Earlier this week, we shared a photo via social media of a highly-modified (relatively speaking)
Fox body Mustang that Nick Plewniak has been racing in small-tire no-prep events this season. The car, which sports an extended wheelbase forward of the firewall, a straight front axle, and no nose, has been rather controversial, and not surprisingly, it drew a bevy of contrasting opinions. One person who saw the chatter was South Carolina racer and fabricator Nate Weimer, who reached out to us privately.
Weimer’s message said, in effect, “hey, I’ve got something I want to show you.” How were we going to turn down an invitation like that?
What Weimer has quietly assembled may be the most unique and modified of no-prep cars to date. It is however, not a new concept, as there are shades of 1960’s-era A/FX’ers and Gassers evident in its design. And, truth be told, both he and Plewniak’s cars are very functional for their purpose, even if they do ruffle some feathers for their looks. The challenge to true no-prep racing of course, is the supreme lack of traction, and so these two (and others) are pushing the envelope as far as they can to maximize weight transfer onto the rear tires, until someone tells them they can’t. Form be damned, this is about winning. And as those modified cars made famous in the ’60s proved, enguiniety translates to victory.
“I really didn’t put two and two together that what I was building was something that had already been done before, until I got done with it,” Weimer says. “I had a ’79 RX-7 that I raced for a couple years, and realized over time I either had to custom fabricate a front suspension with Fox body parts for it, or go with something else. So I bought a Fox body and raced it for a while, and it worked perfectly. Within a few passes it was pretty competitive. But I found that it’s not really hard to make something work like everybody else is doing, but there’s 10 other guys doing exactly what…
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