Richard And The Old Man

Yeah, it was going to be a street car”

- Ro McGonegal

In ancient times, Detroit Raw supplied the youth market with hot cars, defined it with them, but they easily handed off the muscle car powertrain to a bunch of mature sheet metal, including the Monte Carlo, a car that wasn’t necessarily meant to be a hot rod of any stripe. In the weed-smoky ’70s, our pal Berserko Bob had one. Not some small-block/ slushbox wheezer, either. His Monte had a 454 backed by a Turbo 400. No one we knew had anything like it. But Berserko didn’t hot rod it. He just drove it every day. Rich McLeod (a mechanic and welder by experience) got his Monte way back in ’98. He didn’t want it for the daily grind. He turned his unique sheet metal into a drag racer, a hot rod that gets serious second looks. When he bought it off some soul at an Arizona Air Force base it was in solid shape. Must have been the dry air that preserved it.

Rich didn’t stall. Though he might pedal the car once in a while on the street, he went right for the throat. Straightaway, he pulled his NMCA Easy Street hat on and got busy with the future. He began his industry on the north side of Milwaukee in a two-and-a-half car garage. Talk about putting yourself in debt. At the same time he got married and bought a house. But some humans need to operate under that kind of pressure— keeps it all relative.