After the Corvair, Sonny and Phil put the motor back in the ’65 Chevrolet and raced it some, and then they bought a new ’67 Chevelle with a 396 and four-speed, which did pretty well, then followed a ’69 Camaro 427, and that was THE car. Tindal ordered it directly from General Motors 
and picked it up from the dealership on a trailer. The car was never driven on the street. It was eventually sold as-is -- unmodified -- to replace another race car that was stolen out of a Tennessee motel parking lot.
Then came Sonny’s ’73 Vega, his first “real” car. “Up until then, we had store-bought cars. We bought a Bo Laws small block and put in it, and it was the first car we built ourselves, with complete tube frame. We ran it for about six years, in a gas class. We later put in a big block with a Powerglide,” Tindal says. Another “real” race car followed the Vega, one of Pro Mod Eliminator founder Ed Hoover’s cars, an ’87 Pontiac, the car that got stolen.
“We didn’t get to race it. We went to Tennessee to a race in 1989 and went to the motel on Saturday night and got up Sunday morning and the car, truck, trailer, everything was gone. All we had left were our suitcases,” he said.
Why Pro Modified?, Tindal was asked. “We always tried to run the top class, and we ended up in IHRA Top Sportsman. Orangeburg Drag Strip (only a 40-minute tow from Tindal’s Cayce home) came up with a thing … there were a bunch of fellas around here who liked to grudge race, and they started a class that paid $1,500 to win, a Quick 8 deal. There were about 10 cars at first, and we had to get into that. I built an ’85 Corvette to run that with.” Then followed a Tommy Mauney Pro Stocker, an ’87 Trans Am that was raced by Charles Wilford, and with a Sonny Leonard 650 backed by a 400 Turbo trans, Sonny won some races around home. Some of the other Quick 8 cars were faster, but Tindal would
beat a lot of them. “And we always went down the track with it,” he said.
Two body changes followed, then a new 2000 Firebird that never went straight, and in 2002, Sonny got hold of a Mauney-built Grand Am. It has since been updated, and now, with a new paint scheme and Fulton power, it’s like a new car. Sonny’s name is on the driver’s window and Debbie’s name is on the passenger side. His long-time crew of Mike Ray, brother Phil, daughter Robin and wife Debbie return for another go at the Pro Modified battles for 2006 and beyond.
They will race a little IHRA stuff, but mostly they’ll focus on some ADRL races and the Carolina Quick 8 Racers Association, 20 to 25 races in all. Today’s power comes from a split-carbureted 738-inch Gene Fulton engine with a four-speed Lenco and four stages of NOS nitrous.
He has suffered only one bad wreck on the track, in 1988. “Back then,” Tindal says, “I drove a lot of these old grudge cars, and I was driving an ’88 Camaro for a fella from Orangeburg. At Shuffletown, we were in a Quick 8 race and I left and the car shook on the other end real hard and it hit the guard rail. It knocked the front wheel off it and rolled about five times and it hit a light pole right on my door. It crushed the rails in on me, broke my hip and messed my shoulders up, and I was out for a couple of weeks. I went to another car on my crutches. It was the Gaffney Brothers’ Nova. I handed my wife the crutches and got in the car and won the race.”
So the ultimate question to Sonny Tindal remains: Why is a soon-to-be 69 year-old that goes low, low fours in the eighth-mile still drag racing? “I have a lot of people ask me that. I say if I can go 4.04, the next thing I’d want to go is 4-flat. I just want to get faster. I enjoy it. I don’t like to work on them like I used to, but I still enjoy driving. I’ve worked all my life and always had good health, and I think that just keeping on racing is good medicine.
“The writing is on the wall. I know I’m getting old, but this is a very good car, and I’m going to keep it up real good. I keep saying every year that I’m quitting and quitting, but it seems to keep on being good. I’ll probably slow down a good bit after next year,” Tindal said.
As we referred to earlier, there are 20 or so scheduled races for the Tindals and company for 2006, from Coastal Plains to Farmington, to Mooresville and beyond. Sonny knows that the old Orangeburg track has been sold and will be made new, and his long-time friend, Buddy Boozer, still sponsors him, and the racing remains good. The Tindals now show up at the track in a new Kodiak Chevrolet hauler with a 53-foot trailer
“I just race. That’s good medicine. I’ve never smoked, drank or anything like that. That keeps your health real good,” Sonny says. “The business and the race car kind of go together. If I quit racing, I’ll quit work. If I quit work, I’ll have to quit racing. We and Boozer pay our own way.”
And about racing Pro Mod/Quick8 against all those blown cars? “We love to get in there and aggravate them.” Four-oh-four, you see, is not a bad number to claim. 
 wilson@dragracingonline.com |
