Roy Badie's worst nightmare

[Lynn]

From the horse's mouth.


It'll Never Die
A few corrections are in order regarding your Hemi versus Buick article in the Feb. '07 issue. First of all, I'm just an average enthusiast and definitely not a "seasoned NHRA Stock Eliminator veteran" as you reported. I've never raced in any NHRA-sanctioned event. I don't even own a car trailer, and I never have. So wherever my cars go, they are driven. In the Dec. '84 race that I had with Roy Badie's '70 Hemi GTX four-speed, he is the one who trailered his car to Gainesville Raceway. I drove my '70 Buick GS Stage 1 260 miles round-trip. Both cars had the same mild modifications, as you reported, and neither was purpose-built for that particular race. They were both stock-long-block street cars with headers and very mild cams.

I didn't even know about the challenge that Badie had made (where he stated the "the Buick GS runs like it's tied to a tree&quot until one week before the race when I received a phone call about the challenge from then-editor of Muscle Car Review, Donald Farr. That race was entirely a last-minute affair for me. Its relevance to the general enthusiast was based on the fact that both cars were true cars as you would find at a car show or cruising on the street. As an aside, after I raced Roy Badie, I also raced and beat a '70 Hemicuda that showed up with Roy. This was recorded on a video camera but was never reported in the pages of Muscle Car Review.

Lastly, round three of Hemi versus Buick happened back in July 1993 at Napierville Dragway outside Montreal, Canada. Again, the challengers were two basically stock-appearing, street-legal, stock-displacement cars: a '70 GSX Stage 1 and a '71 Hemicuda. Both had to "idle like stock" (a magazine rule). Muscle Car Review again sponsored the race. After losing the first round, the Hemicuda's owner refused to run the required two out of three races, so the magazine had no article. Nothing was ever published about this, but we have it all on video. So it can be easily argued that the Buick GS won two out of three of the magazine match races against the Hemi, for whatever it's worth!
Richard Lasseter
Valdosta, GA



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