Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Fuller
It won't be to much longer until these will be the only cars in stock at Indy if this is not addressed.
|
In 1972 NHRA attempted to legislate an arbitrary "10-year rule" for Stock Eliminator. It was a poorly conceived plan that failed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the first OPEC/Big Oil-engineered fuel shortage crisis and the ensuing horsepower reductions across the American car market. For over 20 years very few high performance cars were manufactured for the domestic market and most of them were at a competitive disadvantage when paired against existing combinations. The "classic" muscle cars ruled in Stock Eliminator. Eventually, only cars manufactured in 1959 and earlier suffered banishment from the eliminator bracket.
In either 1997 or 1998, the Official Rulebook included paragraph inviting OEM to create "special production runs" of vehicles that "need not be showroom available" to be included in the Classification Guide. It only took ten years for manufacturers to avail themselves of this opportunity and begin licensing outside vendors to begin spitting out cookie-cutter models and kits of race-only "Stockers." (That brings to mind the old joke about a football game during which one team retired to the locker room and it only required eight plays for the inept competition to find the end zone.)
Fast forward to 2014 and finally someone has devised a means to the ultimate goal of a Stock Eliminator field composed only of late model factory Stock cars. Give a few models of very expensive, purpose-built factory race cars a free pass to compete without the artificial ceiling of the AHFS and we're only a heart-beat away from Nirvana, a field composed of only cars that are newer than 10 years! It's funny how things work out.
c