{"id":9919,"date":"2014-12-11T10:28:48","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T18:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=9919"},"modified":"2014-12-11T10:28:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T18:28:48","slug":"firesuit-phil-drag-racing-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/firesuit-phil-drag-racing-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Firesuit Phil, Drag Racing Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Firesuit<\/a>
Firesuit Phil and his Ford coupe at Symco.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pofahl was a lifelong resident of Kenosha. For 30 years he worked at American Motors. His greatest passion was drag racing as \u201cFiresuit Phil\u201d in his dark green Gasser. Phil was proud of his many trophies and awards. He was a member of the Geezer Gassers, Mid Century Mercury Car Club, Midwest Ford Club, Midwest Street Machines, and AMO\/AMX Club. He was inducted into the Great Lakes Dragway Hall of Fame and the Kenosha Legends.<\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>
Jerry Haley\u2019s Anglia in early days at Union Grove.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pofahl never considered painting his 5-window coupe. He didn\u2019t want the hot rod, which he built in 1958, to look like a gasser wannabe made in 2008. The Ford\u2019s 54-year-old battle-scarred enamel was as authentic as its Olds Rocket Eight and its Hilborn fuel-injection system. Firesuit\u2019s Ford was \u201cThe Real McCoy.\u201dPhil has had the Ford longer than he had his wife Barb (who also drag raced in an AMX). He bought it in 1958 for $75 and it took a few years to build it into a racing car. It had a \u201952 Oldsmobile V-8 when he got it, but not the one that was in it in 2011. That engine came from his first car\u2014one of 6,402 Oldsmobile Deluxe 88s made in 1952. It started as a 303-cid Olds Rocket V-8 and grew.<\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>
Jerry Haley in his coupe racing at Union Grove.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Phil said he got the Olds when he was 16 or 17, but didn\u2019t make it to nearby Union Grove the year it opened. Firesuit had an early flyer from the strip that read, \u201cAfter a full year of much hard work, and personal sacrifice, the first official sanctioned drag got under way, the morning of Oct. 7, 1956.\u201d Firesuit said that was accurate. \u201cYou see, I got picked up for dragging on the street and my dad had to come bail me out and I thought \u2018This is not <\/i>good!\u2019 So, I started racing at the strip and they (his parents) never gave me any static about drag racing. So I did it all out there and, it\u2019s safer and makes more sense, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Al<\/a>
Al Pfeifer\u2019s Willys 5-window was a neat looking gasser.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Firesuit Phil could rattle off names of the famous drag racers he knew\u2014like Perry Seitz and Jerry Haley. He knew Broadway Bob Metzler, long-time owner of Great Lakes Dragaway, for his entire racing career. Firesuit played jokes on Don Garlits and got his friend \u201cOhio George\u201d Montgomery going when he gave K.S. Pittmans widow a snappy ride in the \u201946 Ford. \u201cI told George it\u2019s a racing car, not a bus,\u201d laughed Phil. \u201cGarlits gave George a fast, scary ride in the Ford and he wasn\u2019t a happy camper, but Lavaun Pittman had an ear-to-ear grin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Firesuit<\/a>
Firesuit Phil blasts off the line with his Ford coupe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After serving Uncle Same and starting a family, Phil let the car sit for 23 years. His son was in high school at that time and the school was going to have a car show. He told his father, \u201cC\u2019mon, let\u2019s get the car going,\u201d so they went out to the one-car garage and started working on it and got it to the point where it was running. Then, the next thing to do was take it to \u201cThe Grove,\u201d where they won a trophy in 1987. \u201cAfter I got back out there, it was kind of let\u2019s try this and let\u2019s try that,\u201d Phil recalled. \u201cLike I said, drag racers always want to go faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Phil<\/a>
Phil and some of his famous drag racing buds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After he got into Nostalgia racing Firesuit took more honors. In 1996, Phil won the Goodguys\u2019 \u201cMost Nostalgic Race Car\u201d award. On July 22, 2000, he was inducted into the Kenosha Hod Rod Assoc. \u201cHall of Fame. In 2006, he was one of only 32 racers from throughout the world invited to a \u201cNHRA Salutes the Gassers\u201d event at Indianapolis on Labor Day weekend. Then, in 2008, he took 1st<\/sup> Place \u201cGeezer Gasser\u201d at the Goodguys Nostalgia Nats in Bowling Green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firesuit Phil was a legend, and so were his vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3447],"tags":[1337,1682,1683,1680,687,995,1681,953,304,663],"class_list":["post-9919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic","tag-tbt","tag-1946-ford","tag-1952-oldsmobile-v-8","tag-celebration-of-life","tag-classic-cars","tag-classic-racers","tag-firesuit-phil","tag-gunners-classic-corner","tag-john-gunnell","tag-throwback-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Firesuit-Phil-Photo-01-FEAT.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-2zZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9923,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9919\/revisions\/9923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}