If you’ve been a follower of DRAGZINE for any time at all, you’re well aware that we are huge fanatics of heads up, street car drag racing, or essentially, anything that’s fast and looks as though it could be driven on the street. Much of our content, from event coverage, to tech articles, and news caters to this specific genre of racing. As such, on this Flashback Friday, we jump in the Wayback Machine and travel to a time that, in the grand scheme of drag racing history, wasn’t that long ago: 1992, and Hot Rod Magazine’s very first Fastest Street Car Shootout.

Held at the sadly now-defunct Memphis Motorsports Park just outside of Memphis in Millington, Tennessee, brought together many of the early greats of street car racing to see once and for all who truly had the quickest and fastest street car in America.  This event can be mostly credited with jumpstarting organizations such as the National Muscle Car Association (NMCA), National Street Car Association (NSCA), Fun Ford Weekend (FFW), and others, that eventually spawned into the huge, nationwide and even worldwide craze that street car drag racing is today. Little did event organizers, competitors, and fans in attendance know just what effect this race would have on the sport in the years and decades to come.

The Fastest Street Car Shootout featured many of the greatest street car racers of all-time, with the likes of Gene Deputy, Rod Saboury, Steve Grebeck, Mark Tate, Mike Moran, and many others all in contention for the event win and a place in Hot Rod’s Top 10 Fastest Street Cars in America. Max Carter and his ’66 Chevy II qualified dead last in the field after experiencing his share of troubles during an attrition-filled weekend of qualifying, but on race day, would turn around his fortunes, going to the final alongside Steve Johnson and running the quickest elapsed time of the weekend for the win, 8.43 at 160.37 MPH to Johnson’s 8.74 at 150.27. Enjoy this look back at one of the venues that set Outlaw 10.5, Drag Radial, and other forms of small tire racing in motion.