Family weaves love of cars through generations

Goffstown Editor — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:02:00 GMT

BY MICHELLE KIM

Stepping into the shop of Sassy Racing Engines, located right next to the Sugar Hill Speedway, is a bit like stepping into Dr. Frankenstein’s lair.

The walls drip with colorful photos, and parts of powerful engines lay around like organs ready for transplant.

But you won’t find any lightning or mad cackling scientists here. Just the engineering creativity and hard work of father and son team John and Brian Knox, who specialize in making custombuilt supercharged Chrysler 426 Hemi engines for the small but growing world of competitive truck and tractor pulling, along with drag racing and monster trucks.

Competitive pulling involves seeing how far a tractor or truck can pull a sled loaded with 5,000 to 50,000 pound weights that move toward the front of the sled as it’s pulled, creating more drag that eventually stops the sled.

The sport is most popular in the Midwest, but has a growing following outside of the United States in European countries like Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, said Brian.

The Knoxes first began entering tractor pulling in 1979 with a single-engine 1,200-horsepower tractor with a Massey-Ferguson body named the “Sassy Massey.” It started as a consolation project for Brian Knox, who was disappointed when his parents decided to stop competing in funny car races.

Since then, the Knoxes had gone into building engines and competing full time in 1990, when John Knox sold off his interest in a farm equipment business.

Brian gave up competing in 1998 to devote more time to building engines for their customers to keep up with demand. They had $1.6 million in sales last year and sold about 40 engines. At many pulling competitions, about half the competitors will have a Sassy engine, said Brian.

Brian’s recent creation, “Show No Mercy,” for customer Bruce Slagh, won this year’s the national tractor pulling championships in Bowling Green, Ohio, with five engines with 10,000 horsepower.

John Knox, 62, has worked with Chrysler 426 Hemi engines for 40 years since his drag and funny car racing days in the the 1960s and ’70s.

He caught the racing bug as a young man working for his father in the family farm equipment business. At that time, during the 1960s, the Detroit auto companies were coming out with more powerful cars that appealed to the young, Baby Boomer generation.

“A lot of us farm boys said, ‘That’s pretty cool. Better than baling hay,’” said John.

When the dragway opened in the motorsports park in Loudon, he decided that if he was going to do drag racing, he was going to do it properly and invested in a Plymouth Belvedere with a Chrysler 426 Hemi engine. Not that his father exactly understood what he was trying to do when he saw John and his friends working on the car.

“Dad walked in and flipped out. ‘What are you, stupid or something? Taking apart a perfectly good engine!’” said John.

John and Rodalyn, high school sweethearts at the old Weare High School, began entering drag racing competitions, and later on, funny racing competitions, in the Northeast. They would often leave on Friday, driving and working throughout the night to attend multiple races on the weekend, and arrive back on Monday morning to a full, regular work week.

“I tell people, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’” said Rodalyn, with a laugh. “It was just the age I was in the time I was in. I was really confident at what I was doing.”

Rodalyn initially competed in the women’s events only, but when John noticed her times were faster than his, she became the primary driver.

“She was so good,” said her husband. “These old cars, boy, they were handfuls.”

Her son observed that the best drivers often are the ones with less mechanical knowledge. “They have better focus,” said Brian.

As one of the few women drivers in that era, Rodalyn faced much scrutiny. She had to overcome family concerns, being a young mother in a dangerous sport, as well as professional prejudices.

When she got her drag racing license, she had to qualify for a higher level in order to compete at the level below, while many of the male drivers never even had to get a license.

“It made me pretty mad, at the time, I’ll tell you. But that’s the way it was,” she said.

“Rodalyn had talent and marketability, being a lady driver,” said John. “She was very important to our success in business indirectly because of her talents.”

She competed from 1968 until 1979, when the demands of the growing business and family became too much. She returned to competing at tractor pulls on the Sassy Massey from 1990 to 1998, winning three national championships, after which Sassy Engines devoted itself to making engines only.

The Knoxes have already started training the next generation of “gearheads,” with Brian’s cousin, Gary Trehan, 15, a sophomore at John Stark Regional High School, learning and working part time at the shop. Brian points out that what they do at the shop can’t be learned at a school or in a book.

John Knox is proud of what he and his family has accomplished and said that if he had to do it all over again, he would.

“I’ve got a serious bunch of pride in memories of what my wife did and then my son. A lot of people go through all their lives and retire and hate what they’ve done,” he said. “We do what we want to do and make a living doing it.”

Weare News : competitive truck and tractor pulling

Family weaves love of cars through generations