When Ron Hodgson and his son Ryan arrived at the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion this past October in Bakersfield, Calif., their Nostalgia Funny Car didn’t go unnoticed.

Their brand-new Victory Race Cars-built 1969 Camaro Funny Car – primarily the body – didn’t sit well with some fellow Nostalgia Funny Car competitors as they felt it was against the spirit of the rules.

Danny Gracia, NHRA’s national Technical Director, addressed the issue of the Funny Car body Hodgson was campaigning with CompetitionPlus.com.

“The way we see it, it meets the rules,” Gracia said. “Dimensionally it meets the 60-inch width of the car and the rule states that it must resemble a production car, and it does resemble a ’69 Camaro. Going forward with that, I mean obviously, they feel there is a lot of aero in those cars and we’ve made them make some changes. We made them fix the front end because that was the biggest complaint and hopefully that will satisfy them.”
Gracia took a moment to discuss the specific changes that had to be made to the Hodgson’s ’69 Camaro.

“We made them move the front end right where the grill opening is at,” Gracia said. “We made them cut that off and move it forward 2½ inches. We made them make the grill opening a little taller. We made them cut the one inch lips right around the back of the car, and we also, in front of the fenders, we made them tuck that back in. (We made them do that) just in the spirit of the rule because the other folks are saying that’s the way it is supposed to look.” 

Gracia acknowledged dealing with the ’69 Camaro isn’t easy.

“You have three different eras of ’69 Camaros as it is, and how do you compare all of them to be the same?,” Gracia said. “If we get into a situation where we start measuring all these cars, we are going to find there’s a lot of difference in between that. You see it in the Firebird, you see it in the ’70 Camaros also. The day when they were building these cars, all they were doing was putting a thumb up and saying, ‘Yeah it looks like a ’70 Camaro.’”

Gracia also is aware that these Nostalgia Funny Cars are running modern day chassis which means they have to have different kind of bodies.

“What they are doing now is they are using a modern day chassis where they set the driver up higher so he can have more vision,” Gracia said. “So, to deal with that, you have to raise the body up, you have to raise the roof and you can only raise the body up so high, so you are going to have to raise the roof somewhat to meet that particular height of the chassis.”