From the first day we received the Neon body to the first day of last year's SEMA, we had only five weeks to complete and debut the car. It normally takes 10 to 11 months to finish a car, but with such a big time constraint, we went in and modified a lot of parts off the Focus. We saved five days' worth of work by reusing the Focus-which doesn't seem like a whole lot of time, but those five 18- to 20-hour days were an eternity. We kept most of the chassis and the suspension, but everything else is new-the carbon, tin work, tubs, body, wheelbase, front end, wing, and wheelie bars-they're all new. When people say it's just the same as the Focus, it's not. Very few parts from the original chassis remain. To save as much weight as possible, most of the nuts we used are aluminum and the bolts are titanium. We used very little steel with the exception of the chrome-moly cage because the NHRA mandates that. Wherever possible, we used whatever material we can to save weight.
The big dilemma with building and getting the car down the track has to do with the NHRA and its regulations concerning our Mopar A4 engine block, which is a four-cylinder engine that's used in the midget racing cars. We called and gave them the part number, since it's something you can order from the Mopar catalog. It's not an engine that I had built just for me. I asked, "Will it be legal?" They said, "Sure, go ahead and use it. It will be totally legal."
During the construction of the car, we spent about $40K on engine development and engine parts-basically everything it takes to build an engine. Well, whendebuted the car at SEMA, all the other racers and manufacturers started to complain that it was an unfair engine to use. GM, who puts a lot of money into its Ecotech program, also has a lot of pull with the NHRA, who then basically came back to me [to get the NHRA to] outlaw the engine. For the next three months, the NHRA couldn't give us an exact ruling of whether or not it would be legal, and just up until two months ago, we had to switch over to the stock SRT-4 engine. And just within days of our switching over to the SRT engine, we received a press release from the NHRA stating that push-rod engines are not allowed in our class, as well as any manufacturer who offers an aftermarket OEM engine is not legal. What's ironic about that is the only manufacturer who offers an aftermarket block is Mopar. Without the NHRA directly saying "You cannot run a Mopar engine," they said it. The only thing that's made this whole ordeal somewhat easy is Darrel Cox's experience with the Neon engine. If it wasn't for Darrel, we'd definitely be scrambling to get things done. But look at Christian Rado's car-it uses a Toyota Tundra truck engine. It's not like that's the same engine that comes with [the Celica]. You can argue that the rules are favoring other racers or manufacturers. Ultimately, I think the SRT-4 engine will be better because anyone who winds up buying an SRT-4 and sees us driving down the track and doing well can say, "We have the same engine." Any parts we use on the race car can be purchased through the Mopar catalog. If you really want to say that these parts will be track-tested and -proven, they will be that for sure.
Mopar is definitely our bread-and-butter in terms of finance. We're not really whining about money. People think we have millions of dollars to spend, but I still live at home with my parents. Everyone's going to talk and think what they want to think, but Mopar is our title sponsor. We're not looking for any other additional sponsors right now because Mopar has helped out a lot. We do have other people who are doing a lot for us, like Pro-Lite, who handle our machine work. Anything and everything we need machined, they do. Obviously, the majority of the stickers you see on the car will represent people who've helped us out along the way, but Mopar and Dodge are our primary sponsors. We're not going to do anything to take away from what they've done for us.