Well race fans, it’s another of my infamous weekday TeaZer posts for an upcoming series of features I hope y’all will enjoy! Rather than a whole new category of articles, this is a rather a “sub-classification” of Lorelei. And so, I give you the opening salvo of Roxy Calder’s series of articles under the heading of…
About DC Confidential
Drag City Confidential-frequently shorthanded to “DC Confidential“- is our column excavating the hidden history of Wardglenn and its notorious racetrack. Written by Roxy Calder, with on-the-ground reconnaissance by Baden Worrell and Jason Carter, it’s part investigative reporting, part oral history, and part rumor-chasing.
Where Baden brings the fandom, Jason brings the skepticism, and Roxy digs for the facts. Together, they track down the legends that haunt Drag City — whether it’s forgotten racers, outlaw crews, or cult bands that left behind more whispers than records.
Some stories are true, some are half-true, and some are probably lies. But that’s Wardglenn for you!
Coming This Weekend: The Legend of The Sinisters
Our first case file takes us back to the mid-1980s and a band that seemed stitched into the fabric of Drag City itself: The Sinisters. Half the town thought they were Satanists, the other half thought they were clowns — but for a few years, they were everywhere, from the bleachers to the campground stages..and their few, loyal fans have never forgotten them!
Your Humble Blogger having a drink at Drag City Diner while listening to Wardglenn’s homegrown psychobilly rockers!
With only a handful of records to their name and an unreleased album that still haunts collectors, their story is tangled up with rumor, tragedy, and maybe even a touch of the occult. Did one of them die in Chicago? Did another disappear overseas? And could one still be walking the paddock at Drag City today, hiding in plain sight?
This is Roxy’s attempt to untangle the myth, with Baden and Jason lending their voices along the way.
There is a particular image that I found over a decade ago – I believe I originally came across it on the website for Hagerty classic car insurance – that has stayed with me since I first saw it. I love and cherish this picture, because something about it is extremely evocative to me. It is an image of a kid who – in every way – could have been me! This composition, called “Car Kid Bedroom,” shows a boy who appears to be around 13 or 14 years old, sitting on the shag carpet of the woodgrain formica-paneled bedroom of what would have been a typical suburban house of its era, playing with a Tyco slot car set, and, from the Mercedes-Benz LeMans reproduction poster to the image of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock to the Hot Wheels wheel-shaped car case to the stack of Hot Rod magazines, he is surrounded by ephemera that looks exactly like my own bedroom looked when I was that age! I’m choosing this image to kick off this nostalgic post to remind y’all that just because this particular entry at thunderjetheaven.com is not about slot cars or die-casts, or cars at all, it definitely belongs on this blog: it’s an “Out of the Slot” entry, for sure, but its focus on the days of our youth is right in-line with what this blog was designed from the outset to represent! I bet your bedroom looked a lot like this when you were a kid, too!
I’m deviating WAAAAY off topic for this one, dear readers…and on a Sunday, even! And yet, is it really that much of a deviation? If you’re anywhere near my age, get ready to relive a taste sensation…even if only in your mind!
Funny thing about that…we know that even long-latent memories can be triggered by the strangest things-sometimes we don’t even know what the trigger is-and for me, at least, it seems like that’s happening more as I age. Flavors are one of those ghostly things that the mind has troubles conjuring up. I don’t think a flavor is quite as ethereal as a smell; most people seem able to remember the taste of things well enough to describe it to someone…but when you think about it, can you really taste something in your memory? And if you can, what foods from your youth would you most like to taste again…now that they’re gone?
There are a thousand ways to measure time passing. You can look at old photos, listen to songs that take you back, or use your mind to walk through a mall that isn’t there anymore. But for me, one of the surest ways is food. Not the staples you can still buy — Coke, Doritos, Oreos. I mean the things that vanished. The snacks, candy bars, and sodas that carried us through childhood afternoons and teenage nights, and then one day just… stopped being there.
This is a trip back to the supermarket aisles and freezer cases of the ’70s and ’80s, where some of the best-tasting things we grew up with are gone. For me personally, there are 2 things in particular that I miss most…
Morton Honey Buns
The first thing I think of is Morton Honey Buns. My mom used to make them for breakfast for me and my sister going back about as far as I can remember, always smothered with butter and then baked in the oven before school. They came out of the oven hot and sticky, and along with a glass of morning milk, they would just melt in your mouth. That was a whole morning right there. You can still find variations of “honey buns” now, but nothing like the Morton’s; they had a crisp outside when cooked just right, a gooey center, and they were just the right amount of carbs and sugar to get a 10 year old up and out the door for school. I’d give anything for one more plate of those.
Pepperidge Farms Croissant Pizzas
By the time I was a teenager, I had graduated to late-night solo meals, and for a while that meant Pepperidge Farms Croissant Pizzas: buttery, flaky layers wrapped around gooey cheese and sauce. I practically lived on them. I ate them almost every night for a couple of years. Some of the happiest memories of my entire life were late nights in 1990, when I was 18 and finally out of high school, staying up late to watch re-runs of Remington Steele and scarfing down a crispy PF croissant pizza that had been in the oven for 25 minutes. They vanished sometime in the ’90s, and nothing since has hit the same spot. That was my teenage comfort food, and it’s gone.
But That’s Not All!
The Snack Oddballs
Hostess Choco-diles were another one: Basically a chocolate-covered Twinkie, but with a mythology all their own. If you grew up on the West Coast, you knew them. If you didn’t, you might not even believe they existed. The jingle said it all: “It takes a while to eat a Chocodile!” For a brief time they came back, but the magic was in those original runs, where you almost felt like you were getting away with something just by eating one.
“It takes a while to eat a Choco-dile!”
Jason jogged my memory about another regional one from his childhood: Nalley Crunchi-O’s — crunchy potato rings in a canister. They were like the love child of onion rings and potato chips. He and his sister used to crunch on those on family camping trips when they were kids in the Anchorage area, and apparently they were regional to the Pacific Northwest. Regional, short-lived, and forgotten by the world at large, but part of his little corner of it.
And then there were Jell-O Pudding Pops — every freezer had them in the mid-’80s, and every kid wanted them. The commercials with Bill Cosby made them look irresistible! Fudgy, creamy, frozen pudding on a stick. They burned bright for a few years and then disappeared.
The Candy Aisle
The Marathon Bar is the king of the lost candy bars. Eight inches of braided caramel covered in chocolate, stretched across its wrapper like a dare. The commercials went heavy on that gimmick — Patrick Wayne showing it off like Excalibur. Discontinued in ’81, but it left a mark.
Choco-Lite was Nestlé’s bubbly chocolate bar, filled with tiny air pockets. Light, crunchy, and pitched as “space-age” chocolate for the future. It didn’t last long, but it had a flavor and texture that nothing since has really matched.
Chunky was technically never gone — it’s still around in corners — but it was way more common in the ’70s. A brick of chocolate studded with peanuts and raisins, wrapped in foil, heavy enough to use as a paperweight. A bar that made no apologies for being ugly and dense.
The Cola Wars (and Their Cousins)
Now, Coke and Pepsi were the titans, of course. The Cola Wars were raging on TV commercials, with Michael Jackson shilling Pepsi and Mean Joe Greene tossing his Coke jersey to a kid. But outside that battle, there was a whole world of “other colas.”
My mom used to buy C&C Cola because it was cheap. I only ever saw it in cans, never bottles. They had this pinkish-red and white design that still sticks in my memory. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great, but it was ours. I even remember the commercial for it, which specifically called it out as a more affordable alternative to Coke or Pepsi.
RC Cola was the most famous of the second-tier sodas. Always the underdog, but it had its loyalists. You’d see it at picnics and barbecues, and they had a long-gone diet version called “RC 100” that also had an unforgettable ad that I still love to this day.
“Thanks for nothin’!”
And then there was Shasta, which is technically still around, but the commercials are what made it legendary. If you were a kid in the ’80s, you can probably still hear it in your head:
“Don’t give me that same old cola, that so-so soda, I wanna rock n’ rolla! I want a pop! I want a Shasta!”
They had every flavor under the sun, in loud, colorful cans. Shasta felt fun and a little rebellious, like the cola version of roller skating in neon.
I have to ask…if you were a parent in 1982 and considering buying this product for your kids, and you watched this commercial advertising “10% fruit juice,” wouldn’t you be inclined to ask: “What’s the other 90%?!”
And finally, Capri Sun — not a cola, but worth mentioning. It was exotic back then, in its foil pouch, imported from Germany. I never liked the taste, but I remember the hype. The commercials made it look like something astronauts would drink.
Eatin’ Your Nostalgia…
For me, it all comes back to the Morton Honey Buns and the Pepperidge Farm Croissant Pizzas. Those were my anchors — childhood mornings and teenage nights. They’re gone, but the memories are still baked in, and that’s the magic of these vanished foods. Back then, they were just snacks. Now? If you could eat one of these today, it would be a time machine in your mouf!
Generation-X Saturday Morning Nutrition!
So, dear readers…what were your favorites?! What would you nosh on again for breakfast or a midnight snack if you could?
From the files of our diecast collections, this Saturday Evening Post has some real “red meat” for my fellow Matchbox collectors! This is a topic I’ve been aware of for a while but had slipped through the cracks over the years in all the excitement about Thunderjets. Thanks to a recent comment by a reader who was raised in Brazil, this latent interest was recently rekindled!
As this #75 Alfa Carabo demonstrates, the #1 thing that makes the Roly Toys Matchbox cars so appealing to collectors is that they’re different; with very few exceptions, most of them were painted in unique colors that bore no resemblance to models made anywhere else, and they usually mixed decals and labels in ways their English-made counterparts never imagined!
I’ve been a serious Matchbox collector for over 40 years now. Since my focus is on the 1953-1982 Lesney era, I’ve seen some pretty rare pieces, but there is an entire category of Matchbox car that is so rare that I’ve never laid eyes on one in person in my lifetime.
A near-mint #68 Porsche 910 in a caramel color nothing like the copper-red of the one we all know and love!
Every collector has their “white whale.” For many of us, it’s that elusive Superfast variation or a blister card from a non-English-speaking land. But for the truly esoteric Matchbox hunter, the rarest quarry comes from halfway across the globe — the short, strange, and fragile production runs of Matchbox cars in Brazil. From Roly Toys in Rio de Janeiro to Inbrima in Manaus, the story of Matchbox in Brazil is a tale of small-scale industry, fragile finishes, and a market that barely leaked across its own borders. Even veteran collectors like your humble blogger have never held one in their hands.
Roly Toys: Brazil’s Own Miniatures
A selection of early Roly Toys models of the VW van
Founded in 1964, Roly Toys set out to make 1:64 diecast versions of the cars Brazilians actually drove. Their lineup included:
An assortment of models of the Brazilian-made Willys Interlagos coupe….the real car may be even more rare than the toy!
Willys Interlagos Berlineta
DKW Vemaguet wagon
Volkswagen Kombi and Beetle
Jeep Willys
Scania Vabis dump truck
Mercedes-Benz LP-321 tanker
Paint adhesion was poor, so survivors today often look battered even when they weren’t. In 1969, Roly tried to answer the Hot Wheels revolution with a short-lived “Bólidos” line — faster-rolling Interlagos and Karmann Ghia models.
By 1967, Roly was also Lesney’s official Brazilian importer, and many English-made Matchbox boxes from the period carry a bright orange sticker: “Distribuidor Exclusivo – Roly Toys – Rua da Gamboa 279, Rio de Janeiro.”
The RARE amongst the RARE: the Roly Toys ’68 Camaro was one of only 4 models released under the “bolidos” moniker: their version of the Matchbox Superfast concept!
The Move North: Inbrima in Manaus
A trio of mid-1970’s Inbrima-made Matchboxes, 2 DeTomaso Panteras and a Pontiac Firebird
In the early 1970s, Brazil’s government incentivized industry in the Amazon’s new Manaus Free Trade Zone. Roly shifted operations north, renaming itself Inbrima — Indústria de Brinquedos do Amazonas S.A.
Here, Inbrima assembled Matchbox cars from parts shipped in by Lesney. Bases and packaging gained unique identifiers:
Paper “Inbrima” labels (black, later gold-foil)
Engraved “FAB ZF MANAUS” bases
Clip-on plastic tags with “Manaus” — often missing today, leaving two holes in the base
Sometimes the original “Made in England” was crudely drilled away
Boxes changed too:
Generic fantasy-car artwork with color-coded number stickers (yellow/red, later red/black)
A handful of special picture boxes in 1976 (Challenger, Faun, Firebird, Formula 5000)
By 1981, blue window boxes labeled Lesney Products PLC with white flap stickers
ABOVE: Models of the #20 Lamborghini Marzal illustrate early and later examples of Brazilian box designs: on the left, the original Lesney box coated with labels. On the right: the custom-printed boxes made by Inbrima with a generic model illustration.
Inbrima’s paint choices were often bolder than UK runs — you might find a Dodge Challenger in a color that never saw a London factory.
One of the most desirable of all the early Roly Toys releases, the beautiful #69 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow convertible in light yellow with a charcoal base. Almost impossible to find, this copy is in near mint condition; we can only speculate what a fanatical collector might have paid for this!
The End of the Road
When Lesney collapsed in 1982, Inbrima’s pipeline dried up. The factory was eventually absorbed by Trol, who continued producing Matchbox into the Universal era under the “Trol Inbrima” name. But by then, the magic of the Lesney years was gone.
A superb assortment of rare Roly Toys copies of the #62 “Rat Rod Dragster,” the modified ’68 Mercury Cougar. None these colors were available on the English-made models. Note the white version has the side label from the English version of the #70 Dodge Dragster. A find like this would make a collector swoon!
Chasing Unicorns Today
So why are Brazilian Matchbox models almost mythically rare?
one of the less appealing design decisions made by Roly Toys was the idea to paint detachable parts like doors or hoods in deviating colors.
Limited distribution: Made for Brazil only, never exported in bulk.
Fragile finishes: Roly paint flakes, Inbrima labels fall off.
Small runs: Production numbers were tiny compared to UK output.
Transition chaos: Lesney’s downfall left many stranded in obscurity.
For collectors outside South America, encountering one in person is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Empty boxes with distributor stickers sometimes surface, but intact cars are rarer than rare.
One your bumble blogger would most like to own: the #14 Iso Grifo in dark metallic red! A shame they elected to do the ugly deviating color on the doors on this one, as the English-made version was never produced in this color, and this Brazilian release shows it should have been!
The Brazilian Matchbox cars of the Lesney era are ghosts of the diecast world — fragile, scarce, and endlessly fascinating. They represent a unique collision of local industry, government policy, and global toy history.
A pristine version of the #1 Mod Rod in blue with side decals from the #8 Wildcat Dragster: an example of mint condition, making it a unicorn amongst unicorns!
Most of us will never own one. Many of us will never even see one outside of a photo. But knowing they existed, even for a short time, reminds us that the Matchbox story is bigger — and stranger — than the shelves we grew up with.
References:
Some sites that provided helpful information for this post include:
A site in Portuguese, naturally, but with the help of “moderen” technology, you can x-late it all into the language of your choice with the click of button! This “deep dive” is a knowledgeable and fascinating read!
A superb collection of Lesney-era and post-Lesney era Brazilian MBX cars carefully photographed and cataloged, even with variations: not to be missed for those interested in the topic!
Keep hunting and collecting, fellow gearheads…you never know what might turn up out there!
⚡️ ThunderJet Heaven: Keeping the obscure stories alive, one forgotten casting at a time.
Let’s SCORE this post! Does “Night Over Manaus” by Boozoo Bajou seem apropos???
But no answers come… only smoke, grease, and the great huffing of carburetors.
Here at Drag City, we take that silence and make it holy. We keep the mess intact. We don’t sand down the rust, or airbrush the scars.
Because Nick Cave told us the truth before anyone else would:
The world is filthy.
People are hypocrites.
Love and death live side by side.
And God, if He’s there at all, is probably laughing through broken teeth.
Drag City runs on that gospel. It’s not Madison Avenue slick. It’s not Silicon Valley sanitized. It’s raw: stocky bodies in threadbare Levi’s, seedy motels, battered muscle cars, spectators who know sin is part of the show.
This place belongs to the patron saint of beautiful collapse, Nick Cave — preacher, poet, trickster, mourner. He blesses the burnout marks on Dead Man’s Curve. He baptizes our engines in oil and fire. He reminds us that stories matter more than explanations.
Here, in Wardglenn, we don’t ask the author to explain anymore. We just race, remember, and make it loud enough that we will be remembered!
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!
Wow, this must be the 3rd or 4th song I’ve posted on this blog just from this one album, but I do LOVE “Old Nick” so! His music has been with me for most of my life, and I’ll put his work up against any other balladeer out there! So yes, dear readers, this was another “indulgent one” from your music-loving gearhead blogger, but coming up this weekend I’ve got something special for you…
I don’t usually do an “Out of the Slot” post on the weekends, but we’re jumping out of the slot next Sunday to take a look at a topic this blog has never looked at before: FOOD! Ready for a nostalgic walk down the grocery store aisles of your childhood to take a look at all those products you haven’t seen in decades? Tune in for that, as well as a close-up look at an oft-neglected (but recently asked-about!) feature of the track! And, of course, more updates on the never-ending Diecast flood that threatens to drown my whole household in Hot Wheels! There are some awesome new releases getting unwrapped! All this and more coming up here at thunderjetheaven.com because, ya know, there’s ALWAYS something going on at Drag City!
Some stories are too strange to die, too stubborn to stay buried. At Drag City, they don’t talk about Zach Zimmerman in the past tense, and they don’t call the ’58 Plymouth Belvedere by its name. They just say one thing, with a kind of resigned fear:.. she always comes back.
Track File #008 – Compiled from interviews, reports, and field notes, Wardglenn, CA
Midnight at Drag City
The strip is quiet now, just the hum of sodium lamps and the whisper of desert air. But those who know Drag City will tell you: silence is never silence. Some nights you catch the smell of hot brakes drifting over the paddock. Some nights you hear the uneven thrum of a big Mopar idle. And every once in a while, someone swears they see fins flicker past the gate.
The car is called “Furious:” A gold and white 1958 Plymouth Belvedere. She should have been gone long ago. But in Wardglenn, this particlar car – or perhaps one much like it? – has been hanging around for nearly 30 years.
Zach “Zigzag” Zimmerman
There’s always that one car.
Not the fastest. Not the loudest. Not the one with the biggest sponsor decal or the best finish record. Just… the one people keep talking about. The one that doesn’t quite fit, and somehow makes that work. The one that never should’ve made it out of the paddock — and yet keeps rolling up to the line.
At Drag City, that car is a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere known only by the name stenciled on the dashboard: Furious.
You’ve probably seen her — wide, low, and impossible to ignore in gold with white trim, like someone chromed a wasp. She rumbles more than she roars, and she leans in the turns like she’s daring gravity to argue. Her driver is Zach “Zigzag” Zimmerman, a low-key local with a sly grin, grease under his nails, and a dog named Bullet who won’t go near the car.
This isn’t a post about lap times. It’s not about horsepower or setup tricks or gear ratios.
This is about everything else.
About a picture tacked to a corkboard. A locked glovebox. A girl who disappeared in 1961. A car that somehow… always came back.
Discovery: The Photograph in the Trailer
It started with a photograph.
We were digging around the Records Trailer — that gray steel box near the paddock with a warped floor and a broken fan — looking for Group A tech slips. Jason flipped through a binder labeled UNREGISTERED VEHICLES. Roxy was sipping something stronger than coffee from her Drag City mug.
That’s when I saw it.
A Polaroid, curling at the corners, pinned to a corkboard above the fuse panel.
It showed a Mobil station at dusk. Dusty background, empty lot. And dead center — a red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Belvedere. Tailfins sharp. Badge unmistakable.
On the back, scribbled in ballpoint:
Furious.
Jason stopped flipping pages. Roxy stopped mid-sip.
And just like that, we weren’t looking for lap sheets anymore.
Interview: Zach “Zigzag” Zimmerman
We found Zach in the paddock near Garage 3B. Furious gleamed behind him like a prop from a movie: baby moons, perfect interior, gold paint that somehow didn’t catch dust.
We asked him what he knew.
Zach:
“She’s not stock. Not even close.” “Original 318’s long gone. She’s got a 361 bored and stroked from a Chrysler 300. Pushin’ close to 400 horses.” “Dressed it up like a factory V-800. You open the hood, you think it’s stock. Until she runs.”
He rattled off the rest like a grocery list:
B&M shifter
A-833 four-speed
5-core radiator
Front discs
Custom console wrapped in color-keyed vinyl
And one last thing —
Zach:
“Glovebox is locked. Always was. Key doesn’t work. Never forced it.”
How He Found Her
We asked the big question: where did you find her?
He looked east. Past the track. Toward the hills.
Zach:
“Searchlight, Nevada.” “Desert run in ‘81. Looking for parts. Handwritten flyer at a diner — ‘Mopars – must haul.’ Led me to this busted-up trailer lot on the edge of town. There she was. Under a tarp. Flat tires. Paint like sunburn.”
Jason:
“She still red and white then?”
Zach:
“Yeah. Faded. But straight. Clean under the dust. Guy said his uncle bought her while he was in the miliary stationed a ways away, couldn’t get her to run. Parked it there in ‘71 and never moved it again. I threw him two hundred bucks and a box of plugs.”
He shrugged.
Zach:
“Towed her home. Changed the oil. New battery. She turned over before the key hit ignition.”
Interview: Pops at the Chevron
The next day, we headed over to the little Chevron station on Bear Valley Road near the main entrance gates to Drag City. Earl “Pops” Delaney has been running it since the fifties.
We asked if he knew a guy named Red Vassell.
Pops didn’t blink.
Pops:
“Raymond. Yeah. Called him Red. Bought a ‘58 Belvedere straight off the line. Picked it up from Miller Chrysler in Riverside. Drove there in a DeSoto, left in that Plymouth. Red and white. Car was too clean. Even after rain.”
We asked about Red himself.
Pops:
“Quiet. Loner. Worked outta his garage on Mariposa Ridge. People say he was good — real good — with anything mechanical. Fixed things fast. Never talked much.”
And then he gave us more than we asked for.
Pops:
“Girl went missing in ’61. Linda was her name; Linda Mae Stratton. Can’t forget it. Was prom night. Last seen getting into a red-and-white car someone said was a Plymouth. Case was never solved.”
Jason and I exchanged looks.
Pops added one last thing:
Pops:
“That glovebox ever open?”
We shook our heads.
He nodded once. Then went back to wiping the same clean rag. Locals still lean on the counter at Pops’ garage and trade theories. Pops himself shakes his head.
“That car was meaner than Zach ever was. You don’t drive a car like that, not unless you want a fight. And Red? He loved a fight. Too much.”
He goes quiet before adding:
“Never found that girl. Cars don’t just vanish. People don’t either. But if you tell me that Red’s Plymouth’s is Zach’s car – that its come back… I can’t tell you you’re wrong.”
Sightings
Late in the summer of ’61, a waitress at the Star-Lite Diner on the Nevada border swore she heard a car “breathing” out by the dumpsters, heavy and uneven, but saw only empty pavement. A retired track marshal recalled unexplained streaks across the apron after lock-up. Deputies filed reports noting fresh tire marks of a width not sold in decades, always angled toward town.
The details changed from one account to the next, but a pattern formed. The Plymouth was always seen—or heard—pointing home.
Mariposa Ridge
Room 4: swamp cooler humming, typewriter clacking; Roxy stayed at the Drag-O-Way Motel to type up notes. That afternoon, Jason and I headed out. We took Bear Valley Road east, then north up a cracked spur locals call Mariposa Ridge Road. Old fire road. No signage. Scrub brush. Power lines that buzzed louder than the Blazer’s engine.
A few miles up, we pulled off near an old quarry. There, in a clearing, we found it.
A patch of hardened asphalt — black, warped, glossy — like it had melted, then cooled; warped like taffy, then hardened like obsidian.
Around it: a faint path. Wide enough for a car. No tread. Just… heat distortion baked into the dirt.
We took photos; didn’t talk much.
There was a payphone at Desert View Gas & Oil six miles back. We called Roxy.
Her answer?
“Get a picture. And get back before dark.”
Dead Man’s Curve, 2:14 A.M.
Jason and I walked the track that night, flashlights cutting the dark. At Dead Man’s Curve, where Furious was last seen, we found two faint parallel streaks etched into the tarmac. Jason crouched, brushing a hand along them. “Not daylight runs,” he said.
I bent close to a paint flake in the gravel: black, with red bleeding through. “Not from tonight’s cars.”
Jason’ s voice dropped low.
“Zach used to say the car remembers the fast laps. The mistakes. The way home. Maybe… it wants to finish what it started.”
Then it came—a low V8 thrum rolling out of the dark, Mopar deep, steady, close. We froze. The sound faded. Silence again.
The Glovebox Opens
Late that night we found Roxy still awake; we could hear the clacking of her Smith Corona manual from out in the hall. We knocked and entered and the 3 of us discussed what we’d found at the track.
Then came the knock. Zach Zimmerman at the door. Holding a small object in his hand.
Zach:
“Came back to the motel. Sat in the car. Tried it again. It opened.”
Inside: a compact mirror, cracked. Lipstick smudge still faint inside. Back engraved with initials: L.M.S.
Roxy flipped through an archive crate and found it fast:
WARDGLENN PD – 1961 BULLETIN MISSING: LINDA MAE STRATTON, AGE 17 Last seen: Elsinore Rd., Gas & Go station, 11:32 PM. Witness describes red-and-white Dodge or Plymouth. Car not identified. Case unresolved.
Roxy wrote in the margin of her notebook:
“Not a haunting. Not a possession. A loop.”
Theories
The skeptics call it a prank: a swap-meet story built to spook a town addicted to ghost stories. Some say a rival is just trying to rattle Zach to shake his mojo on the track.
But the stories don’t fade: Bias-ply widths etched across fresh blacktop; primer bleeding through the gold paint. Uncatalogued engine parts surfacing in junkyards with no record of sale. And the car’s habits: never grandstanding, never cruising Main. Always circling the track. Always pointing toward home.
Deputy Ben Alvarez remembers it best. “I saw those prints myself,” he said. “Eight-inch bias plies. Nobody’s buying those in 1984. Nobody. So what car left them?”
Race Day
Filed Observation – Heat 3, 10:45 AM – Dry Track – 83°F Driver: Zimmerman, Z. Vehicle: 1958 Plymouth Belvedere “Furious”
Subject vehicle performed cleanly in corners 1–3. No instability observed.
Key anomaly:
No visible tire marks on corner exit.
Jason:
“She doesn’t leave rubber. Like she’s not really touching the ground.”
We stood at the fence. Roxy leaned on the rail.
Roxy:
“Same motion. Every lap. Like it remembers itself.”
Sunset paints Drag City gold. The paddock stirs. The strip looks empty, just as it should. But on the k-rail at Dead Man’s Curve, two streaks remain, curling off into nothing.
Some cars rust. Some cars collapse. Some are just parked and forgotten. But some refuse to quit. In Wardglenn, they don’t say “if.” They don’t even say “when.”
Of “Furious,” they just say: she always comes back.
END OF REPORT
TRACK FILES #008 — “She Always Comes Back” Filed: July 1986 | Status: OPEN
