Wassinks SN-95

Campaigning a Pro 5.0 Mustang with any hope of competitiveness these days is prohibitively expensive, and, as with the top classes in any other form of motorsport, the price of admission becomes steeper every season. It's getting so the only practical way to justify one of these dollar-fueled rocket sleds is as a business-promotional tool. But who says you have to be practical to love racing? Despite this upward fiscal spiral, not every Pro 5.0 team runs on a heavily sponsored, megadollar budget.

We present this new Canadian entry, co-owned by Darren and Walter Wassink, as a prime example. Now we're certainly not suggesting its construction was inexpensive, but neither Darren, who does the driving, nor his dad, Walter, have any business-promotional axes to grind with the recently completed '98-bodied racer. They just enjoy the sport of drag racing to the extent they're willing to dig deep into their own bruised and battered savings accounts to participate. That this hobby provides them quality family time is a welcome bonus.

This isn't the Wassinks first foray into the wacky world of quarter-mile Mustangs. Some readers may have seen their previous Fox convertible that had a giant, stylized Canadian flag fluttering on its flanks. In fact, they had started to gut that car to convert it for Pro 5.0 duty when Anthony Polito of Polito Ford. Lincoln waved the offer of an early SN-95 body shell under their noses. That and the rapidly evolving Pro 5.0 rules packages soon had them negotiating with Toronto's Phoenix Fabricating for construction of an all-new, 25.1C-compliant chassis on which to hang the body.

But the Wassinks purposely stopped short of going with the fully tubular frontend that Pro 5.0 rules now permit. Instead, they stuck with the older-style "factory" snout to give the new car dual-purpose rules legality. Darren and Walter realistically recognize they're unlikely to have the travel time or funding to contest the whole Pro 5.0 tour. So, they also wanted the car to fit into the Super Street rules of the Ontario Street Car Association, which-like the old Pro 5.0 rules-require a stock layout from the firewall forward. This means they can pursue a local points chase while still running Pro 5.0 as time and finances permit.

The Wassinks opted to keep things 302-based under the Joe Van Overbeek fiberglass hood. They tapped Paul Silva of J&P Performance to craft a small-displacement bullet on which to hang a large-displacement Innovation T-100 turbocharger. When you say "turbo" and "Pro 5.0" in the same breath, you can usually expect to find the name Job Spetter somewhere in there as well. In this case, the New York turbomeister not only gave advice on, and tuned, the engine/turbo combo, but he also did the original drawing for the distinctive "Turbo Rat Pack" hood graphic, artfully applied by Skinny's Air Brushing over several layers of DuPont paint shot by Town & Country Body Shop.

When we took these photos at the car's on-track shakedown outing last fall, a Liberty five-speed gearbox was on board. The original plan had been to use a two-speed Powerglide, but the Wassinks concluded the automatic wouldn't be able to keep up in Pro 5.0. Their plan for 2002 is to run the Liberty stick-shift at Pro 5.0 events-while trying to assimilate the huge clutch-learning curve-and then swap to the likely slower but more consistent Powerglide for OSCA's Super Street weekends.

Darren and Walter realistically don't expect to clean up in Pro 5.0 this year, as the learning curve will no doubt be steep. But by building a dual-purpose racer, they've made the most of their considerable investment. And while some might argue any sort of equation between race car and investment, how many other forms of investment can pay dividends in as little as seven seconds?