2000 Pontiac Firebird

"We were pretty much amateurs, neither of us had ever built a real race car before." Usually, when someone says that, you end up looking at something that belongs in a junkyard, welded together with coat hangers, and powered by some sort of "RV cam." Instead, what you see in front of you is the product of over 1,100 man-hours of work. In perspective, that is over one hundred and thirty-five hours of labor for every single second of track time. That's just to physically assemble this monster, let alone all the other hard work involved with owning and maintaining a competitive drag radial race car. When asked, Mark Koehler says, "I have always wanted to build a race car from scratch. The fact that it turned out to look and perform better then we thought it would is what I like most about it."

There is a lot going on here, so let us start at the front, at the very tip of the compressor blade. As air enters the Precision 94mm turbo, it is quickly compressed and sent directly through a custom-built 2,000+hp air-to-water intercooler, which sits neatly in the engine bay. Cooled and still screaming, the next stop takes us past a massive 105mm Wilson throttle body and into the ever-popular Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake. Total Engine Airflow is responsible for massaging the Trick Flow 225cc aluminum heads, which feature large Ferrea 2.08-inch intake valves opened by a top-secret hydraulic roller camshaft. Passing through here, the 28 pounds of boost finally enters the combustion chamber where it is met by a ton of fuel, provided by 160 lb/hr injectors backed by twin Bosch 044 fuel pumps. "We chose the pumps for their quality, price, and reliability. At some point, you need to keep things simple and on budget."

As soon as the Big Stuff 3 system, tuned by Mark with help from the Ohio Boys, fires the spark, all of Kurt Urban's motor building experience is put to the test. Using a set of JE forged pistons housed in a 4-inch-bore aluminum LS2 block, power is transferred down the Howards billet connecting rods to spin the beefy stock-stroke Callies DragonSlayer crankshaft. The crank, supported by billet main caps, is oiled using an ARE dry sump system, plumbed with help from Bob's Braided Lines, and a ported Wheel 2 Wheel pump. The exhaust runs out a set of stock GM 6.0L manifolds, past an HKS 60mm wastegate, and into the backside of the turbo. Post turbo it is split and heads out either side fender after being muffled by a pair of Burns mufflers. Mark reports that this is "just a little starter motor to get us going."

Making a living on the backside of the crankshaft is a custom 6,000-stall converter built by Midwest, which supplies power to the Rossler Pro-Mod two-speed Powerglide. All of this torque and turbo-induced horsepower is now sent down the Mark Williams chrome-moly driveshaft and into the substantially built Billingsley Fab 9-inch rearend. Here a 3.50 rear gear attached to a full spool delivers everything it's got down a set of 40-spline gun-drilled axles. A pair of 315/60/15 Mickey Thompson drag radials, clenched to huge 15x10-inch Weld Racing wheels are the only things touching the pavement and they provide enough grip to move the Firebird 60 feet in just 1.30 seconds. Suspension, as you can imagine, is extremely important when going this fast and for this Mark runs a surprisingly simple setup. Billingsley upper and lower control arms sit front and rear, while a set of Strange double-adjustable shocks wrapped inside Strange springs are in charge of controlling everything.

Is your jaw on the floor yet? Have I mentioned that in just a couple of trips to the track, Mark has already gone 8.06 at 175 mph and he is just getting started? Maybe raw ridiculous speed isn't your cup of tea. Perhaps you prefer a wild show car with candied paint, a nice interior, and killer wheels. If that's the case, you're in luck.