can you imagine how the first guy felt?

[Jim Ratto]

Nowadays, as much fun as it is, it's common for a good-running Beetle to whoop the pants off of a Mustang, Corvette, etc.

But imagine it's 1969 or so.....think about how cool it must have been for the guy that kicked some V8-ass before any other street Bug did. I wonder when, where, and who....maybe Sarge has some stories.

I can just imagine the sinking feeling of the Mach 1 or Z/28 driver after seeing the Anchor Muffler getting smaller and smaller......he he he...

[Sarge]

Back in the day, whupping V8 ass was what drove all of us to greater heights.  It was a slow process though, as the parts that we take for granted nowdays were, for the most part, nonexistant.  As for the guy who passed out the most V8 beatings, that would most likely be Mike Mahaffey and it was ALWAYS a pleasure watching him do it!  Those were the days of Big Carl's in Fullerton (they had car-hops out back to bring your food to the car), Taco Villa (about a mile from Carl's) and the Bean Hut (another mile or two away).  These places always had lots of V8's whether muscle car, hot rod, or something new right off the showroom floor.  VW's were always the butt of the joke, so to speak.  So you can see right where this was headed...V8 WHUP ASS  !  I had a progression of different engines during that time from a 1600 with a Zenith 32 NDIX, to a 300cfm Holley Bug Spray, to a 1700 with Solex 40P11-4's, to 48 IDA's, and finally an 1835 with IDA's backed with close ratio's...each a little faster then the last.  So, for me being one of the first so to speak, it was great back then and it's still fun today!

[Jim Ratto]

found these posts about Mahaffey's car on the other forum.

"HAAA HAAA....Back then, there was BIG Carl's (not Carl's JR) on Harbor Blvd.  They had car hops and no shortage of high performance Detroit Iron out back to harrass.  Across the street from Carl's was Select Auto Sale (Fiat dealer) where we would park out front and "solicit the canidates" as they passed by.  Races would happen out on La Palma St or over behind the Sunkist Orange Proccessing plant...lots of good times!


Right on Deano...Ed did buy Mike's ride.  One of my all-time favorite car sightings at Carl's was Tom McMullen's WILD 32 Ford....Black, Great flame job, and that Moon gas tank in front of the radiator...plus that unmistakable whine of a supercharger under the hood...THEE BEST!  Let's not forget about the Haydon brothers, either.  Doug and Whit both had fast cars that pushed the envelope.  Doug's 67 was white to begin with then painted a beautiful "Vicks Bottle Blue"...Whit's 56 was Sepia Brown.  If there were any reved motors or dirty looks from other drivers, those two were the first to strike!  I had a neighbor who owned a Dodge Super Bee that was pretty stout...I raced him one night over at Nabisco for $25 and lost by a 1/2 car...the Haydons were in the guys face for double or nothing.  The guy agreed, so we cruised over to Doug & Whit's shop a few miles away to get thier "car"...which had been recently turned into a race car.  Needless to say, I got my money back!"

[Jim Ratto]

and more.............

this time from Mike himself....one of the best posts ever on the CLF

"That was a fun era, height of the muscle car scene. The cruise scene was on Harbor Blvd. going between Big Carl’s and Taco Villa - straight out of American Graffiti. We were the anti-muscle car crowd that was basically laughed at. Before I built my car a fast street VW ran in the high 15’s or 16’s, hardly a threat to the muscle cars. The really fast VW’s were strip only – the Inch Pincher, Schley Bros, Vittone, etc. But no one that I knew of was using that technology in a daily driver street car. So I decided to go for it. Ron Fleming and I built the motor at Gene Berg’s shop when he first moved to Orange from Washington. I had it dyno’d by Dean Lowry. After a full pulls he just looked at us and said we were crazy, “you can’t drive this on the street. It has more hp than my Inch Pincher did a year ago.”  We just smiled, said “we’ll see”. Actually it worked far better than we had even hoped. It was a torque monster that pulled right off of idle. I’m sure the Vertex magneto helped a lot. Ron did a great job on the heads. Suddenly, I had a legitimate low 13-second street car, with fan belt, muffler, and Pirelli’s. American cars needed to have slicks and uncorked headers to run faster than that. Anyway, back to the muscle car street scene. They’d never seen a fast VW on the street before. I’ll share three of my favorite memories. I was cruising through the car hop section in the back of Big Carl’s and a guy in a Chevelle stuck his head out and started laughing at my car. I stopped backed up, bounced the front end a little and did a major burn out lifting the front wheels a few inches. I went back around, stopped in front of his car, yelled out “want to race that piece of s#*t.?” The look on his face was priceless as he slumped in his seat and everyone around was laughing. Another time I was alone driving at night on Harbor Blvd. in La Habra. I pulled up next to a 1968 Mustang fastback. He was obviously very proud of his car as he still had the white shoe polish bracket time of 11.85 on his windshield, presumably from Wed. night bracket racing at OCIR the night before. So I revved him off. He and his buddy just looked at me and started laughing. Obviously he didn’t take me seriously. He just pulled away rather quickly and I stayed a half a car back then punched it and lurched ahead of him. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces as they snapped their heads toward me in disbelief. So we pulled up to the next intersection (fortunately traffic was very light, no one else around). Now he knew I was serious. Watching the side yellow light anticipating the green light, we both took off burning. I shut it down when my speedo said 100-mph and I had him by about 2 open cars. He turned left, I turned right, splitting up in case a cop saw us. I would have liked to have heard their conversation after that. Shortly thereafter I was without my car at Taco Villa and we approached a crowd engaged in some animated story telling. Standing back and listening I heard them talking about an 11-second street VW. Man, I was wondering where the heck is that car. I didn’t know of any that fast. Then one of the guys from the crowd that knew me and had set up some races for me that he made some good money on whispered to me “they’re talking about your car.” I couldn’t get any more races from that crowd after that.

Mike Mahaffey"

MAN what an inspiring story!

[SilverPig]

Ace! 

[Lee.C]

truly inspirering stories guys - God I wish i was there 

[Turtle001]

awesome stories!!!

[Rick Meredith]

Great stuff. Even in the late 70s/Early 80s most of the V8 crowd were oblivious to fast VWs.

[Rocket-Racing]

Truly awesome reading!
Wish I could say "Ron Fleming and I built the motor at Gene Berg's shop and had it dyno'd by Dean Lowry"..
Guess I'm not the only one here with that wish 

[Tobi/DFL]

You definitely aren´t!

[Jim Ratto]

every once in awhile I like to dig this old post from Mike Mahaffey up.... it still gives me permagrin

[Carlos De Alba]

every once in awhile I like to dig this old post from Mike Mahaffey up.... it still gives me permagrin

Thanks Ratto.........what a great topic.......... 

[speedwell]

found these posts about Mahaffey's car on the other forum.

jim have a link too see those pictures
 

[danny gabbard]

I was not slamming the guy I 'm sorry If it came out that way doug and I were drinking buddies for a while. just kinda of wondered what happen to the guy. shit road his motorcycle home one night to help him out .

[Sarge]

Not the same Doug Haydon...Doug's never owned a motorcycle.

[danny gabbard]

again I'm sorry, It did not come out the way I wrote it. fingers moveing faster than brain. I will start slowing down sorry sarge

[louisb]

Great story. Wonder if we could get him on here. Sarge?

--louis