Slick-tire doorsammer racing is coming back en vogue, and we’re here for it.

Street Outlaws No Prep Kings promoter Pilgrim Studios plans to a debut a new category at its event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Arizona next month, featuring the true back-half 10.5-inch tire cars that ruled outlaw racing in the South in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The aim of the new class is to reclaim the glory of what many consider to be the true Outlaw 10.5 cars, before more advanced full chassis began to infiltrate and forever change the face of small-tire racing. The cars will be mandated to utilize the stock front framerails from the firewall forward; aftermarket or custom K-members can be used and must bolt to the stock framerail. Stock-type front suspension is required, and the stock strut towers must also remain in place. Like those early cars, any rear suspension type is allowed. The cars have to remain within 2 inches of their factory produced wheelbase, and with steel roof and quarters mandated, must retain their overall factory dimensions.

Any engine is permitted, with a range of weights already devised based on power adder configuration, and of course, it wouldn’t be an Outlaw 10.5-style category without 33×10.5W slicks.

The rules got carried away over the year on what I believe was a very pure performance class. And I think if those grey-area cars are kept out, these back-half style cars are going to come out of the woodwork. – Jim Howe

No Prep Kings star Jim Howe, who cut his teeth racing with ORSCA and other groups around the South in the formative years of small-tire outlaw racing, has committed an entry to the class — his familiar “The Warden” ’68 Camaro with son Jimmy at the wheel — but has also aided in getting this new endeavor off the ground.

“The reason for this is, there are so many of the older, true back-half Outlaw 10.5 cars that were part of the early movement of the doorslammer racing we have today, that are sitting,” Howe says. “The rule makers have bent and bent and bent over the years to continually allow extra stuff in. They started letting tube chassis cars in that were masquerading as back-half cars, and that opened Pandora’s box. They’re basically a Pro Mod or Pro Stock chassis. People try to tell me there’s no difference, and I can tell you there is, because I have both.”

“Once those cars started being built like that, that killed the blue-collar guys in Outlaw 10.5,” Howe continues. “Blue-collar guys don’t want to bracket race, they want to go fast without spending half or 3/4 of a million a year to race, spending 100-grand on an engine and half a million a chassis. The rules got carried away over the year on what I believe was a very pure performance class. And I think if those grey-area cars are kept out, these back-half style cars are going to come out of the woodwork. I put a post out on Facebook over a year asking how many of these cars are just sitting, and the responses were overwhelming. People were saying, ‘I’ve still got mine, but I have no place to race it. I can go test-and-tune at my local track.’ These guys want to go have fun with these cars and there’s just no place to do it. This will allow the purists that have these cars to come back out. The old Jack Barfield cars and cars like that sitting in barns all over the country can do a 5-inch bore space nitrous motor, a roots-blown Hemi or big-block Chevy, an 88mm turbo deal, and come out and race. And they’ve got to race on a no-prep surface, so that and the tire will be an equalizer for these cars.”

“I’m excited about it, and I hope some of the East coast guys will take a vacation and come out to Arizona to support it. If we get the support, it will stay, and it will be a big deal. The ball is in the racers’ court right now.”

The Wild Horse Pass event will be held the weekend of