This week’s throwback Thursday features Scott Cook’s 2000 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi. This was the first 3800 FWD Bonneville to ever run a twelve second quarter mile. Then eleven seconds. And then ten seconds! The best time was 10.711 @ 125.71 mph with Ed Morad as the driver.
In the drag racing world FWD cars are certainly outnumbered by RWD cars. In RWD cars, weight transfer at launch works in your favor. In FWD cars, it’s the opposite of what you want to happen. It took considerable engineering in order to achieve these impressive quarter mile times.
If you could see through all that tire smoke, you would notice that custom designed wheelie bars fabricated by Bob Cook. However, what is different about these wheelie bars is that rather than keeping the front of the car from lifting too far off the ground, they are actually being used to apply downfroce to the front wheels to improve traction. These are some of the intricacies you have to consider when you’re building the quickest 3800 FWD Bonneville in the world. You have to shift your mindset from what you consider to be a typical drag car, to one that is going to act in a completely different way.
Overcoming challenges like this is what has lead to Tapout Tuning’s success, solving problems and making solutions!
