By Rob Kinnan, HOTROD.com

	Monstrous BBS wheels carry equally huge 335/30ZR-18 Goodyear street tires. Tire clearance is possible with no front wheelwells and tubs in the rear. Wes Allison
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The Porsche and Ferrari wankers never knew what they were getting themselves into. The second running of the Silver State Classic was expected to be much like the first -- a group of high rollers bringing together their European exotics and assorted oddball sports cars (with a handful of Corvettes, Panteras, and other domestics thrown in) to let it all hang out on a closed section of highway in the remote desert of Ely, Nevada. Ely is so far out in the middle of nowhere that we were shocked they had electricity, let alone an actual high school with a football field. But there we were, standing on the field surrounded by beautiful people and their beautiful automobiles, being careful not to bump into anyone lest we cause them to dribble their chablis. The Euro supercar owners at best tolerated the Vette guys and were confident that a red Italian car would run the highest speed of the event. It would be a red car, that's for sure, but not one of theirs.

That's when it happened. Amid the polite conversations of tire ratings and frequent V-12 tune-ups there came a rumble that seemed to generate from well below the earth's crust. We hot rodders in attendance recognized it as the sound of a high-compression big-block Chevy firing up. The rest weren't quite sure what was happening until R.J. Gottlieb backed Big Red out of the trailer, clunked the Jerico into First gear, and slowly idled the surging, barking, bright red '69 Camaro between the rows of shiny new sports cars toward its space next to father Dan's hot rodded '91 Corvette. After R.J. backed it in and hit the switch to kill the 800-horse Rat motor, the world seemed eerily quiet.

Normally, a crowd would gather around such a spectacle, but not here. Not today. The other competitors kept their distance, and all they could do was stare, mouths agape in sad realization that they would all be racing for Second Place, and even then, nobody would care. For this garish American "godawful hotrod" was sure to not only eat their lunch, but to also spit it back in their face and walk off with their trophy wife.

The gauges are housed in this custom transmission tunnel-mounted box. Wes Allison

Sure enough, with HOT ROD's Joe Pettitt doing little more than providing right-side ballast, Big Red destroyed the 94-mile course in 27 minutes, 54 seconds, for an average speed of 197.99 mph and a radar-recorded 222-mph top-end velocity. That was in 1989, and the legend of Big Red had just begun.

In reality, Big Red's legend began a year or two earlier. The original Big Red was a '69 Camaro with not much more than a rollcage and a John Lingenfelter--built 540 big-block that made 800 hp and pushed the car to over 200 mph. The first time the world saw the Gottliebs' '69 Camaro was at the '88 La Carerra Road Race, a flat-out 120-mile road race in Ensenada, Mexico. Foolish officials started Big Red third on the grid, but it quickly passed the two "faster" cars that started in front of it, then chased down a handful of the motorcycles that got even bigger head starts. Near the end of the race, however, with R.J. driving and Chris Kaufmann in the right seat, the car went off the road and crashed. R.J. and Chris walked away but the car was toast. Before they even got home, a new '69 body was located and they wisely decided to drop it on a full stock car--style tube chassis. Bill Osborne of Inland Chassis Design was given the task of building the car.