MODIFIED ICON COTTON PERRY PLANS HIS RETURN WITH ANOTHER CHEVY II

by Bobby Bennett    Mon, 2020-12-07 20:46

A drag racing institution will return to NHRA in 2021.

If you raced Modified Eliminator in the 1970s, you didn’t pick Cotton; he picked you. Back in those days of the high-winding, 50-pound flywheel, Doug Nash-shifted coupes and sedans, the gentleman from Ringgold, Ga., named Cotton Perry was not the ideal opponent.

No, he didn’t have a finely tuned small-block engine or a sleek Corvette Stingray.

But he did have as nice of a Modified Production entry as the others, a ’67 Chevy II.

Perry had an “H” Modified Production car, powered by a 301-inch, inline six-cylinder Chevrolet engine, which hummed like a bumblebee, yet screamed like a chainsaw and stung like a yellow jacket when he worked the shifter on the Liberty transmission.

When NHRA disbanded Modified Eliminator at the end of the 1981 season, Perry had won seven of eight NHRA national event finals, scored four NHRA Division 2 titles, and set numerous records along the way. In 1978, Perry came up shy of winning the Grace Cup championship despite winning four national events.

Perry tried his hand at Super Stock racing in 1982. Still, the breakout format and the fact NHRA didn’t reassign his classification to Competition Eliminator took the thrill out of drag racing for Perry, and he sold his legendary “Pocket Rocket” and quit. He and his uncle Jim Headrick partnered briefly with Brian Browell on a Comp dragster in the 1980s for a couple of seasons.

 

 

 

SIDEBAR - THE LEGEND OF THE POCKET ROCKET

By the time Cotton Perry learned what the term Pocket Rocket meant, it was already incorporated into a stunning paint scheme applied by Terry Russell, an extremely talented painter known for his talents in air-brushing.

Three dozens of contingency decals, multiple national event titles, and world records later, those who worshipped the Modified Eliminator platform knew all too well what the Pocket Rocket meant. It might have been slang for amphetamines back then, but its definition was a potent H/Modified Production 1967 Chevy II with an oddball engine combination to this community.

Perry, and his uncle and “best friend” Jim Headrick raced in the high-winding, gear-jamming division with a 301-cubic-inch, inline six-cylinder that was as equally tough on parts as it was the competition.

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Up until the last few seasons, Perry hadn’t considered returning to race NHRA.

Let the record reflect, four decades later, that the Pocket Rocket will return.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, recently Perry traveled to Spartanburg, SC, where he purchased a ’66 Chevy II, two-door post car from longtime Modified racer Bobby Earnhardt. So yes, a similar Chevy II will return with Perry behind the wheel of an inline-six powered stick-shifted hot rod. What remains to be seen is whether the car will be the Pocket Rocket II.

The classic might just have Perry & Headrick on the fender, honoring his longtime partnership with late uncle and “best friend” Headrick, killed in a non-racing automobile accident in 1991.

Perry looks back to his iconic race car’s Pocket Rocket branding and realized his naivety and Southern Baptist upbringing would have never knowingly allowed the branding on the side of the car. While the term has many slang connotations today, it was a trucker term back-in-the-day referring to amphetamines.

“I’m going to tell you how old-fashioned I was back then; I didn’t know what a pocket rocket was,” Perry said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know that. I did not know that until I got the car and I was told that. Jim’s mama, who was my grandma, and my mother, were very Godly old-fashioned baptists. I’m talking about they wouldn’t even go into a store if they believed alcohol was in there.”

And while Perry is content to let traditions go by the wayside, he plans to run the new Chevy II in Competition Eliminator, under the H/Super Modified classification with a small-block, Buick-headed engine by Tim Freeman, which will be displacing around  280-cubic-inches.

Perry has been working on his return for a while now and doing so with an inline six-cylinder dragster he’s been putting through the paces at his local track, Brainerd Motorsports Park in Ringold, Ga. However, keeping the parts together was enough of a message to go with the V-8 during this go-round.

Perry intends to run the car primarily in the Gear Jammers series and attend as many NHRA Comp Eliminator races as he can.

“I just want to have fun,” Perry said. “I debated about putting the Pocket Rocket on it, but right now, I don’t plan to. I just have the Perry and Headrick on the door and the fender, and that’s it.”

 

 

 

 

 
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