Connections. Favors. Luck. Friends. Everyone has some combination of the above in their lives, but somehow the employment of any of these to do something like, say, build a car, seems to cut two ways. If I use favors, I'm clever and thrifty, but if the other guy does it to achieve the same ends, he is somehow inferior, unable to get by on his own without a crutch, even, in some morally ambiguous way, cheating-not terribly fair, in the scheme of things. What is the crime in using the tools given to you? Far as we can tell, there is none. Still, the nicer the car, the more the jealousy-and whatever the excuse for it, jealousy is all it is-comes spilling forth, in the form of epithets, rolled eyes, the occasional rude turn of phrase, both behind the back and to the face of the car owner in question.
Don't hate Dan Powell just because his Pontiac is beautiful. Dan, now residing in Clyde, Michigan, was born into a Pontiac family-his dad, Don Powell, has worked for the division for close to four decades, and maintains an enviable fleet of original-owner Ponchos in the garage including a '71 Grand Prix and a '91 1LE Formula. When it came time for Dan to get behind the wheel, there was no question that it would have the Pontiac name attached to its rump. Soon, a '95 6-speed Trans Am, painted Medium Garnet Red Metallic, rested in Dan's driveway. Since Dad works for the Pontiac, he got a pretty healthy discount (Powell paid about $21K out the door in '95 dollars). Tell me, if you had the opportunity, that you wouldn't do exactly the same thing.
To Dan's credit, the money he would have spent on the T/A had he bought it through normal channels was promptly invested in serious speed parts, making it the lean, mean 11-second machine that it is today. Hey, he could have spent it on beer and ball games. But that wouldn't have gotten him into High Performance Pontiac magazine.
Even with plenty of his own money at stake, Dan got a helping hand...sort of. This is where the luck, if you can call it that, comes into the picture. Enter Car Craft, the official magazine of burnout contests, primered fenders and bratty attitude. Anyway, Dan was showing his T/A at the Street Machine Nationals a couple of seasons ago (in Indianapolis, back in 2001) and during the fireworks show there was a bit of excitement when one of the rockets failed to go into the sky and instead aimed straight for the show field. The explosive charge landed square atop Dan's recently finished T/A.
Call it karma if you're feeling uncharitable, call it crap luck if you're feeling sympathetic. made As you'd imagine, the impact and explosion ruined the passenger's side front fender and the underside of the hood. It also charred most of the stainless brightwork in the engine bay, and in the end all four pieces of body glass had to be replaced. "They looked as if you'd welded quarters on a car and didn't use a welding blanket," says Dan. Eeewww. Beyond the repair bill, Powell pocketed a little extra cash for his two months without its use, courtesy of some very panicky show officials. And again, he sunk it all back into the T/A.