From the Ripley’s Believe It or Not files, there’s this late entry.

About three weeks ago, when Kenny Voss and son Cory pulled out of their south Florida home base of Live Oak, the plan was to take their Pro 632 Corvette to a buyer who was meeting them near Dallas, Texas.

But rather than returning directly to Florida with an empty trailer, they bought another race car – and had to make a 2,000-mile detour to get it home. And the transaction that occurred – from start to finish, with a third party who initiated the purchase with a simple suggestion – took all of five minutes.

“It was a case of perfect timing, a little bit of faith and divine intervention,” said Dillon Voss, PDRA’s Pro 632 champion in 2017.

Dillon is Cory’s twin brother and the current driver in the family. Their dad, Kenny, was an NHRA Pro Stock racer in the 1980s who later spent many years competing in NMCA Pro Street action. Kenny is also the founder of Voss Racing Engines, and Cory started Voss Wheelie Bars.

Now it’s Dillon’s turn to compete in Pro Stock – PDRA Extreme Pro Stock, that is. He first tested the waters in 2017-18 with car owner Enoch Love of Richmond, Va., and reached the finals three times in “six or seven starts” in that car, Voss said. 

The new car is “new” only in the sense that the Voss family was in possession of it for some two weeks before heading to GALOT Motorsports Park for the 2022 PDRA opener last weekend. The car was built in 2004 by Jerry Haas, and was fitted with a Chevy Cavalier body by its previous owner, Iowan Ed Machecek. 

Machecek died in November 2019, and it was only recently – very recently – that his son, Chad, posted on Facebook that his father’s car was for sale. Approximately two minutes after the post went online, it was seen by Illinois Xtreme Pro Stock racer/winner Tony Gillig. He immediately thought of the Voss brothers.

“They’ve been wanting to race Pro Stock forever. The price looked pretty decent, so I sent Cory a Facebook message, ‘Hey, this car’s for sale. I know it’s a good piece, and it’s got low runs on it,’ ” Gillig said. “I know they (the Macheceks) didn’t race it much, and they were a Sonny’s (Racing Engines) customer for 30 years. I said, ‘I’m sure it’s got good pieces and parts in it, so it’s a good buy. Give him a shout.’ ”

Cory Voss, who was en route to Texas, immediately jumped on the tip and sent Chad Machecek a message.

“It was one of those deals where I shot him a number I didn’t think he would accept,” Voss said. “Then I looked at my dad and said, ‘I just accidentally bought a Pro Stock operation.’ 

“It was shocking because one minute we had a complete plan of attack to go forward and win the Pro 632 championship, and minutes later, we’re headed north to Iowa to pick up an entire mountain motor Pro Stock operation.”

Instead of heading east from Texas to Florida as planned, Kenny and Cory Voss traveled north 13 hours to Iowa.

“And then it gets better,” Gillig said with a grin. “Cory goes to get the car, and he gets a spare motor with a broken block, (gear) ratios, radios, you name it. I told him, ‘You just won the lottery. You’re welcome.’ ”

The Vosses found the car “all together and shined up, just like it was ready to roll out to go to the race track,” Cory said. “We pulled the front end off, we looked at the motor, and we realized it’s got all good parts. It’s got a billet block. It was one of Sonny Leonard’s latest pieces at the time in 2015. They had just sent the car back to Jerry Haas and had it updated for Chad to run mountain motor Pro Stock. It had a fresh clutch, a fresh bellhousing, new rims and tires – they kept great care of the equipment. We hit the jackpot, we did.”

Then came the 1,111-mile, 16-plus hour drive to Florida with a trailer full of equipment. Once they got home and despite the car’s pristine condition, there was plenty of work to be done to get ready for the PDRA opener.

“We had two working weekends to get the car outfitted and updated,” Dillon Voss. “We sent the shocks out to Adam Lambert at (Precision Racing Suspension) to get them updated … and we had about a week and a half to go through the motor.

Added Cory, “We took the motor apart to document everything, to double-check all the components inside because after one of those motors sits for so long, we wanted to make sure the rings were still good. We had to change valve springs, and we got part numbers off the rods so we could get new stuff on order.

“Mainly it was just a maintenance thing. We changed brake lines, changed valve springs, we built a new set of our carbon fiber wheelie bars for it, and we put new seat belts in it. We set it up for how we run our race cars, scaled it and went racing.”

It didn’t take long for the Voss brothers to smile. They made one test pass Thursday, the day before qualifying began, that resulted in a 4.16-second eighth-mile shot. That, as it turned out, would have been good enough to place them 12th in the 16-car field. The first run was so rsolid they skipped other chances to make test passes to minimize engine wear.

The next day, when it counted, they improved to 4.14, and followed that up with a 4.10 “at only 174” mph, Dillon said. “We’re down about four miles an hour, so when we get some power back in the motor I have no doubt we’ll run up front.”

They didn’t get a chance to prove that in eliminations. When Dillon made his burnout for the opening round, PDRA starter Kyle Lang noticed a trail of fluid on the track. Just as he bent down to wipe his finger through the fluid, Dillon radioed Cory to report that he didn’t have any brakes – a brake line had broken.

“Luckily it happened on the burnout and not on the top end,” Cory said, “or we’d have been picking it up out of the sand trap.”

Despite that setback, Dillon said he was “extremely happy” with the weekend. His twin brother agreed.

“Our plan was if we could qualify middle of the pack and show up first round, we’d meet our expectations,” Cory said. “We knew going in with a 16-car field it was going to be an uphill battle.

“Every run we made we got better. Our 4.10 run was not a perfect run, it had three or four hundredths left in it. So we were going to do a little more and try to go an .08, let Dillon do his job on the tree, but we just weren’t able to get there.”

What now that they’ve got their feet wet with the new car?

“We’ve got a few ideas on picking up some horsepower,” Cory Voss said, “so we’re gonna pull the motor apart and make a few small changes to it. We’ve got a game plan and some parts on order to make more power.”

“We have a really good combination,” Dillon said. “Cory is the crew chief, Dad takes care of the motors, and my uncle Mark takes care of the stuff from the firewall back.”

Also pleased – even though they’re now competitors in the same class – was Gillig, who reached Saturday’s semifinals before falling to eventual winner and 2021 champ Chris Powers.

“They’re good dudes, so I’m happy for them,” said Gillig. “They’re kind of like us, a low-fund team, so it’s good they can get their hands in the game with their own stuff. They had driven for Enoch before and tried all kinds of ways to keep racing Pro Stock and it’s not easy. This is a huge move for them, so I’m happy for them.”