events

The Das Drag Day
The Notorious Der Autobahn Scrapers Club Celebrated its 10th Anniversary with a Highly Successful Drag Day in Germany. VW Trends Covered this Exceptional Event...

By Stephan Szantai
Photography: Stephan Szantai

After some debate, they elected to hold the event in the neighboring Germany, more specifically in Bitburg, a city renowned for its Bitburger beer! Interestingly enough, Americans came en force to the area during the early '50s, erecting a military airport on the outskirts of town. Up to 12,500 Americans were stationed in Bitburg over the following years. Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, most of our armed forces have left the region; however, the airport remains active on a much smaller scale for civilian use only.

So as to entertain the American troops still located in this part of the country, the airport is converted into a low-key dragstrip known as "Bitburg Motorpark" during some weekends. For a few Euros, everybody and anybody--American G.I. or not--could test his car on a quarter-mile track. Der Autobahn Scrapers opted to use this existing format for their drag day; in other words the get-together was held in conjunction with a regular "Run-What-You-Brung" weekend usually taken over by European sport compacts and V8 muscle cars. As a side note, let's mention that these drag races are organized by an association called 1-on-1 Motorsports, an international group consisting of Germans, Dutch... and Americans! The presence of the latter certainly appealed to many participants in the DAS Drag Day, and numerous times we heard guys telling us, "Hey, we feel like we are in the United States!" The goal of Der Autobahn Scrapers wasn't to attract a large crowd, as the club members' idea of fun being to promote quality rather than quantity. They consequently relied on word of mouth rather than advertising, and in the end, high-performance enthusiasts came along with their Volkswagens from over half-a-dozen countries.

But we are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, so let's back up a bit... Our excellent adventures started on Friday, September 5, when we met Clyde Berg (of Gene Berg Enterprises, Calif.) at the airport in Brussels, Belgium. How did Clyde end up in this part of the world? Well, for the second time his famous ex-drag Bug has changed hands, and the new owner from Luxembourg invited him to race his beloved Sedan in Bitburg! We then went to Pat Stock & Performance--a Belgian VW shop run by a few DAS members--and at about 6pm we left in the company of about 15 Cal Lookers, in tow and not. The caravan arrived at the track three hours later. It was pitch dark, so we had absolutely no idea how the site looked. We would have to wait anxiously until Saturday morning to find out!

Saturday came, and boy, did we love what we saw! The place covers a huge piece of land, and 1-on-1 Motorsports sets the "dragstrip" on one of the airport's taxiways. Since there isn't enough space for a return road, all the cars needed to use the runway to go back to the pits. Now here is the tricky part... Small private planes still land from time to time on this same runway! To avoid any catastrophic crash, racers had therefore to wait at the end of the track, to make sure that no planes were going to hit the ground before driving back to the pit on the runway. The burn-out area proved quite interesting as well. The airport officials don't allow you to warm up the tires on the improvised racetrack, so competitors needed to do their burn outs next to the taxiway, at a 90-degree angle from the line. That's right, they had to make a sharp left turn towards the staging lights once done smoking the tires! Where there is a will, there is a way.

DAS brought along an impressive collection of memorabilia, exhibited under a couple of tents. Their display included various vintage high-performance parts (EMPI, DDS, etc.), in addition to a selection of obscure wheels. While we noticed a few German Look Bugs in the pits, the vast majority of VWs on hand featured Cal Look attributes. Their owners sometime belong to a club whose name sounds like something you would read in the pages of VWTrends back in 1977. How about Der Fieser Luftkuehlers (the mean aircoolers) or Der Benzin Saufers (the gas guzzlers)? On the whole, we were quite surprised and impressed with the quality of the Volkswagens we saw. Check out the pictures and judge for yourself... Let's also mention that DAS made some great dash plaques, inspired by the likes of the old Orange County Bug-Ins.

Although the official name of the event was "Drag Day," it actually spread over a period of two days, with Saturday dedicated to grudge matches, and Sunday to bracket racing--Udo Becker and his 10-second race car won the finals against Pat Deperne of DAS. A handful of street Bugs ran low 12s, and we recognized a few very fast Beetles involved in the German Tuner Test seen in our June 2003 issue. Clyde Berg broke the gearbox of the orange and white racer on Saturday, but after a frantic wrenching session at night with help from the crew of Steve's VW Shop, the vehicle saw more track action on Sunday.

The European high-performance Volkswagen scene gathers a tight-knit group of friends, and this could be witnessed by the couple of "surprise" trophies given by two German clubs to the members of Der Autobahn Scrapers in honor of its tenth anniversary. DAS also presented three killer trophies of their own (inspired by the like of the Orange County Bug-Ins) to their favorite Cal Look VWs. Overall, we would like to thank wholeheartedly Der Autobahn Scrapers for their warm welcome and for this killer weekend, which was blessed with decent weather - it seemed to rain all the time except during the races!