Drag Illustrated Issue 109, May 2016 | Page 63

PHOTOS: VAN ABERNETHY, BRYAN EPPS DIALED IN power potential for the car’s factory 304ci engine, although the desire to go faster was still very much irrefutable. By now he had become a fullfledged American Motors enthusiast (a genuine purist if you will) who didn’t want to dabble in switching horsepower brands, regardless of the general consensus. “I bought a motor from a Stock/Super Stock guy up in Wisconsin who built me a pretty good 390 AMC engine for the car,” says Kremkau. Still completely streetable and very much his daily driver, Kremkau was suddenly clocking 11.20s in the Gremlin. The car was getting fast to the point that his dad finally asked him to not drive it on the street anymore. “I gave my dad a couple rides in the car and it blew his mind, he really didn’t know how fast the car had become,” Kremkau admits. “He was pretty insistent that I keep it on the track, and only on the track.” At first, Allan was reluctant to make the conversion from street car to dedicated race car, so instead he bought a second vehicle and only drove the Gremlin on weekends. “Sometime around 1978 I finally did take it off the street and convert it into a race car,” says Allan. It was around this same timeframe that Mike and Paul Therber gave the Gremlin its first racing paint job, back when the brothers owned a paint shop together in Florida. Then came the transmission swap, with the factory three-speed transmission being replaced with a four-speed manual. In the late 1970s, Allan bracket raced the car every chance he got, and as one might guess, it wasn’t particularly consistent for dialin racing, but the allure was fueled by bona fide, gear-banging excitement. “I tore up a lot of clutches and transmissions on a regular basis, and never won a single race with a four-speed, but I had a ball doing it,” he smiles. “I finally broke down and put an automatic in the car.” It wasn’t until 1982 that a buddy built him his first Powerglide transmission and that’s when he started winning some races with the car. He won his very first race at Orlando Speed World sometime around 1984 and has captured many more wins since. Eventually he outfitted the car with a 401 cubic inch American Motors V8, which produces around 750 horsepower. “It’s got a Moldex crank, billet rods and aftermarket Indy aluminum heads. If you want a car to go fast and stay together you’ve simply got to spend the money on some good parts,” says Kremkau, who has clocked 9.0s at 147mph in the car. “They make good power for what they are. A lot of people have never given AMC a lot of credit, but I did some research when I was younger and I believe some of the AMC Pro Stock pioneers like Wally Booth and Dave Kanners had some stuff figured out.” His point has merit when you consider that at the peak of their careers, Booth and Kanners (then teammates) met head-to-head in Pro Stock’s only all-AMC final in 1976 at the NHRA World Finals. Shortly thereafter, sponsorship deals fell through and suddenly the most promising AMC Pro Stock team disbanded. Long since has American Motors cars slipped out of sight at the drag strip and into obscurity. “Kids come up to me all the time in the pits and ask me what kind of car this is,” laughs Allan. “I tell them it’s an AMC Gremlin and they’re like, ‘What the heck is that?’” The oddly shaped little car gets multiple double takes and gawking stares whenever Allan rolls the car out of the trailer. Most recently, it even captured the attention of IHRA officials, who awarded Kremkau’s Gremlin “Best Ap pearing” at the Nitro Nationals in Orlando this year. The car is a constant conversation piece, and many onlookers stop to comment on the ultra-short wheelbase that the car appears to have. “A factory Gremlin has a 96-inch wheelbase, but mine actually measures 97-inches since I moved the rear end back slightly,” explains Kremkau. “These cars are deceptively short though. A Chevy Vega’s wheelbase is only one-inch longer than a Gremlin, but because the body has no overhang in the back it makes the Gremlin look much shorter than it really is.” Everything about Allan Kremkau’s AMC-powered Gremlin screams nostalgia. Even the most recent paint job is 26-years-old and is the handiwork of Mike Therber, who painted the car for the second time in 1990. Therber also plays a key role in Kremkau’s fondest racing memory when the two longtime friends traveled from Florida to Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania for a Mopar/AMC event a number of years ago. Allan got the win in the finals when Therber went red. “It didn’t matter who won or lost, I had the opportunity to race my best friend in the finals. To this day though I still owe him, ‘cause he’s beaten me since then,” he laughs. For Kremkau, the joy of racing means meeting up with friends at the track, and that’s the element he still enjoys most of all. “At the recent IHRA Pro Am race at Bradenton Motorsports Park, there were probably 20 friends pitted around me - many of them I’ve known since the 1970s,” says Kremkau. “That is a big part of what makes all of this drag racing stuff so much fun – being around your friends and people that share your passion.” His wife, Karen, is always by his side and never misses the chance to go to the track. Simply stated, Allan Kremkau is man who’s found the recipe for success by way of racing relationships, the likes of which he’s cultivated for decades. As for the litany of race cars he’s owned over the years, it’s actually a pretty short list. To this present day, his 1972 AMC Gremlin is the only race car he’s ever owned, and that’s something he doesn’t see changing anytime soon. “Sometimes I think about getting another car,” says Kremkau with a laugh, “but then I wonder what on earth I would replace the Gremlin DI DI DI with?” DI DI DI DI May 2016 DI DI DI DragIllustrated.com | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | 63