations Jeff. Well done.

The Totally Awesome Missus Murff and I spent the bulk of our day helping our friend Vic with the Funny Car in any way we could, which in all honesty wasn’t much help at all. But watching the Funny Car, watching my nephew Gerrit match race his Topolino against a front engine dragster, and meeting up with all of the Ford Muscle folks that were there made up for having a broken car. Well, a little anyway.

Funny thing, Nancy and I originally were not going to go. Then Spali32 posted about the day, Malodin said he was up for it, and then BTLS66Coupe chimed in. So we decided to go for it. I wish we could have run the car, but we are very glad we were there.

According to Spali32
Well I finally got to go after all. There was a mix up in the 12 hour shifts I was working. Ended up going to the Pacific Raceway on Saturday. Met up with Murff and his wife, BTLS66Coupe, Malodin & family, and Vince. We all had a great time visiting and watching the race.

Well the cougar was down for right now, while I fine tune the Max Fire. So I ended up taking my 06 Charger with 40K miles. It was a hoot to drive as I have over the years put a Superchips programmer, 180 degree thermostat, Borla 125 cat back exhaust, and a wicked little Airhammer(6″ at the filter mouth and narrowing down to 4″ at the TB). Oh yeah… it’s 110 db with the hood open and 106db with the hood closed…

I saw Murff out of the corner of my eye as I staged… decided to doing a little Hemi smoke show as I saw him with the camera. I ran a 1st run of .345 reaction time, 2.17 60 footer, and a 13.9@100.58mph. I had about an hour and half of cool down as we waited for the pit crew to clean some oil that spilled out during someone’s run. Ended up walking around talking while I waited for my next run. Finally got around the 2nd time and knocked out a .083 reaction time, 2.13 60 footer, and a 13.9@100.88mph. As you can see… I was watching the tree this time. Weather seemed to be a steady 55 degrees which sure helped. I’m sure if I would of arrived with a 1/4 tank of gas vs my full tank, and street psi hwy tires I could of pulled a 13.8 sec run or so.

We all had a great time and hope to see everyone else at other future drag meets with my Cougar.

According to BTLS66Coupe
My Saturday started out really good. I worked until 7:00 am on Saturday morning so I had everything packed up in the Mustang ready to go to the track. I think I got to the track at 8:30 am or so found Murff and Nancy getting the Falcon ready. I drive the Mustang to the track with the slicks in the trunk. So the first thing that I do is jack of the Mustang with my 44 year old jack one side at a time and get the slicks on. I was excited to race the Mustang this weekend because I made a pretty big gear change in the rearend. I changed the 3.80 trac loc to 4.62 trac loc so I was expecting a little more performance. After getting the slicks on it was time to get tech out of the way.

Saturday being one of the last race days of the season brought out a lot of cars. I’m thinking that there were around 300 to 350 cars. Racing was scheduled to start at around 9:00 am, but because of the rain the night before we didn’t get to race until 11:30 or so. At least there were a lot of cool and fast cars to look at while we waited for the pavement to dry.

Racing finally got started at around 11:30. After waiting a little over an hour I got a chance to make a run down the track. I did a real good burnout and lined up against a Toyota Supra I think. I took it kind of easy because I hadn’t raced with this set-up before. I ended up getting a pretty good reaction time, .096 and a 13.11@103.4 in the 1/4. I got back in line for another run. It only took 2 hours and 9 minutes to make my second run. That was due to a bunch of cars, someone oiling down the track and another guy taking out the center-line cones. I did a real good burn out again and lined up against a Honda Civic. This time I hammered on it a little more. My reaction time was pretty good again at .020 a 60ft 1.84 and a 1/4 time of 12.93. I was very happy with that time. My goal for this season was to get into the 12s and I achieved that goal. I wanted to make another run, but I didn’t want to wait another 2 hours.

I think the only thing better than getting into the 12s was meeting some of the great people from Ford Muscle that have the same passion for cars and racing. Can’t wait for next years racing season.

How far does your brand loyalty or enthusiasm for your Ford project car go? Are you willing to support and reward failure? Our government is considering legislation to make the automakers eligible for help under the US $700-billion bailout that cleared the US Congress in October.

As a Ford enthusiast, what do you think? Leave your comments.

FordMuscle contributor and roving track reporter Rick Devito interviews Matt Chobirko featuring his 11 sec 2001 Ford Ranger.

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The price of a barrel of crude oil fell below $70 today. This comes just three months after a record high of $145 in mid-July. In sync with so many other corrupt dealings between our government, Wall Street, and U.S. financial institutions, the fact that gas prices do not decline as fast as they rise, are leaving the american consumer with more cynicism about economic factors beyond their control.

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FordMuscle contributor and roving track reporter Rick Devito interviews Bob Cochran of Columbus, Ohio, featuring his 1948 F1.

Check out more FordMuscle videos on YouTube or at http://www.fordmuscle.tv/