Crash! Boom! Slam!
Pete “Repeat” Millette Sr. connects loose starter wires manually from the front seat and sprays Technicolor sparks across his lap. His 1970s Ford jumps to life–shaking, growling, ready for trouble. Millette is driving tonight for Damage Inc. in a team demolition derby competition at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, where it’s 85 degrees at 8 p.m. and way too humid for this sort of foolishness.
But don’t try telling that to the 12,500 fans jamming the joint.
Listen as track announcer Jan Gabriel eggs them on with his rumbling, “Let me hear the Route 66 Stomp!” Twenty-five thousand feet respond. They pummel the grandstand decking as Gabriel holds a cupped hand over his mike, smiles wickedly and whispers: “Management hates it when I do that.”
Rain starts and stops as Millette watches the lightning show to the east.
His son, “Repeat Jr.,” is lining up directly behind him, with two more confederates sitting just ahead. In five minutes they’ll run against the Locomotives in the second of four scheduled heats.
Imagine, if you will, a race where the first car to finish five laps is declared the winner. Sounds easy, except for those characters in the black cars lurking behind Repeat and Repeat Jr.
The Locomotives. Sinister, take-no-prisoners kind of guys.
Their job is to stop the lead Damage Inc. driver. Launch straight across the track and center-punch the joker!
Take him out, finish him off.
And if they do, maybe their lead guy’ll have a shot at sneaking through the Damage Inc. crashers and blockers unscathed for a team win.
Because it’s all about strategy in team demolition derby racing, about running interference for your lead car while targeting their point man.
Think roller derby.
Except here, the roller skates are replaced by 1974 Ford LTDs. And instead of a smooth wooden track, you slip and slide through sodden tons of good old Illinois mud. Indeed, after two heats, the Route 66 track grows swampy; top speed is 15 or 20 m.p.h. and drivers lock horns, bog down and bull-rush each other until an engine seizes or rear end goes.
The sell-out crowd eats this stuff up.
Pete Millette has run in team demolition derbies since 1975; he used to be with the Mean Green Machine and remains friendly with his old compadres. But these days he and Repeat Junior drive for Damage Inc.
“We all got started over at the old Santa Fe Speedway,” said Millette, a carpenter and welder who sets up his own cars and comes across as the calming influence, the wise old head. “We’d still be there, too, if they hadn’t closed the track down.”
Team demolition derby, a phenomenon unique to the Chicago area, can trace its origins to the long-shuttered 87th Street Speedway in the early 1950s. It began with teams racing one make against another–Chevrolets against Fords, for example. A promoter named Howard Teidt organized races at Santa Fe Speedway in the late 1950s, where the sport remained until the track closed in 1995.
According to Gabriel, Route 66 picked up on the team demolition derby concept three years ago, at the urging of Larry Decker, the track’s primary supplier of souvenir T-shirts and baseball caps. “Larry understood there’s a substantial local following for this sport,” Gabriel said. “He knew the history involved. The Mean Green Machine, for example, goes back to the late 1960s.
“You have a situation here where sons of the original drivers are competing with each other, and a third generation is only a few years away from driving. You also have wives and girlfriends and everybody else in the family working to prepare these cars, because remember, you don’t just bring four old Mercurys out and run them all night long. Your team counts on destroying four cars per heat. That means you need at least 12 cars a night prepared and ready to run, and two or three extras if you’re smart.”
Teams are constantly looking to restock their supply of vehicles. Cars are typically damaged beyond repair in these events.
And they don’t go for anything built since 1978. Team demolition guys want the old boats, preferably Ford LTDs with big block motors, pretty much any Mercury and maybe the occasional Lincoln. The problem with beaters from the 1980s and 1990s is that they have too much plastic and the body panels are too light. They don’t hold up to a true thrashing.
John Leibundguth drives for the Quick Silver Destruction Co. and prefers a specific model. “Ford LTDs made between 1970 and 1974. The 1973 had an especially strong front end,” he said.
Common sense would tell you there’s a limited supply of Fords from the 1970s. If your team destroys 12 cars per night and there’s usually four events per season, you’ll need a minimum of 48 old bombs for one year of racing. Multiply that by eight teams and the obvious question arises: Where will you find 384 beater Fords every year?
“Pretty much anywhere,” laughs Tracy Parrotte, a former Quick Silver driver whose father, Jack Parrotte, raced for the original Mean Green Machine. Parrotte helps out Leibundguth, whose dad Hal drove team demolition competitions in the 1970s, and Leibundguth’s teammate, Chris McGuire, whose old man was James “Pudgy” McGuire of the original Pink Panthers demolition team.
“You spot ’em in back yards and behind gas stations,” said Parrotte. “Some guys’ll drive down to Texas and around the south looking for cars. We like to get ’em free if we can, or pay only $150 or $300. You don’t ever want to pay more than $500 for a car. That would make no sense.”
“You don’t want a GM product, either,” added Millette Sr. “We run dry engines without radiators, and the GMs get too hot, too quick. I stick with the big block 460s if I can, and the first thing I do is take out the dashboard. You take a good head-on hit … and that dashboard’ll come right back at you!”
Millette mentioned running Fords without radiators or coolant, or with a “dry block,” as the racers say. Gas tanks also are disconnected and drained, and gas is stored in small marine tanks in the rear seat, where they’re less likely take a direct hit. Other modifications include hiked-up front ends and a two-battery arrangement that gives the driver a second shot if his first power source fails.
“Setting up cars means putting in marine tanks and batteries and tuning the engines a little,” said Leibundguth. “Your main worry is the engine and transmission. Are they gonna last through the race?”
Jan Gabriel says team demolition derby competitions could rival Monster Trucks in popularity if a national TV network or cable operation got behind the sport with a firm push. Team demolition derby has all the action and colorful characters of Monster Trucks and the World Wrestling Federation.
“Get ready to trash, smash and crash!” he growls. “First-timer Stranglehold moves into the finals against those oooooold stalwarts, the Locomotives. They’ve been around . . . for yeaaaars!!! We’re talking Dennis `the Menace’ Ryan, Sneaky Pete Ryan, Minor Dave [Janin] and Phil Ledder. Give ’em a Route 66 hand! They’re going for an undefeated season!” (The Locomotives have a strutting major domo who waves his arms and barks orders.)
The audience takes sides.
Everyone loves an underdog, and Stranglehold seems to have most of the applause.
The green flag drops, and, as you might guess, the Locomotives make liverwurst of Stranglehold. Their winning purse is $5,000, with another $21,000 split among the other seven teams, according to finish.
Millette Sr., back in the pits, drinking a beer with the other Damage Inc. drivers and their families, smiles his wolfy smile and insists, “I usually hit what I aim at. I like rear tires–I like to rip them up!”
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Team demolition derby typically runs from May to August at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet. This year’s last event is Saturday.
