DENNIS COULDN’T AFFORD THE CHASSIS, SO HE GAVE IT BACK
Alcohol Epilogue
There is an epilogue to Faye Grant’s Top Alcohol dragster career — for the 1989–’90 season, Denny’s mega-Donovan was installed into a newer and lighter chassis that Garth Hogan had imported from the US and run successfully in Top Fuel. But, due to a hard-to-identify problem, the new car never went as well as the old one. The cause of the lack of performance — identified too late — was that the diameter of the fuel line from the tank to the pump was too big (it was a Top Fuel car, remember) which caused swirling and cavitation. Part way through the season, while Denny and Mike were struggling to sort out the problem with the new car, the failing economy resulting from the Wall Street crash of two years before caught up with Grant Developments and it went under — along with Faye and Dennis’ hopes of buying another house to replace the one they’d sold to fund their racing campaign. Dennis couldn’t afford to pay Garth for the new chassis, so he gave it back, and the Grants — both aged 46 — sadly drew the curtain on their challenging, spectacular, colourful, and ultimately successful drag racing career.
Racing Epilogue
In all the years that Faye was racing, Dennis always had a hankering for circuit racing. So, when the financial trauma of the early ’90s settled a little, the old ’76 Mustang that started it all was pulled out of the shed and the dust was wiped away. The necessary work, such as roll cage, seats, harnesses, and suitable diff gears, was carried out, and, over the course of four years, Faye and Dennis did some circuit racing at Pukekohe and Taupo, with both of them driving, and entered the Targa together twice. While Dennis clicked with circuit racing and tarmac rallying well, Faye took a bit longer to get up to speed. “I took a while to feel confident. All those years of running in a straight line had taken their toll. The old brain wasn’t programmed to go around corners, but, with perseverance and a heap of nervous energy, things came good. Dennis ended up doing most of the driving on the two Targas we did. At times the ‘verbal handbrake’ was stuck on, but I should have had more faith in Denny — he did a wonderful job and got us to third in class on one of them.” In 1999, that, too, came to an end.
Life Epilogue
“I enjoyed the Targas and the circuit racing, but I wasn’t really hooked. My heart wasn’t in it. My heart was still with the years gone past,” Faye admits. Faye is 73 now, living a life that would be quiet by anyone’s standards, let alone by the standards of someone who was once the fastest Top Alcohol pilot in Australasia. She lives in a modest but very nice house built by the old race team of Kerry, Mike, and Dennis, situated on a beautiful bush-clad lifestyle property north of Whangarei, which she shares with Kerry, daughter-in-law Kathryn, and some of her grandchildren. Dennis, her husband of 53 years, died suddenly in 2015 while enjoying a walk around their bush block at the age of 71, and that has been incredibly hard for Faye to cope with. On the plus side, with only a couple of minutes’ walk between the homes, there are plenty of caring family members to keep a close eye on Faye during her — forgive the pun — slower years. She occupies herself these days with volunteer ambulance work, and has something of a reputation as a quick and enthusiastic driver of any ambulance she drives. Some of her colleagues, in their early days of getting to know her, said, “You drive quite fast — are you used to driving like that?” If only they knew who they were talking to! Faye still gets a kick from trying to cut a good light on the streets of Whangarei in her six-cylinder Ford Falcon daily-driver. Nothing’s changed, except for the ET and mph on the timing slip.
There’s a bit more to this story that we simply couldn’t fit into this issue, so check back in next month for the lowdown on Dennis, as well as a few more of Faye’s anecdotes.