some stuff to drive it on the street,
but he still drives it. People say you
can’t have a roll cage for it to be a
street car, but I don’t agree with that.
I want to be safe. I guess you’re
damned if you do, and you’re
damned if you don’t.”
It’s at the drag strip where Bunton
gets down to business. He can generally be found at local street car and
small block-focused races. “Down
here in the South, they pay a lot of
money to win, and there are no rules,
except for the tire,” he notes of the
events at the lightly prepped tracks
he frequents with his Fox Body. Regardless of the condition of the track,
safety is a top priority wherever
Bunton races. “I wear a HANS device
and pull the belts as tight as they
can go. You just never know.”
He’s won a number of races during
his relatively short career, but his
80
STREETRACE
most memorable was his first-ever race, then the car turned and hit the I can’t,” he confesses. To keep with
street car race in July of 2014 at wall and killed him,” Bunton states. the street car theme, Bunton also
Bowman Dragway in Orangeburg, “It was really hard for me to go back tries to keep his interior as presentSouth Carolina. “I started going fast after that. I was scared. But I did, and able as possible. “If I went to a
and people had an issue. A lot of I won the month after in his honor.” straight race car, I know I could
people were talking crap, but none After overcoming the tragic loss, knock two-tenths off just on weight
showed up to race that weekend, Bunton pressed on. During a test alone, but I won’t do that.”
just to watch,” he remembers of the session at Carolina Dragway – the
event, which included a thirty-mile “House of Hook” – in Aiken, South The idea of chipping away at his
mandatory drive for the street car Carolina, Bunton ran a new pe rsonal numbers is enticing, though, and
competition. “When I won, nobody best of 4.79 at 148.7 mph with a 1.14- Bunton plans on getting down into
would talk to me or acknowledge second sixty-foot time.
the 4.50-zone with his 1,600-plus
me. I never thought I’d win a race in
horsepower Fox Body soon enough.
my life, and when I did, it was like, The biggest challenge of racing such “It’s got enough power to do it,” he
holy crap!” With a payout of only a a quick street car at the track, ac- asserts, “I just need the weather to
few hundred dollars, Bunton insists cording to Bunton, is keeping the car cooperate and the stars to align.”
his excitement wasn’t about the running cool. “I have to have a radiamoney – it was about proving tor, a decent cooling system, and it Given the amount of determination,
people wrong.
all has to work. People don’t under- drive, and stubbornness in the face
stand you can’t just mount the turbo of adversity that Bunton’s already
With a collection of wins under his in front of the bumper, because you demonstrated, making those 4.50
belt in 2015, Bunton vividly recalls have a radiator there. My car doesn’t hits should be as easy as driving to
another race at Bowman Dragway have Dzus fasteners on the hood, it’s the corner store with his wife in his
that year which claimed the life of all AeroCatch stuff. If I had a racecar, Mustang to pick up some groceries
his friend Del Harwell. “He won the I’d have carbon fiber everywhere, but or catch a movie on date night.
PHOTOS: KEVIN COX, ELLEN ESCHENBACHER
FOUR-SECOND FOX