ROLL OUT
In 2016, it doesn’t take much beyond license plates and headlights to
prove your street car’s streetworthiness, but Keith’s definition includes
the rigors of daily driving, at least during the warm weather season in
his hometown of Lee’s Summit, Missouri. “I don’t think the car could
possibly run well enough, be fast enough, for me to feel like it’s justified
to not be able to drive it around town, to dinner, to the grocery store,”
says Keith. “I want a car I can enjoy away from the race track, too.”
applied and ended up actually getting a job and
just focused all my energy on moving up at the
dealership. I worked my way up pretty fast and
eventually landed a gig as a service writer. I
worked there for just shy of 10 years.
hardly have to leave town. There were so many True (laughs). Well, it was a bit polarizing—friends
people involved at the time—and legitimately and my fellow Chevy guys loved it, Mustang guys
fast cars, too. Traveling to find a race on the street? hated it—what really made it stick, though, was
That was unheard of. You’d stay in town and you’d when I started posting videos on YouTube.com. I
race who was in town. You’d go out to a spot, started uploading videos of me racing my ’02
race and then spend the next several days, and Camaro and they were pretty popular. Then Kyle
Do you think your experience at the dealership
in some cases weeks, talking and arguing about [Loftis] from 1320Video.com, who was a friend of
and that aforementioned eye for detail
it on the forum [KansasCityStreetRacing.org]. Hon- mine, he posted a video of me racing at TX2K the
influenced expectations for your own
estly, I don’t know that I’d have gotten as serious one year I went and it really took off. That was
car builds?
about all this racing stuff as I have without that when a lot of stuff really started going crazy.
I do think, as far as modifications and stuff like forum. If that wasn’t around, I don’t think we
that go, I’ve got a certain expectation that I can’t would be where we’re at right now, in my opinion. I had sold the 2002 Camaro and wanted to build
shake when it comes to working on my car. I was It was all good-natured for the most part. We’d the 2010 Chevy Camaro that I’d originally bought
around brand-new cars so much that it tends to have the occasional blow up and usual trash as a daily driver. I took all the money from selling
make you feel bad if your own stuff doesn’t look talking, but it was normally more ‘Who’s going the ’02 and dumped it straight into the 2010. That
that way. Under the hood, under the car, interior- to beat who?’ and things like that.
car, honestly, was the first of its kind. When I
wise, I’m real picky about how everything looks
started posting pictures of the build on fifth-genand to tell you the truth, I hope people notice.
KCSR.org – that’s where the whole “Stang
eration Camaro forums, people were going insane
Killer” thing got started.
over the stuff I was doing to it. Going into the
I’m sure your posts on the message boards
Yeah, that was my username.
deal, I was just thinking, ‘Hey, it’s rear-wheel drive
following along with the build of your Camaro
and it’s got an LS motor, this seems like a pretty
got a lot of attention, but you were generating
There had to be more to it than that. Not
solid starting point.’ It’s just that nobody was really
a lot of buzz actually racing the car, right?
everybody gets one of their Internet message
modifying those cars like that at the time. I put a
Well, I’d like to think that was the case (laughs). board usernames permanently atbig, monster, forward-facing, 88-millimeter turBack at that time, you could race on the street tached to them.
bocharged 370ci iron truck block motor in it, a
just about every night of the week and you’d
Turbo 400 transmission and a 9-inch Ford rear end.
WINTER2016
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