BITTEN BY THE BUG —
ALCOHOL-FUELLED BEETLE
Being a farm boy all his life, John ‘JD’ Shepherd never really knew much about cars. This all changed at the young and impressionable age of 17, when his brother-in-law took him on a “mystery trip” to the Hawke’s Bay and a place called ‘Thunderpark’. It was here that John got bitten by the drag racing bug bad — really, really bad! John says that it was a day that, “Would change my life forever, as it did for a lot of us experiencing Thunderpark for the first time”, during the golden days of drag racing in New Zealand. It also happened to be the year that ‘The Phoenix’ and ‘LA Hooker’ from the US were touring the country. What a year to pop your drag racing cherry!
A couple of years later, in the early ’80s, a 19-yearold John, with a spring in his step and a sparkle in his eye, returned to the hallowed turf in the Bay for another hit of the drag racing drug. Wellington legend Russ Clarke was campaigning his V8powered Volkswagen at the time. John witnessed one of his wild, lurching, out-of-control passes down the quarter-mile and thought, I gotta get me one of these. So, in 1984, he purchased Volkswagen number one, and, over the next couple of years, set about building his own street-legal V8 Bug that he in turn would take to the drags to, “see how fast it was”. Things were OK for a short while, but, as is often the case, John yearned for more excitement, more speed, and lower ETs. Over time, the VW went from a 13-second street car to a record-setting 9.9-second competition car.
In 1990, JD’s days of racing the rapid VW would come to a spectacular end. During one pass, at around half-track, he crossed the centre line in the out-of-control Bug and bounced off the wall in the opposite lane, causing substantial damage to the front of the car. At that point, John decided it was time to get something a little less street car and a lot more race car.
The ex–Neil Robertson Fiat Topolino was purchased, and, with the 350ci Chev out of the VW installed upfront, John was back racing again. For the next two seasons he was a regular sight at the drag strip, mostly sideways and on the edge of out of control. He says he got told off too many times to remember for violating the centre line and eventually sold the car to Jenny Pederson and Malcolm Murray, who would campaign it in Super Gas.
After a brief lay off due to health issues, John’s right foot got itchy again and he decided he wanted to race at the annual Nostalgia Drags. Sadly, however, he was given the bad news that the VW didn’t meet the criteria. This minor setback didn’t hold him back for long however; not wanting to miss out, John sat down in front of the computer screen during the long winter months and discovered RacingJunk.com and was introduced to a front-engine dragster (FED) called ‘Hellrazor’.
Eight months later, the 1968-vintage, alcoholconsuming, blown-Hemi-powered digger arrived in New Zealand. There was a small problem, though: John had absolutely no idea about anything supercharged, Hemi’d, or FED’d!
But word spread fast and fellow racer Raymond Smyth gave him a call to offer some advice. John says, “His love and knowledge on early Hemi motors was better than searching Google — even to this day, whenever we head to Meremere, he is always there to help.”
JD and his hard-working crew got the car running and eventually laid down a 7.2-second pass at 187mph. This wasn’t enough, though, so a new supercharger was bought in the quest for a 200mph pass. Sadly, the old chassis just wasn’t up to the task, causing all sorts of issues along the way, such as broken parts and severe tyre shake, even knocking John unconscious and giving him concussion, making for a very long, painful,
expensive, and somewhat frustrating journey. So, the hunt was on for a better chassis.
John’s second FED, ‘Backdraft’, arrived a couple of years later. The car was supposed to be a rolling chassis to put the blown Hemi from Hellrazor into, but John, being John, couldn’t help himself and bought it complete with another blown Hemi already between the frame rails. The chassis was also much newer. The 1999-built dragster would be a perfect tool to propel him towards that muchwanted 200mph timeslip. To date, with Backdraft, John has won the 50th New Zealand Nationals in 2018 and the Outlaw 71 series in 2019, and, putting the cherry on top of the cake, it has given him his first 200mph timeslip. “It drives like a dream, it’s probably my favourite car,” he says.
Moving along with the story, one day, out of the blue, Raymond Smyth gave John a call informing him that “there was a Hemi for sale”. Les Herst was selling the engine out of the legendary Phoenix, the very car John had first been introduced to and fallen in love with all those years ago at Thunderpark — he had to have it. After some lengthy discussions, a deal was put together. Not only did John buy the engine, he also bought the whole damn car! The legend went straight to Paralax Race Cars for Grant Downing to piece together a new chassis, and it will again pound the drag strip when the time is right.
You’d think that an already impressive line-up of race cars in the shed would be enough to satisfy him, but no, not for JD. That’s where his latest purchase enters the fray, the “based-on-a-1959VW-Beetle” supercharged outlaw was purchased complete in 2019.
At the end of the inaugural season of the Outlaw 71 series, in which he had raced Backdraft, John noticed that, although the field was mixed and varied, there were already four FEDs racing. He was floating around online again one night and saw that there was a car in Aussie for sale, one that he had first laid eyes on 17 years ago. He felt this one would be ideal to race and would add a bit of variety to the bracket and for the crowd.
JD is not like everyone else, he’s wired a bit differently, and anyone who knows him can tell you more than one no-sleep-for-days stories to make a race meeting. The latest all-nighter he pulled was the night before the photos for our shoot were taken. John finally finished putting the
diff back in the car at 5am to make it mobile for us — er, thanks! John freely admits that he’s terrible with deadlines but has no problem working through the night to get stuff finished. There’s a fine line between dedication and madness, JD!
The car was previously raced in Australia and wore the name ‘Nasty Bug’. The previous owner had run a best of 6.90 seconds at 197mph, so the potential was there to run some rapid passes once John got to grips with the short-wheelbase car. Midway through the year, courtesy of Paul Stitchbury at CFR Line, John’s new toy arrived. On its arrival, it was dissected and got a good seeing to and a bit of a makeover before hitting the strip on this side of the ditch. The 14-71 Mooneyham–supercharged 510ci big block Chev was pulled apart by Phil Blumont of Palmerston North Engine Rebuilders. The Merlin block was filled up with all the fruit — Crower crank, GRP rods, and CP Pistons, and these were found to be in excellent shape, as were the Pro Topline heads, Yella Terra roller rockers, and Comp Cams camshaft. While the engine was in capable hands, the driveline was thoroughly inspected and found to be in as good a shape as the engine — but you’d expect nothing less from the set-up.
That set-up includes a manually shifted Reid Racing Powerglide, super-short custom driveshaft, braced nine-inch diff filled with Harrop Engineering alloy centre, Mark Williams floating hubs, and 40-spline gun-drilled axles. Clearly some money had been
spent on this car, and John couldn’t have been happier with his purchase. Now called ‘Biohazard’, the Bug hit the strip once John and crew had given it a clean bill of health. On its first outing at Masterton Motorplex (MMP), delays and rain limited them to only three shakedown passes. The limited data gathered were enough to indicate that the car had good potential but needed a little bit of tweaking to achieve the numbers John was looking for. Into the trailer and up to Grant Downing the Bug went to rub shoulders with The Phoenix. New wheelie bars and a much needed chassis set-up later, Biohazard was back to run some real numbers. Meeting number two netted mixed results: electrical gremlins plagued the team, but, once these were sorted, the car managed to reel off a high seven-second pass — they were on the right track.
Yearning for more seat time, Team Biohazard, consisting of John, Phil Blumont, Andrew Carol, and Brittany McVeigh, loaded the trailer and headed north to Meremere. The car ran flawlessly and nailed an easy 7.5-second pass before transmission failure ended their day early.
With the trans all fixed it was back to MMP. Sadly, things didn’t go to plan here either. In eerily similar fashion to all those years before, John found himself in an out-of-control Volkswagen at halftrack. The Bug snapped sideways at the transition point and turned hard left, arrowing towards the concrete wall. Thankfully, this time, the impact was nowhere near as severe as the 1990 crash. However, even though it was just a relatively gentle brush with the wall, there was still a bit of damage. Squashed headers, a couple of bent rims, a bit of rear-end damage, and some pretty bad bumps and bruises to the bodywork, made the decision easier for John to park the car for the rest of the season. The VW was stripped once again and inspected to see what had caused the latest indiscretion and to check for any parts failures. Thankfully, none was found. Grant Downing repaired the damaged diff, Rimrite Alloys in Palmy straightened the wheels, and a new set of slicks and frontrunners was purchased just as a precaution. At this point, it was decided to bring the car up to the ‘show car’ standard of the rest of John’s fleet of race cars. Advanced Panel and Paint repaired the scrapes and grazes that the concrete had inflicted on the fibreglass bodywork. Once it was all glued and sellotaped back together, Dion Crook at Dzine Signs repainted the shell and front clip in