Seattle's John Goodman has been collecting, preserving, and racing Corvettes for several years-a hobby that doesn't come without a price, so it helps that he has enjoyed success wheeling and dealing in the city's commercial real estate market. He is also an active participant in competitive vintage racing-local, national, and even the international circuit.
The risks involved with vintage racing are two fold: the threat of personal injury is combined with the fear of demolishing a priceless and irreplaceable piece of racing nostalgia. as technology, safety equipment, and vehicle engineering has evolved, the vehicles streaking across the concourses have not. The high velocity of these races test the limits of those aged race cars, often past their breaking points. Many a classic Ferrari and Daytona Shelby has snapped a control arm and spiraled out of control into a guardrail.
Rules admonish the drivers to keep their throttles at 90 percent, but we all know the temptation of passing a DeTomaso Pantera on the big end is sometimes too much for a big-block Vette to resist. John shrugs off any inquiry about the lengths that he goes to outperform the other participants, but he does have the awards and accolades to evidence some fancy driving without putting the nose of one of his fiberglass-bodied assassins into the tail of an innocuous Speedster Porsche. And for those unaware, long before the Tokyo-born, pseudo-sport of drifting was ever imagined, these wicked machines were smoldering rubber at erratic angles and insane rpms way before a Toyota Supra ever broke its wheels loose in a vacant parking lot.
The observant will pick up on a theme running through the Corvette collection-fuel injection and big-blocks, as only a few of the earlier cars are still fed by carburetors. In addition to his Corvettes, an assortment of race-prepped dancing ponies and Porsches litter his collection, as well as a vintage racing Budweiser powerboat motivated by a 24-litre Rolls-Royce V-12 Spitfire engine.
One suspects John likes to race big-block Corvettes because of the sheer challenge, although he maintains they're more forgiving. When it comes to Cobras, big-blocks get loose and wash out in a corner much earlier than small-block cars. you can carry a lot more speed into a corner in a better-balanced car with a lighter engine, so if it all goes "pear-shaped" it happens much more quickly. If you make it through the corner with a big-block car still pointing forwards, you have all that straight line brutality to let loose, which is where the fun is. On the other hand, perhaps it's just that small-block Corvettes are too easy to drive and don't provide John with a challenge.