WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

THE PRO STREET ERA PEAKED IN THE '80S. ARE WE IN THE BEGINNING OF A RESURGENCE?

- JOHN MCGANN

What can you say about Rick Dobbertin’s J2000 that hasn’t already been said? Some people call it the pinnacle of Pro Street, some call it the car that put a stake in the heart in the Pro Street movement. Maybe those opinions are one and the same.

Rick Dobbertin debuted his 1985 Pontiac J2000 at the 1986 Car Craft Street Machine Nationals and set the world on fire. Throngs of people and even a TV news crew flocked to the car, as much a work of art as it was an engineering masterpiece. For the next couple of years, the car made the rounds at all the major shows, including the HOT ROD Supernationals and Super Cruise, then it disappeared from the scene. It had been hidden in a storage facility in Chicago until last September when Matt Hay, another famous Pro Street builder, convinced the owner to sell it to him.

Now, we have the privilege of photographing these two Pro Street icons together, but imagine what it’s like to know you own both of them. Matt Hay described our photo shoot as surreal. “It was amazing to see the two together on location for the shoot. Yes, we’ve taken pictures of them at home, but seeing them in the sunset together was totally different.”

He built the Thunderbird to show at the 1988 Street Machine Nationals, where it won the Best Engineered and Best Paint and Graphics awards. It was also runner-up for the Best Street Machine award. Matt and his wife Debbie are accomplished builders from the Pro Street Era.

In 2014, they reacquired the Thunderbird after it had languished in disrepair in the hands of several disinterested owners. Matt says he’s not looking to relive his youth; he wants to see these cars and the legacy of that era survive.