Import drag racing pioneer and champion Vinny Ten is accustomed to straddling two worlds. Living in Woodside, Queens, he's an East Coast icon in a sport routinely associated with the West Coast. To speak with him, you'd think he was a hot-rodder from the Golden Era '60s when Dodge Hemis and Chevy small blocks ruled. Instead, he's one of the gurus of the New Wave of motorsports, dedicated to extracting maximum performance from import sport compacts. Even his heritage represents something of an outreach: Ten is the All-American product of Irish and Italian forebears-in other words, he's the quintessential New Yawkah.
"OK, so I do have this accent and this attitude that comes from growing up in New York City," Vinny admits. "They don't call it the concrete jungle for nothing. This can be a very tough place, but that's what makes us stronger, what enables us to do more with less. Sure, I'm proud to be a New Yorker. But I'm proud to be an American, too, and I certainly don't think my attitude is any different from any other truly dedicated racer, no matter where you're from. As for my accent," he continues with a smile, "hey, up here, I'm just like everyone else."
Well, almost. It's not everyone else who can boast of building and campaigning a 1,000-plus hp Toyota Supra capable of an 8.03-second quarter mile, with a best speed of 169.25 mph.This car, a rear-drive Supra turbo, dubbed "The Intimidator," is in fact much more than a mechanical showcase of Ten's performance-tuning capabilities. It's also a record-shattering headline maker and has done more than its fair share to put import drag racing on the map.
The Intimidator is single-handedly responsible for breaking a string of consecutive performance barriers. It's the first Toyota Supra ever to break into the 12s, 11s, 10s, 9s and 8s. It's also the first Supra ever to smash successively through the speed barriers of 120, 130, 140, 150 and now 160 mph. Just the same, Ten points out, "we've never raced any further than the East Coast, so we've never really had an opportunity to meet and greet people or fans or sponsors on the West Coast, and maybe this adds to a sort of mysterious persona people associate with us." Staying close to home certainly hasn't stopped the awards from coming. The Intimidator currently boasts 19 trophy finishes, and it owns national class records in an unbroken string from 1997 through 2001.
The car, which Vinny campaigns in Import Drag Racing Championship's (IDRC) Outlaw Class, National Import Racing Association's (NIRA) Pro Comp Class and National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA) Modern Class, has Toyota's DOHC six-cylinder 2JZ-GTE powerplant underhood.
Vinny will claim only that The Intimidator exceeds 1,000 horsepower-without NOS or alcohol- just VP 116 race fuel. He's equally guarded about the myriad fine points comprising his overall tuning regimen. Suffice it to say, however, Turbonetics hardware is well-represented underhood, as is the wizardry of noted East Coast turbo tuner Job Spetter & Sons. Pistons are from JE Pistons, and Kooks headers handle the down-stream side of the equation. Both F.B. Transmission and Pro Torque Converters play an integral role in getting all of the engine's power to the Intimidator's rear wheels.
Certain allowances have to be made to accommodate such a substantial increase in the car's output. Accordingly, the Supra's OE rear end has been back-halved with a Ford 9-inch rear by Coast Chassis, which accounts mostly for The Intimidator's classification in IDRC's Outlaw Class. Vinny also credits Coast for the chassis work on the car, and he acknowledges, as well, the vital assistance he's received from Bob's Automotive Machine in Harrison, N.J. Moreover, Vinny is quick to acknowledge the invaluable support of colleagues at his New York tuning shop Performance Factory NYC, who tend to customers during the week only to spend long weekends as The Intimidator's race crew.
This success hasn't come overnight, however. The history of import drag racing in this country is such that competitors like Ten are inventing the sport as they go along. For example, he recalls when he first started building and campaigning his cars, "import drag racing wasn't even a term yet." In fact, Ten suggests the sport almost came about by accident-on the East Coast, at least. "In the beginning," he says, "there were a lot of new people coming into this country, mainly from the Caribbean.
They didn't have Chevys down there; they were more likely to drive Corollas and other small imports. So it was only natural for them to modify and race the cars they were already used to-especially when the factory-turbocharged imports starting appearing on the scene in the late '80s."
For some reason, the whole concept of turbocharging and turbo-tuning captivated Ten right from the start. At the time, Ten served as the "A" Technician for a multi-line dealership organization in New York, which included Acura, Porsche and Volvo brands, among others.
In 1992, Ten founded Performance Factory NYC. "I was the first import tuner shop in the New York area," he recalls. "There was nobody else. By '93, when I started going to the track, I was still the only import guy there. It wasn't until, oh, '95 or '97 when I started seeing other import cars at the races. But by '98, the whole thing really started getting big. This is when the Battle of the Imports and the California scene really started taking off; and to be honest, Hondas played a big part in establishing this popularity-thanks most of all to their affordability.
"As for Ten's first efforts at the track, it seems as if fate was on his side. "One of the first organized events I ever attended," he says, "was this NIRA-sanctioned race at Atco, N.J, in 1997. I was there, Eddie Bello was there, David Buschur was there and so was Sean Glazer. But at the time, nobody had yet broken into the 10s on the East Coast. Well," he continues with a chuckle, "I did. We went 10.68." Perhaps one could say the Era of (Vinny) Ten began at this very moment.
Certainly the import drag racing scene is coming of age, and Ten is quick to applaud the work of the current three sanctioning bodies, NIRA, IRDC and NHRA. "They all do a great job individually," he says. "Without them, we wouldn't have attracted major companies to the sport, which in turn has led to larger purses for the winners."
But as a bare-knuckled privateer, Ten can be plainly outspoken as well: "On the other hand, the sanctioning bodies refuse to streamline the rules." Competing in each series means building cars according to three different sets of rules. By establishing common class rules throughout each of the sanctions, Ten points out "people will have an opportunity to build 'spec' cars. This way people can come into the sport knowing what they're getting into financially. As it stands now, we've been hit with rule changes almost every year we've been racing." And this situation is only aggravated, Ten contends, by three competing governing bodies manipulating their rules independently of their rivals.
After all, it's Ten's belief the privateer represents the life-blood of this sport, even as the import racing scene continues to gain in popularity and exposure. "When people say money buys the power," he confides, "I have to disagree. Sure, it's intimidating when you roll up to the track and there are 15 teams with their semi-tractor trailers already at the paddock. And here you are with your Ford F250 and your car on a crappy open trailer wearing temporary tags. But when you can unload the car and do 8.20 at 169 mph like we did at Englishtown last year, you've got the satisfaction of beating the whole field by a half-second and 10 mph."
According to Ten, there's no other feeling like winning on these terms, and for this reason it'd be a shame if the organizing bodies behind the sport made life increasingly difficult for the privateer. "It's not like I really have a choice to go racing or not," Ten says, wearing a wry grin. "After all, I'm not into drag racing. Drag racing is in me. So, sponsor or no sponsor, I consider myself the luckiest man alive."