Pure Stock Series
Since this is the fourth installment, you probably know the premise of this series inside out. We held a major shootout at Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton, which consisted of a group of Pontiac Pure Stock racers, who compete each year in the Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race (PSMCDR or PS). The rules and setups were discussed in the past few issues, so let's suffice it to say that these Pontiacs must remain very close to factory stock, right down to the wheels and tires. Certain concessions are given to NHRA-legal-for-stock-class engine specs, aftermarket clutches, more modern exhaust systems with H- or X-type crossovers (but no headers), and some very mild suspension tweaking.

Pure Stock Series
Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton, Michigan, played host to a group of very dedicated Pontiac racers, but there were no slicks, no nitrous, no headers, practically nuthin' non-stock. Because, as you know-if you've been following this series-these were all Pure Stock racers who compete in the annual Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race (PS) each year at this very same facility. The drivers knowing the ins and outs of the track and the track personnel knowing the particular needs of racers who run on bias-ply street tires would pay off for everyone as these competitors were about to produce some very impressive time slips. Let's meet our current crop of participants.

For 2007, Speedworld Motorplex and Steve Barcak's Pontiac Heaven once again played host to HPP's Pavement Pounders Shootout. Due to a few mechanical difficulties, this year's participant list was cut to three, though each of them is certainly worthy of these pages and will provide potent combinations that you may want to try in your Pontiac.

This month, we go back to Ontario, California, for the second installment of the HPP Pavement Pounders Shootout from Auto Club Dragway at California Speedway in Fontana, California. It was held in conjunction with POCI Convention and Pontiac Drag Days, with Dave "Big Injun" Anderson organizing the racers and working with the POCI Drag Race Committee to bring it all together.

SO there we were at Ohio Valley Dragway in Louisville, Kentucky, anxiously awaiting not only the start of the HPP-sponsored Jim Wangers Invitational Race, but also our HPP shootout. The only problems were that you could cut the air with a knife and it was raining on this July morning.

For all who asked for more 400s, you are certainly getting your fill of them in this shootout series-and the latest installment is no exception, as we have a 9-second 400 '65 GTO, an 11-second 400 '73 Ventura, and a 10-second 400 '69 Firebird. Just to keep all those 400s honest, we also have a 455-powered '70 GTO convertible. So let's meet this month's contestants who, thanks to Virginia Motorsports Park management and Jim Zeek at Pontiacs In the Park, had a great track on which to race in our Pontiac Pavement Pounders Shootout.

This installment of the HPP "Pontiac Pavement Pounders Shootout" should please all those who love pure-Pontiac power as we have enlisted examples of a 400, a 428, a 455, and a 400 that became a 455 to throw down on the dragstrip for your enjoyment. Unlike the last installment however, three out of four of these machines are racecars that are dialed-in to a single purpose-to get through the quarter faster than the guy in the next lane. But don't fret readers, we have a street/strip Pontiac that serves double duty as well.

Following the success of the shootouts that we ran last year just prior to the Pontiacs in the Park event, both HPP and show promoter Jim Zeek felt it would be a great idea to do it all over again-so we did. What follows over the next few issues are the result of the endeavor.

On April 1, 2006, HPP once again returned to Speedworld Motorplex just outside Phoenix, Arizona, to attend Pontiac Heaven Drags & More. As an added bonus, we hosted an HPP shootout featuring four potent street/strip Pontiacs from the Southwest and West Coast: Alan Monroe's '78 Trans Am, Mike Ciraolo's '66 GP, Les Iden's '68 GP, and Matthew Luster's '69 GTO. As you can see, this is shaping up to be a great Big Car versustraditional-muscle shootout.

Last issue, our Pavement Pounders Shootout series brought us North of the border, to Ontario's Grand Bend Motorplex for our first international event. Eight hot Pontiacs and their owners had the opportunity to burn some rubber and make passes in front of HPP's cameras. The first four competitors basked in the limelight of our July issue, while the second group has the attention focused on them for this installment.

Feeling slightly anxious, the HPP staff ventured to Norwalk, Ohio, to run three shootouts in late April. Why the stress, you ask? Weather. We had reserved a date at Norwalk, Ohio's famed Raceway Park, but the weather experts had expressed a serious chance of rain. In fact, it rained for much of the trip out there the day before. We aren't just talking your typical April shower but the Midwest's renowned thunder and lightning storms. If another would have hit again before we had a chance to photograph and race some of the most powerful Pontiac pavement pounders in the region, we would've literally been up the creek.

It's very interesting to observe how things change in the battle of the sexes. Though women race car drivers were a part of the racing scene for as long as there has been a racing scene, they were usually seen as curiosities or, at best, minor players. As a result, women weren't taken very seriously by the racing establishment. By the '50s, though, things had loosened up enough where "Powder-Puff" divisions for women often ran as part of a regular weekend race program.

My, how fast a year goes by. It would seem that we just finished last year's Lone Star Shootout series and here were are once again reporting from the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, regarding how fast these Pontiacs are getting. For this series, HPP once again culled various entries with a lot of help from Randy Allen, Rob Bender, Floyd Hand, and other members of the Dallas Area Pontiac Association to provide a varied group of shootout Pontiacs for you to enjoy. We will run this year's events as a three-part series beginning with this installment, which will present five very different Pontiacs with combinations that can be emulated by the readership--should you so desire--once you see how they run. Enough with the chitchat, let's meet our participants.

From a full tube-chassis '70 GTO to a front-halved (we'll explain later) and back-halved '64 GTO, through a coil-sprung '80 LeMans and a leaf-sprung '73 Ventura, this shootout will show you that any of these chassis setups can perform and do it well with pure Pontiac power up front. So for our final installment of the Norwalk Raceway Park series of the HPP shootouts, let's meet our contestants:

This installment of the Pontiac Pavement Pounders Lone Star shootout illustrates what big cubes and nitrous can do for Fourth-Gens, how good, old-fashioned attention to detail can result in pure Pontiac-engined machines being quick in the quarter and a blast on the street, and how boost and a few bolt-ons can make a six-cylinder Third-Gen act like a worked V-8. Yes, we're back at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, with members of the Dallas Area Pontiac Association for a shootout that is sure to be of interest to any reader who likes to go fast and check out the combinations that make it possible--and even read about the ones that may need further development.

Jet-setting is great but it's always good to come back home. After three shootouts in the Dallas, Texas area, HPP's Pontiac Pavement Pounders Shootout returns to its home track of Raceway Park, Englishtown. What better way to start off a fresh season of shootouts than with the most diversified group of contenders that we have ever put together? In a single shootout, you will see a super low-buck entry in the form of a Ram Air III 400-powered 1968 Firebird that was built for less than $3,000. Next is a street sleeper 1978 Grand Prix that looks like a disco throwback but packs a potent 455, which generates mid-11 timeslips. A heavily breathed upon 383-powered 1987 Trans Am enjoys its underdog street status by beating up on Mustangs to the tune of mid-12s. For those who wonder what ever happened to the good running 389s that started the musclecar craze, we have a home-built 1965 LeMans so equipped, that is capable of mid 13s on the skinniest street tires that you've ever seen. And for the traditionalist, we've included a 455-powered '70 GTO that puts its power to the pavement using a recipe that was found in the pages of HPP. If your tastes run more toward late model techno-muscle, then you will be pleased to learn that a supercharged front-wheeler made the cut as well. SLP calls this GP a GTX.

It's no secret that being a Pontiac fan requires a level of dedication and perseverance beyond that of the average Chevy or Ford hobbyist. While parts availability is better now than ever before, it's still not as good as more mainstream marques.

As our company van cut a swath through the humid West Virginia air, it appeared that our luck couldn't be much worse. DeMauro and I had finished covering the rainy POCI Convention in Charleston the day before, where the wet weather put a damper on the impressive Pontiac turnout. The precipitation had prevented us from getting the tech stories and car features we wanted from our trip West. So when Sunday, July 14th dawned, we jumped up in anticipation of a sunny day and spending some time with a group of quick local Pontiacs from the Almost Heaven chapter of POCI that we had invited to an eighth-mile shootout with help of POCI chapter members Bill Muck and Bill Fortune. But as we headed Northwest to the track, the humidity was so thick that it was actually starting to pool on the windshield. Weather reports for the greater Charleston area called for rain throughout the day, and two very grumpy editors predicted that the next 12 hours or so would be spent in our dusty people-mover, sharing beef jerky and racing stories while wholeheartedly cursing Mother Nature.

The last time we wrote about our West Virginia shootout at Kanawha Valley Dragway in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, we told of a very serious group of racers from the Almost Heaven POCI chapter. These die-hards stayed around for an extra day after the POCI convention in nearby Charleston to lay it on the line for impressive timeslips and magazine fame. Misty Mountain Hop was just that: tarmac-tearing launches, lots of wheelies, bouncing suspension components, and steel-nerved drivers who kept the pedal down for glory.

You know those days when gale-force winds require you to walk around at a 45° angle? When garbage, dirt, and the occasional farm animal seem to be on a collision course with your newly-waxed Pontiac? When not-right-in-the-head magazine editors refuse to take heed in extreme weather forecasts and decide to schedule a shootout anyway? Well, April 9 was one of those days.

By now, most of you know about the trials and tribulations that HPP staffers go through to get our shootouts off. We were extremely fortunate to finish three entire sessions with the Almost Heaven POCI chapter at wet-but-scenic Kanawha Valley Dragway in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and this last one was a real barn burner. Our five contestants, who had stayed around after the POCI convention in Charleston to do a little racing, would put on an impressive show. Yep, on the morning of July 14, 2002, these folks had their game faces on, and we would soon learn just how lethal their weapons of choice were: Kenneth Simpson's tempting '63 Tempest used 462 inches of Pontiac power stuffed in a lightweight body to get the job done. Ted Robb's 'glass '62 Catalina had a nose-up attitude all day, and he put the mighty 401 to good use that Sunday. Roger Keeling's 355-fed 2002 Firebird sent us reeling with his lightning-quick 60-foots and mondo wheelstands. Bill Hoy's E Stock Automatic, 403-powered '68 Firebird would be tripping the beams with driver Jack Treola crackin' the whip. And AJ White used barely more than a high-stall converter to get the high-tech LS1 in his quicksilver 2002 WS6 to scream. It was as good as a day with a bunch of Pontiac lovers could get, so once Kanawha Valley's 1/8-mile surface was prepped, we got it on.

Late-models versus early-models! We've waited long enough! As part of our shootout series from Norwalk, we present these four diverse racers for your reading pleasure.

Contrary to the old adage, "It ain't easy being green," we have a group of Pontiacs in this shootout at Norwalk Raceway Park who prove green is the color of quick. All four Ponchos wear that envious hue in one form or another, and though one is Teal Turquoise, we say close enough. What's even more surprising is that none of these machines is Verdoro Green, which is quite possibly Pontiac's most popular rendition of this color.

As most of you already know, we've run a few HPP Pavement Pounder Shootouts at Norwalk Raceway Park (NRP) in years past. The combination of location, quality of the facility, and the expert track prep make it a great choice for the variety of Pontiacs we cover. If anyone is going to hook up and run their best 60-foots, it's likely to happen at Norwalk.

Readers who are 400 fans certainly have a lot to look forward to with this shootout as we have legendary drag racer Truman Fields participating with his "Hard Times" low-11-second NHRA/IHRA Stock Eliminator '68 D-port 400 Ram Air Firebird. This machine is dialed-in to within an inch of its life, and with the deft driving technique of Truman, it's sure to please. The Englewood, Florida, resident isn't going to get off easy though: We have three early A-bodies, each stuffed with over-bored 455s, that plan to race just as hard and satisfy readers who can't get enough of the big-inch combos.