SWEET ASPIRATIONS

Jerry and Matthew Sweet added an 800ci Pro Stock mountain motor to chase HOT ROD Drag Week's Pro Street NA Record.

- MICHAEL GALIMI

Merely uttering the phrase Pro Street conjures up thoughts of the flamboyant show cars of the ’80s, but the Pro Street look actually goes back to the 1970s, when hot rodders began adopting NHRA Pro Stock suspension modifications in their street cars to fit larger rear tires, hence the name Pro Street.

Some experts in the field will also point to a couple of notorious street racers from the Detroit area who relied on big tires to gain an edge in illegal street races in the late ’70s as some of the first to coin the phrase. Pro Street mostly spent the ’80s on the showgrounds, but by 1992, HOT ROD magazine would push to get the cars back to the dragstrip. The world-famous HOT ROD Top 10 Fastest Street Car Shootout was born, and over 30 years later, big-tire street cars are still being hurled down the dragstrip in search of glory. 

Today, HOT ROD Drag Week and events like it around the world test the mettle of street cars through rigorous street drives and daily drag racing. For HOT ROD, it’s five dragstrips in five days with roughly 1,000 miles logged on the odometers of the entrants that separate the street crowd from the posers. There are several categories within the Drag Week format and Pro Street is one of the longest-running classes, made an official category in 2007. The rules are simple and cater to traditional, back-half-style chassis builds, with all entries rolling on wide meats that are at least 11.5 inches across. Drag Week officials break the category into two classifications: Power Adder and Naturally Aspirated. It is the latter that Jerry and Matthew Sweet, the father-and-son team from Michigan, chose to chase after with their colorful 1976 Chevy Nova.