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Larry Larson dips into the fives

24 November, 2014

Following up on his street-legal Chevrolet S10’s overwhelming success during the 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week, where he ran a 6.16 at 219.61mph, beating Andy Frost’s 6.403 at 229.31mph, Larry Larson has gone one step further and dipped into the fives — a 5.950 at 244.43mph, to be exact.


Larry Larson achieves a 5.950 at 244.43mph during 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week

Larry Larson achieves a 5.950 at 244.43mph during 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week

At the Las Vegas-based Street Car Super Nationals, the team had managed to iron out the ignition issues bothering them earlier on — that 6.16 was run with the engine lacking top end.

On the Friday morning, November 21, the team ran a 6.058 at 241.50mph, which was bettered that evening as they ran a 6.043 at 242.67mph. Heading into Sunday morning at number 10 in the Outlaw ProMod class, the team would go on to run their first five-second pass in the wild Chevy S10, becoming the world’s fastest street-legal car for the third time during the course of the event.

Because the S10 is still a relative unknown for the team, it looks as though there’s a lot more potential in it that is yet to be tapped into. The team hopes for a 5.80 at 250mph and given their recent performance it’s highly likely that we’ll be seeing it sooner rather than later.

Not one to take a challenge lying down, 2013 Drag Week champion Tom Bailey has announced via social media his intent to run a 5.50-second pass, stating, “The goals are simple — 300mph in the standing mile, and [a] 5.50 quarter mile”.

With this much excitement so soon after Drag Week, we can’t wait to see what 2015’s event holds — could we be seeing the world’s first 5.50-second pass in a street-legal car?

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.

Range Rover CSK — the original SUV

5 June, 2026

The Range Rover, thanks to Charles Spencer King, went into production in 1970 boasting an iconic shape that would last until 1996. The vehicle that would create the SUV moniker came about because Rover decided it was time to add a bigger four-wheel-drive vehicle, one with a 100-inch wheelbase, to the model range. Land Rover made a 109-inch wheelbase model but the standard vehicle had a 88-inch wheelbase.
The new model would be more suitable for road use than the existing Land Rover, which was considered to be predominantly for rural use. To make sure it could cope on any road it came standard with the Rover 3.5-litre V8 engine. The body design was originally sketched by King and went into production with only a few minor touch-ups by the Rover styling team.
According to King, “The idea was to combine the comfort and on-road ability of a Rover saloon with the off-road ability of a Land Rover. Nobody was doing it.”