Image Courtesy of the NMRA

At the recent NMRA event in Bradenton, Florida, TREMEC and Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords Magazine put together the first-ever Stick Shift Shootout as part of the True Street portion of the event. After the True Street class ran the top eight competitors utilizing manual transmissions were presented with a plaque detailing their prowess, but the top two competitors, Jeff Smith and TJ Fox, battled it out in a best two-of-three heads-up competition to determine a winner. And what did the winner get? Why, a brand-new TREMEC Magnum XL six-speed transmission system.

We caught up with Jeff this week and he was happy to tell us all about his weekend. “I just installed the clutch last week..I drove the car from Orlando to Bradenton to break it in. I had my Weld wheels and my ET streets in the back seat. I borrowed a jack and put them on. I enter True Street every year. I entered with the intention of winning the 11.00 slot. I made five passes on Friday and they were 11.0-11.50. On Friday my 1st pass was a 10.82 at 131 MPH – my first 10 second pass in this car! I was very happy,” he explained.

But the fun didn’t end there – he spun on the second True Street pass and only ran an 11.37, then hooked so hard on the third that the car bogged and an 11.58 was the result, giving him an 11.30 average of his three True Street passes, and the quickest average ET of all of the manual-transmission-equipped competitors. That pitted him up against Fox, who carried an 11.40 average into their heads-up matchup.

On the first run, Smith ran an 11.11 while Fox had a nitrous backfire and never moved. Smith then turned in an 11.0 on the second pass, while Fox ran into issues again and only turned in a 14-second hit. “I was celebrating my new Magnum transmission, then NMRA tech guys kills my celebration informing me the first run was only practice. I was pissed….but my only option was do it again. Third pass I went 10.91 @ 131 while TJ went an 11.1. This time the victory felt better because it was a decent race. All in all it was a great weekend, and I am hoping to step it up and compete again,” he told us. 

Jeff’s 19,000-mile, one-of-281 painted in Competition Orange, 646 rear-wheel-horse 2004 Cobra relies on a number of aftermarket parts, most notably a 2.3L TVS supercharger from Justin Starkey and the team at VMP Tuning. Starkey and his team have tuned the car with some of their in-house parts like a VMP slot-style mass air sensor and Fuel Pump Voltage Booster along with a host of other go-fast parts. Congratulations to you, Jeff – we look forward to seeing you banging gears again soon!