Look Slow And Be Set To Go

The secret of effective street racing lies in owning a car that does not look too fast. ''You don't want to psych somebody out where there's easy money to be made," advises Jack. "You just want to pull in, park it, line up the race, run it off, and get the hell out of there."

Watching Malcolm hustle a customer is a lesson in the art of con. The customer and his buddies shuffle around Malcolm's old car, eyeing the set of the rear bumper, regarding its regular sized tires, noting that the dashboard tachometer appears factory installed. Finally the customer asks: "What you got in there, man?"

"Got some headers," Malcolm admits cagily. He appears naively eager, as though possession of headers on his exhaust system were some ultimate secret weapon.

"Yeah?"

"Think it's got a cam, too." Malcolm scratches his head, wrinkles his forehead.

"Mmmm-hmmmm?"

"Don't know what kind of gears," continues Malcolm. "Bought it off some lot. But, man"—Malcolm's eyes suddenly widen—"it really runs!"

In the background, the customer's buddies are elbowing each other and snickering.

The savvy street racer knows that in addition to not looking fast, his car should not sound fast. Thus, more often than not, he will select a Dodge rather than a Chevy, despite the fact that high-performance parts for the latter are more readily and cheaply available. But a Dodge engine of equal horsepower idles much more smoothly than a Chevy. "You can't get any runs with a Chevy," says Malcolm. "As soon as you fire it up, it's all over. They know you got something under the hood.

"Now my Dodge don't sound too radical. It's a GTX. Originally it was a 383 and I've still got the 383 emblems on it. My brother bought it new and turned some fourteens with it [14 seconds over a quarter mile]. You get somebody with a 12-second machine and ask them to race and they jump right on you. Well, I've got a 440 engine in it now."