The National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) has been around since 1988, but it didn’t turn into a hardcore racing series until the mid-to-late-‘90s, when Fastest Street Car-style racing became all the rage. The NMCA grew year after year, eventually coming under the umbrella of ProMedia, which also produced the National Mustang Racers Association (NMRA). Both series have historically only been contested in the Midwest and eastern parts of the country, with only a few smaller events west of the Mississippi. West coast racers were constantly begging the NMCA to come to their area, so ProMedia created the NMCA West Street Car Nationals a few years ago, a now five-race event series that starts and ends at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, with races at Pomona, Bakersfield, and Las Vegas in the middle.

Participation has been on the up this year, and the Fontana season finale was no exception, with a full pit area of everything from Pro Modified cars to bracket dragsters and street cars. The 3^rd Annual Unlimited Products NMCA West Street Car Finals would settle the points championships for all the classes, with some of them hotly contested coming into the event.

The big dog class is Garrett Turbo Pro Mod, which features turbos and screw blowers, and Rick Snavely’s Turbos Direct-sponsored ’69 Camaro won the championship when fellow contender Andrew Berry didn’t make it out; making it official when Snavely took out Scott Oksas’ Camaro in the second round. But the biggest news in Pro Mod may have been Mike Bowman’s new car, a Jerry Bickel-built Chevelle with show-quality detail and paint and plenty of motor. It was a brand new car, never having turned a tire prior to unloading in Fontana’s pits, but a tire-spinning John Mihovetz (number one qualifier) and a massive oil-down from John Durden’s Willys sent Bowman to the final. Snavely beat him however, when the Chevelle lost the hook.

The second most bad-ass class is ProCharger Street Outlaw, where Dragzine’s own Project BlownZ went into the event with a small points lead over Eric Gustafson’s Chevy-powered Mustang. Gustafson ran the first six-second pass in class history but lost in the second round to Ryan Jones. That meant James Lawrence in BlownZ met Jones in the final. Lawrence ran quicker, but Jones was better on the tree, taking the event win and handing Lawrence a runner-up finish in the points to Gustafson.

There was no question coming into the weekend who would walk away the champion in the Mickey Thompson True 10.5 class, since Mark Luton of Modular Mustang Racing (MMR) came into Fontana undefeated in eliminations. In fact, in the four races leading up the finale, he was number one qualifier at three of them. Luton had a first round bye then sawed his way through Walt Brock’s ’67 Camaro and Steve Kuhls’ ’66 Chevelle before dispatching Roger Holder’s 2000 Camaro in the final round, making it a clean sweep of the season. Talk about dominance.

The ARP Outlaw 8.5 cars put huge power to tiny, 8.5-inch-wide tires, and this is the only NMCA West heads-up class that’s contested on the eighth-mile, not the full quarter. That’s because the class grew out of a few existing classes run in other sanctions that had always run to the eighth. It’s a fun class to watch, since traction is always a valuable and hard-to-get commodity. The expected winner and class champion was George Raygoza’s Nova, but engine problems kept him from making the call for the second round, while Erick Aldrich eventually beat Dan Hale in the final round. We’re not sure how the points have worked out yet in this class so we don’t know who is the season champion, but it appears to be Hale and his ’89 Mustang.

NMCA regular Michael DeMayo made his annual trip West from Pennsylvania to compete at the NMCA West Street Car Finals before heading to Vegas for the Street Car Supernationals in a few weeks—sort of the street-car version of NHRA’s Western Swing. He was certainly one of the class favorites and went three rounds to make it to the final to face the always-tough Tony Aneian. Aneian’s ’68 Camaro runs a bigger engine — a 510 cubic inch Chevy to DeMayo’s 415-inch Ford — and both cars were running in the 8.0s all weekend so it was going to be a good race. But DeMayo screwed the pooch on the line, redlighting with a -.013 reaction time, handing Aneian the win. They both ran it out the back door anyway, DeMayo posting an 8.038 at 169 to the Camaro’s 8.089 at 167.

Hedman Hedders Nostalgia Street Car (NSC) is an index class based on half-second increments that features older-style cars, not modern iron. At Fontana, the competitors ranged from a ’59 Anglia to a ’52 Chevy pickup to Camaros and Novas. There were 23 cars entered in NSC and when the shouting was over, it was Evan Kowalski’s ’78 Chevy Monza taking out Tom Easterday’s ’62 Dodge Dart, when the latter went red. Currie Enterprises Open Comp is an index class in the typical Open Comp fashion, meaning your qualifying time is used as your dial-in, minus a one-tenth breakout. Kowalski had the dream weekend by winning his second class at Fontana, beating Brent Calvert’s CJ Mustang in the final round. That’s got to make the sort trip home to Corona, California a good one!

Calvert also competed in two classes, the second one being Granatelli Motorsports Mustang Madness, which runs a format similar to Open Comp. Calvert, whose father, John, is the force behind Calvert Racing and the ubiquitous Cal-Tracs suspension bars, also runs his factory Mustang racer in NHRA events and special Cobra Jet shootouts, which it has won in the past. But he couldn’t get past eventual class winner Gary Moreno’s ’83 Mustang in the semi-finals. For his part, Moreno took out Greg Dreher’s ’84 Mustang in the final in an incredibly close, double-breakout race that had a difference of .002-seconds at the finish line.

The biggest class as far as entrants was Calvert Racing Quick Street, which featured 45 cars on the ladder, meaning you had to make it through five full rounds of eliminations in order to make it to the final. The money round saw Kevin Hayes’ ’74 Camaro face Pat Van Dusen’s red, white and black ’56 Chevy 210—the tri-5 redlit and gave the win light to the Camaro. Edelbrock Super Quick and NMCA Pro Comp are essentially bracket classes that allow doorslammers, altereds and dragsters, and both classes have a good following of regulars. They were won by Zach Meziere’s 2011 Mullis dragster and Bob Harris’s Grand Am, respectively. The NMCA West has two bracket races, one each on Saturday and Sunday, with Brackets 1, 2, and 3 available to local racers. Several crashes and oil-downs during the day on Saturday pushed that day’s bracket finales to the next morning, so Sunday was a really busy day for the bracket gang.

That marks the end of the 2014 NMCA West season as the staff, led by Event Director Rollie Miller, back to the rules committee to work on next year’s tweaks to the rules and to firm up the schedule and all the class sponsors for another year of street car drag racing — west coast style!