Blackbird Performance’s Geoff Turk has spent much of his life in the boardrooms of corporate America, where — like it or not — profits, human efficiency and growth are often emphasized above all else. But Turk’s many life experiences, from business success to personal tragedy, have shaped his present chapter as he builds his Kentucky-based operation specializing in the venerable Gen III Hemi engine platform into a respected industry mainstay.
With intention, Turk has shifted his view on life and philosophy toward his business endeavors to one that prioritizes relationships and the investment of time and resources into people. That approach is perhaps no more evident than in the way he has taken young, third-generation racer Mark Dudley Jr. under his wing.
Dudley’s connection to the car goes back to the kind of childhood memories racers never forget. “When I was a kid — five, 10 years old — my dad bought this ’63 Fury and named it the Asphalt Hustler,” Dudley said. “He only bought it because he got a good deal, but once he had it, he fell in love with it.” The Dudleys hauled the car across the country running the Nostalgia Super Stock class, and the kid riding shotgun in the motorhome soaked up every bit of it. “It was a 426 Max Wedge push-button shift car. Just a great, fun car. It’s really the car that got me hooked on drag racing.”
Dudley’s father eventually swapped the Fury to his grandfather, who turned it into a street car but never altered its core components. The Max Wedge, the push-button transmission and the Dana rear end were all still there. For years, Dudley knew the car would eventually be his**,** but he just didn’t expect it to happen now or for it to return to the track in such a radically different form.
“This opportunity came around, and my grandfather went ahead and gave me the car a few months ago,” Mark explained. Together, with Turk driving the project, the car will become a ground-up Super Stock GT build, with the classic Fury serving as the canvas and a Mopar Drag Pak-style Gen III Hemi as the centerpiece. “It’ll still be called the Asphalt Hustler, still look like it always has, but now we’re going to be turning it over 10,000 rpm and dropping a clutch,” Dudley said.
Along with other key upgrades, Turk will provide the engine combination for the project. “We pulled out the 426 Max Wedge, and we’re replacing it with a 426 cubic-inch Gen 3 Hemi like you’d see in a Drag Pak. It’s naturally aspirated and built to live at rpm ranges where most engines stop wanting to be alive. In Super Stock GT trim, it needs to make between 900 and 1,000 horsepower, and it’ll need to go high eights to be competitive.”
Inside, it’s a collection of racing hardware: Callies Magnum crank, Callies Ultra rods, Ross pistons, Jesel valvetrain, factory Mopar Drag Pak heads and one of the “Skunk Works” intakes that Blackbird has quietly been developing. “It’s a very radically different-looking Gen 3 intake,” Turk explained. “We tested it on an 830-horsepower engine, and it was better than the aluminum one we paid a thousand dollars for and two grand for porting. It was really designed for this, to turn 9,500 to 10,000 rpm.”
Unlike Dudley’s carbureted Duster, the Fury will run EFI managed by a Holley Dominator ECU and Accufab throttle body.
The transmission is part performance choice, part personality. “I convinced Mark to go with the main transmission option,” Turk said with a grin. The Fury will sport a Liberty five-speed, a RAM clutch and a Browell bellhousing — all the ingredients for a stick-shift car that drives, looks and sounds the part of an old-school Super Stocker. Dudley is thrilled about it. “Ain’t too many gear jammers with leaf springs. It’s going to be fun to drive and to watch,” he said.
They’re keeping those leaf springs on purpose. Turk said it’s partly to preserve the car’s history and partly because his shop cannot resist a good engineering challenge. “We like to do hard things nobody else wants to do. We’re going with Calvert monoleafs, CalTracs and big tires, and we’ll try to make it work.”
Under the car, the Dana 60 is being swapped for a Ford 9-inch because it’s easier to service between rounds. The drum brakes will be upgraded, a full 8.50-certified cage is going in, along with rack-and-pinion steering, Santhuff shocks and racing bucket seats. Beyond that, Turk said, “It’s basically a body in white. It’s a great starting point, but we can’t use a lot of what’s there.”
Turk and the young Dudley’s bond started two years ago when Dudley approached Turk at Rockingham Dragway and admitted he was thinking about running a Gen 3 Hemi — a borderline heretical thought in a die-hard classic Mopar family. Turk recalled it. “He said he’d be excommunicated from his family if he ran EFI. I said, ‘If I build you an engine and give it to you, would your dad be okay with it?’” Dudley went home, asked and came back with a hesitant yes.
That engine, a Race-Spec 700, became the heart of Dudley’s Duster, which reeled off wins, finals and track championships with remarkable consistency. Turk was there the night the car made its first past-half-throttle test hit at Piedmont Dragway. “His dad and grandpa turned around with tears in their eyes,” Turk recalled. “His grandpa shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you for what you did for my kid and my grandkid.’”
By the time Dudley approached Turk last fall at MoParty about trying Super Stock, the relationship had become far more personal than transactional. Dudley told Turk he dreamed of running Super Stock in the IHRA. Turk told him he’d help if he found a suitable car. Dudley laughed and said the only car he ever really wanted for it was his grandfather’s ’63. The next day, after some prompting, his grandfather sent the simple text message he’d waited for since his youth: Take the car and let Geoff turn it into a Super Stocker.
For Dudley, it was overwhelming. For Turk, it was confirmation that building engines is just the medium, but the real work is building people. “I’m much more interested in people now than I am the cars,” he said. “The cars are just the construct. The payoff is the relationships.”
The payoff this time will also be loud, high-rpm and still the Asphalt Hustler he knows and loves, just bigger and better — just the way Dudley dreamed it when he was 10 years old riding in the back seat of a motorhome, staring at a Plymouth Fury he hoped he’d get to race one day.
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