An excerpt from Pro Modified: Two Decades of Thrills - READ THE FULL HISTORY OF PRO MODIFIED HERE

Peaceful coexistence was nothing more than wishful thinking when it came to the nitrous versus supercharger combination racing in the Quick Eights, during the formative years of Pro Modified. The nitrous to blown ratio at the time was roughly nine to one on the IHRA tour and even lesser in the southeastern Quick Eight events.

Walter Henry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, lived in the middle of the nitrous action, yet fought tirelessly for supercharged inclusion into the Quick Eights and later Pro Modified.If you had a supercharger, you might as well have been a leper.

There might have been a blown car in the mix from time to time, but in the southeast, the blown cars were largely “California” cars and that stuff just didn’t fly out on the east coast where most of the IHRA races were.  And, the nitrous cars didn’t really concern themselves with the racers with the appendage protruding from the hood.

There was Walter Henry, a Vietnam Veteran and Baltimore, Md.-transplant, living in Huntersville, NC, who fought tooth and nail for inclusion into the new style of racing being run in his backyard. When the nitrous racers and IHRA Quick Eight racers excluded him, Henry still ran the races and if he had to, he’d bracket race at nearly 200 miles per hour with his jade-green Corvette.

“Walter was one of those individuals that didn't understand the word conservative,” said friend and fellow fast doorslammer racer Charles Carpenter. “He held nothing back and what was on his mind got said. There were no buffers and no restraints. You just had to know Walter to know how he was. He had been through a lot in life and when you understand that, you understand his reasoning into situations in life. He was a true racer and didn't get the accolades that he deserved.”

Those accolades went to the other blower racers like Tommy “The Who” Howes and Fred Hahn, driver for longtime supercharged tuner Jim Oddy.

While the nitrous cars were honing in on the first six-second run, it was Howes, a noted member of the Wild Bunch group, running a supercharger, who stepped up making the first six-second pass during Top Sportsman qualifying at the 1988 IHRA Summer Nationals in Atco, NJ. Almost a year and a half later, during the final IHRA national event of the 1989 season, Hahn stunned the Top Sportsman contingent with a 6.69 elapsed time, almost two tenths quicker than they’d established weeks prior in a Quick Eight during the IHRA U.S. Open Nationals in Darlington, SC. The quickest nitrous car at the time was a mid-6.90.
 
By that point, Mike Thermos, owner of Nitrous Oxide Systems,  pointed out that the fast doorslammer movement was headed in a dangerous direction.

“I personally didn’t have anything against Tommy Howes, but we just didn’t want the class to go in that direction,” Thermos admitted. “We wanted the class to be more along the lines of modified Pro Stockers and not BB/Funny Cars. We let the blown guys in and they were fun to battle. I could see the hitters coming in to take the candy away from the kids and that’s why I fought so hard to keep the blower cars out.”

That fight even extended to the Quick Eight events in the southeast and in one of the lesser publicized confrontations Henry was denied Quick Eight participation at an IHRA WCS [points] race in Shuffletown, NC early in 1989.

A group of nitrous racers gathered together to prevent Henry’s participation in the Quick Eight despite his qualification within the eight quickest full-bodied cars in the Top Sportsman eliminator. In the end, the vote favored Henry’s participation by a 4 – 3 margin. Ironically, it was Scotty Cannon, a nitrous racer who detested the supercharged cars from participation, who cast the deciding vote along with the comment, “Even though I believe the blower cars had an unfair advantage, I’m not going to vote to keep a man from racing.”

Bill Kuhlmann led the charge for the nitrous brigade in the early years of the movement.

Many of the racers in those early years tolerated Henry, but those who got to know him understood that while Henry wasn’t a realistic threat to their new style of racing, the potential was there.

“I was able to see inside of Walter’s program and I will say that he was a pioneer without knowing he was a pioneer. He didn’t have the best equipment and was racing stock Chevrolet blocks and steel heads,” said Bill Kuhlmann, a diehard nitrous advocate in those early days. “Walter was the only guy who would get really mad when he saw an advantage going to a nitrous car. The promoters had to go by the numbers and those numbers favored the nitrous cars. There weren’t many blown cars.”

And because the majority didn’t see Henry as a threat, he gained a foot in the door early on.

“While Walter was a great guy and everyone liked him, because his car wasn’t really competitive, that opened the door,” said Scott Shafiroff, a team owner whose car was driven by Gordy Hmiel. “Those blower cars were different, loud and all over the place. They were a good attraction but they weren’t a threat to overtake anyone out there.”

Ed Hoover said some of those early nitrous and blower debates bordered on fisticuffs.

“I saw it almost come to blows at times,” Hoover admitted. “Whenever you had the majority in the nitrous cars running quite a bit behind the two or three blower cars there, it could get kind of heated. When they let Walter Henry in to run, that just opened the door.”

Ted Jones, the leader of the IHRA at the time Pro Mod was born, admitted his initial blueprint for the class included injected nitro and turbochargers. The pressure put on him by the nitrous racers about including the blower cars as well as his boss, forced him to scrap the idea. Regardless if Pro Modified was born under Jim Ruth's presidency, Jones is adamant that Ruth was not a fan of the class.

And when given the opportunity, that’s when Oddy, Hahn and the Black Mariah drove right in. That foot in the door was enough to inspire Oddy to make the most of the opportunity. For Oddy, that foot bore quite a few bruises as it was slammed on him more than a few times in the form of rule changes over the years.

“Eighteen rule changes in eighteen years,” Oddy lamented, shaking his head.

Though his Corvette was no beauty, it was built, as he said to follow Kuhlmann’s pre-Quick Eight statement.

“They said just run what you brung and you better bring enough, so we were,” Oddy recalled. “We thought okay, so we'll bring this, we'll bring that, we'll try this, we'll try that, and our biggest mistake was letting the clutch out and going 6.69 when I don't think there was another car going 6.8 anything. So yeah, from there on, we paid dearly.”

Oddy was repaid for a series of rules when Pro Modified came around, a class which was not for the weak at heart.

“I'll make the front half a funny car, I'll make the back half a top fuel car and we'll make the middle of the car a pro mod car. So we basically built a top alcohol funny car that had a solid rear, torsion bar front, then I put in a driver pod like a jet car," Oddy said. "So the driver could fit on the left side just barely. We shoved Fred in there with a shoehorn, but sure enough, couple, three races in, the thing was a rocket ship. So by the end of that year, Robert Leonard promised everybody that anything I had in that car wouldn't be back. So he outlawed the solid rear, outlawed the torsion bar. I had a 572 motor in it, they got rid of that, limited it to 526. I had a high helix blower on it, they took care of that. Everybody [around the shop] got pretty enthused and over the winter we made all the changes and went back and won three races the next year.”  

The initial plans for Pro Modified, according to Jones, included injectors and nitromethane.

“Oddy actually slowed down my plans for the class,” Jones admitted. “Part of the appeal of the class was the old versus new, blower versus nitrous and the overall variety. We were going to take it even further with injected nitro, with the flames and the cackle. We had planned to present this class through good research of the rules that limited each. That was the plan, but we caught so much crap over the blown car that we never pushed it.”
 

When the new Pro Modified eliminator was created, the rules established were exactly the opposite of this car owned by Jim Oddy and driven by Fred Hahn. Here in Darlington, Hahn won the 1989 U.S. Open Quick Eight with a string of 6.80s. Two weeks later he unloaded a 6.69, two tenths quicker than any nitrous car had ever run.

For a limited amount of time, you can get all 4 https://t.co/Reh86n8GFm face coverings for just $40. Or any variation of the four masks for just $40. Click here to get yours - https://t.co/wSrXmpHBQm pic.twitter.com/L0JVyB2Mnr

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) December 30, 2020