Most of us have come across someone describing a car as being so fast it blew the doors off the car in the next lane. But one drag-prepped Ford Maverick in Texas is so fast it blew its own door off.
The footage comes from the drag-obsessed 1320 Video YouTube channel and was shot at the Yello Belly strip in Dallas, Texas, which is apparently one of the oldest drag strips in the U.S., having been established way back in 1955.
Yello also appears to have a rather 1950s-like attitude to audience safety. Not only are the stands unusually close to the side of the track, but attendees are also allowed to stand mere inches behind the launching cars, whereas other strips ensure you’re kept far away from the action behind barriers.
There’s some pretty wild machinery in 1320’s film, although maybe they should have rebranded as 660 for this episode, as the Yello strip is an eighth-mile (660 ft/201 m) track rather than a full quarter mile. But that’s still enough space for the vehicles to reach some serious speeds, meaning when the 526 cu-in (8.6-liter) Hemi-engined Ford Maverick’s door lets go, it’s sent flying at 90 degrees to the road.
Related: Drag Racing Chevy Camaro Goes Flying, Sticks The Landing In Incredible Feat Of Car Control
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Incredibly, the Maverick isn’t the only car traveling so fast it blows its own door off. Earlier in the video, at the 5 min 25 second mark, a Fox-bodied Mustang also loses its driver’s door, this time just as it crosses the finish line in hot pursuit of a radically-modded fourth-generation Pontiac Firebird. Even more surprisingly, the event organizers are happy to let the Mustang take another run up the strip with a new door made out of… duct tape.
According to the strip’s website, Yello Belly can track its origins to the early 1950s when kids from the Grand Prairie area would race their hot rods on the dried up bed of the Trinity River. Then in 1955 a philanthropic local millionaire who owned the land built a drag strip on the site to give racers somewhere to play where the cops couldn’t bother them.
It’s great to see the site is still going strong almost 70 years later, but we can’t help wishing a few more of the world’s current millionaires would choose to be so generous to the car community.
