Don Turk has raced Pontiacs all of his life, much to the chagrin of his younger brother Geoff, one of the leading suppliers of Gen3 Hemi technology.
Over the years, Geoff has worked on his brother to run a Chrysler much like a lumberjack swinging an ax on a redwood tree. It wasn’t that Don didn’t like Mopars because he did. He just loved Pontiacs more.
Finally, as Geoff admitted, all the years of lobbying and shaming paid off.
Don decided he would give a Mopar a chance.
He went down the checklist of cars he could run. There was a Duster or a Challenger, but as he saw it, there was an abundance of those.
Or a Dodge Dart or Barracuda, but those are familiar territory in the Hemi Shootout world. Those weren’t unique enough.
There was also a Plymouth Savoy station wagon, which certainly would have qualified as different.
But there was one kind of car in the back of his mind that kept working its way to the front.
A Dodge Mirada.
A what?
A Dodge Mirada, with a stick, to run Super Stock.
In the diverse world known as NHRA Super Stock, a stick-shifted Mirada is about as far into left field as it gets. Couple the Liberty Transmission-shifted Mopar with a Gen3 Hemi from Geoff’s Blackbird Performance brand and Turk might have one of the most talked-about Mopars in NHRA competition.
“I’ve raced Pontiacs my whole life and I still basically am a Pontiac guy, but I also love Mopars,” Turk said. “When it come down to selecting the car, I mean, yeah, sure, you could do a Challenger, or you could do a Duster. Dusters replaced the Camaro. There’s Dusters everywhere. And Challengers, you darn near got to put a number on and figure out which one’s yours.”
Different has always worked for Turk.
He raced station wagons in his bracket racing days and has never needed his race car to look like everybody else’s. If anything, the less likely the starting point, the better.
“I’ve always looked for a more unique body style,” Turk said. “And really it’s more from, for me, I mean, Camaros are cool and Challengers, I love all cars basically, but there’s just something really cool about a car that should never been a race car becoming a race car. And so for me, it’s that kind of, I guess, weirdness or uniqueness that I like in them.”
Turk had seen a Mirada Stock Eliminator car for sale previously and never quite forgot it. The car’s long hood, short rear deck and unmistakable early-1980s shape checked the boxes.
Once Don mentioned a Mirada, Geoff didn’t waste time.
He located a clean 1980 example in Wisconsin that had belonged to the seller’s grandmother. Geoff made the deal for approximately $6,000 and had someone headed north to retrieve it before Don had much opportunity to reconsider his conversion to the Mopar side.
“He goes, ‘What do you mean, you got it?’” Geoff Turk said. “I said, ‘It’s on its way. I sent the kid up, who works here, up there to pick it up in Wisconsin. It’s on its way back. I just paid six grand for it.’ He goes, ‘I guess you’re moving fast so I don’t back out of this deal.’ I said, ‘Damn right.’”
Geoff had reason to move quickly. He’d been waiting on this moment for roughly 45 years.
Their brand rivalry goes back to when Geoff was 13 and Don was working on a Duster. Don then brought home a Pontiac to turn into his first race car, leaving his younger brother wondering why he had abandoned the Mopar.
“Well, Mopars are cool and direct connection, all that s***’s cool,” Geoff recalled Don telling him. “I know you think it’s cool and I think it’s cool too, but Pontiacs are even cooler.”
Geoff’s response established where each brother would stand for most of their racing lives.
“I said, ‘Okay, well if I race, I’m racing Mopars,’” Geoff said. “So that’s the beginning of the story.”
Geoff stayed with Mopars. Don stayed with Pontiacs, including the Pontiac T-37 he still races in Stock Eliminator.
Time, however, hasn’t been especially kind to racers trying to keep decades-old Pontiac combinations alive. Finding usable pieces and building combinations within Stock and Super Stock rules has become an increasingly expensive exercise.
“Racing Pontiacs all these years and hunting down parts and especially for stock and super stock where you just can’t use aftermarket stuff everywhere has gotten expensive,” Don said. “And I’ve always looked at the Coyote motor and the LS motor and the Gen III Hemi and saying, ‘If I had any brains, I would race one of them, because it’s kind of the thing now. It’s leading edge. It’s you’re dealing with brand new parts, not something you found in the junkyard and you got to wait for the machine shop to tell you the block’s okay.’”
Blackbird Performance gave him another reason to make the move. Don recently retired, relocated to Kentucky near his brother and wanted a race car that could also help promote what Geoff and Gina have built with their Gen3 Hemi business.
The Mirada will use a naturally aspirated 392-cubic-inch, 6.4-liter Gen3 Hemi in NHRA Super Stock GT competition. Geoff projects the combination could make somewhere in the 700-800 horsepower range and put the car into the 9.50- to 9.60-second neighborhood.
Don has never driven anything quicker than the 10-second range.
The Mirada was initially supposed to have an automatic transmission. Then Geoff started working on his brother again.
This lobbying campaign didn’t take 45 years.
“Dude, you’re not getting any younger,” Geoff told him. “You always wanted to have a man transmission. I was stupid enough not to do that till too late in my career. I wish I’d had a man transmission drag car a long time ago. Had him on the street, I just didn’t have a drag car.”
Then came the sales pitch only a younger brother could make.
“Man, if I were you, I’d put a Liberty in the damn thing, go out and bang gears and be a man before you die,” Geoff said. “He’s laughing. He goes, ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to do.’ It’s not that hard to do. You just drop a clutch and you pull the lever twice as often. It’s no big deal.”
Don had already considered putting a stick back into his factory manual-transmission Pontiac T-37. The Mirada gave him the opportunity to start fresh instead of changing an existing combination.
He discussed it with Rae Ann, his wife of nearly 50 years and longtime crew chief.
“She said, ‘It’s your car, you do what you want,’” Don said. “So I said, ‘Okay, well I’m going to put a stick in it and if it don’t work out, put the automatic back in it.’ So I kind of jokingly told her it’s going to be like a little baby Pro Stock car.”
Blackbird Performance gave him another reason to make the move. Don recently retired, relocated to Kentucky near his brother and wanted a race car that could also help promote what Geoff and Gina have built with their Gen3 Hemi business.
The Mirada will use a naturally aspirated 392-cubic-inch, 6.4-liter Gen3 Hemi in NHRA Super Stock GT competition. Geoff projects the combination could make somewhere in the 700-800 horsepower range and put the car into the 9.50- to 9.60-second neighborhood.
Don has never driven anything quicker than the 10-second range.
The Mirada was initially supposed to have an automatic transmission. Then Geoff started working on his brother again.
This lobbying campaign didn’t take 45 years.
“Dude, you’re not getting any younger,” Geoff told him. “You always wanted to have a man transmission. I was stupid enough not to do that till too late in my career. I wish I’d had a man transmission drag car a long time ago. Had him on the street, I just didn’t have a drag car.”
Then came the sales pitch only a younger brother could make.
“Man, if I were you, I’d put a Liberty in the damn thing, go out and bang gears and be a man before you die,” Geoff said. “He’s laughing. He goes, ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to do.’ It’s not that hard to do. You just drop a clutch and you pull the lever twice as often. It’s no big deal.”
Don had already considered putting a stick back into his factory manual-transmission Pontiac T-37. The Mirada gave him the opportunity to start fresh instead of changing an existing combination.
He discussed it with Rae Ann, his wife of nearly 50 years and longtime crew chief.
“She said, ‘It’s your car, you do what you want,’” Don said. “So I said, ‘Okay, well I’m going to put a stick in it and if it don’t work out, put the automatic back in it.’ So I kind of jokingly told her it’s going to be like a little baby Pro Stock car.”
Don isn’t particularly concerned about banging gears once the Mirada is moving. He’s spent time talking with experienced stick-shift racers and believes his education will happen mostly during the first few feet of a run.
“I’m not nervous at all. I don’t have much anxiety about it at all,” Don said. “I mean, to me what I’ve learned and what I’ve talked to people, leaving the starting line and doing that in a competitive way every time I think will be the challenge. Going through the gears, I mean, you don’t have to shove the clutch in between gears. You’re just banging gears going down the track.”
The education has already produced some entertainment.
Geoff put Don into another Liberty-equipped Super Stock car and tried to explain how to operate the transmission. Don misunderstood part of the instructions, started working the shifter back and forth while Geoff provided his own engine soundtrack, and somebody had the good sense to record it.
The resulting Reel has generated millions of views.
“It’s got eight million views,” Geoff said. “It’s the most popular thing I’ve ever posted. My brother’s sitting in the car, you can watch it, it’s a Reel.”
If the transmission doesn’t get the Mirada noticed, the paint job should handle the assignment.
Don worked with Justin at JRO Design on a scheme inspired by the drag racing he remembers without directly cloning a famous car. The colors carry a Sox & Martin influence, while the stars across the top push the look toward Evel Knievel territory.
The Blackbird logo on the door is done in gold leaf because, as Turk sees it, some things from drag racing’s past deserve to stay there.
“I don’t want to do a clone car or I don’t even want to do a car that’s painted exactly like a Sox & Martin car, but I want that similar color look to it,” Don said. “And he kind of came up with what you see there. And then I said, ‘I want the black bird and gold leaf on the door because gold leaf is old school and I’m kind of an old school guy.’”
The stars were Don’s idea, inspired by the gassers he watched when he was young. Those cars rarely arrived quietly, visually or otherwise.
“And I just always felt like drag racing to me is like the circus has come to town,” Don said. “And so I wanted a car that kind of was a salute back to what brought me to where I am today racing. So that’s kind of how that paint scheme come about.”
Turk is fully aware the finished product resembles a meeting between Sox & Martin and Knievel. He’s embraced the comparison enough to already have a backup plan if Super Stock doesn’t work out.
“I told my brother, I said, ‘Hey, if this don’t work out, we can shove a hydrogen peroxide rocket through the middle of it and try to jump over some creek somewhere or something,’” Don said. “But I just thought I wanted that retro and, like I said, I didn’t want to clone a car, I just wanted that retro look.”
There is still plenty to sort out before the Mirada becomes a regular visitor to an NHRA staging lane. Don wants to test privately first, particularly while he learns how to leave the starting line with a clutch and produce the reaction times needed to survive in Super Stock.
He’ll have Geoff close by, something the brothers haven’t always had geographically during their adult lives. Don’s recent move has put them within minutes of one another, and the Mirada gives them a reason to go racing together again.
The cooperation ends once helmets go on.
“When he pulls up in the lane next to me, I want to tear his head off just like he wants to tear my head off,” Don said. “There were several times that happened over our careers and especially, I don’t think so much in stock or super stock. I think it was in bracket racing more than anything.”
For decades, the brothers could agree on racing while disagreeing about what badge belonged on the grille.
Geoff finally won that argument. It only took 45 years, a 1980 Dodge Mirada, a Gen3 Hemi and a Liberty transmission to get Don Turk there.
“I think we’re both looking forward to doing a little racing together again and see if he can coach me through some more rounds after I figure out how to get this thing from A to B,” Don said.
