By Ro McGonegal
Photos by qtrturn.com
4/17/07
Shafiroff Race Engine & Components is one of the world’s largest purveyors of race and modified street engines. In the hot rodding world it is a household name. What’s it take to make such a lasting impression? Hang out for a few minutes and find out how a you-and-me racer got to the top of the pile.
The last time I’d actually seen Scott Shafiroff I was perched atop a semi-trailer in the parking lot behind his shop sometime in the 70s. It was the middle of winter and bitter cold. I was looking through the viewfinder of my Nikon hoping that the camera wouldn’t stick to my face. Scott was busy arranging two of his cars for a Car Craft cover image, a Mustang II Pro Stocker and some kind of dragster.
We’d put jack stands under the front wheels of each to make it look as if they were doing a wheelie (the offending jack stands, along with the trickery, would be airbrushed away). It was late ’76 or ‘77. Rick Voegelin, California born and bred, was the editor of Car Craft then. Before he was even in the business, Rick had seen Scott’s red GT-3 Camaro run at an AHRA event in Fremont several years previous. Knew he had the magic charm.
When NHRA created Super Modified, Rick and his partner raced a Camaro in that class. Rick celebrated the parallel but championed Scott in the magazine because he was a serious, pragmatic young racer beyond his years and he dominated GT-2 and GT-3 at non-NHRA events. There was also something compelling to the California boy about Shafiroff’s New York state of mind.
Meanwhile the earth kept rotating, Shafiroff paved his own way, progressed, stepped up to much stronger, much faster cars. I got a glimpse of him at Atco one afternoon about 20 years later. He had brought his big-inch nitrous Firebird for a match race. I remember the burnout. It ran a 6-something. He wasn’t driving it.
Last summer I spent time on Long Island and visited Scott. He’s a man in full stride on his second go around (yes, he has an AARP card), a trimmer version with much less hair (sort of like what happened to me). I asked him if he remembered the cover shoot we did in the winter wind. He pointed to a frame on the wall. “Not a day goes by, I don’t think about that afternoon,” he said.
What got you hooked on the car and engine thing?
SS: From the time I was 11 years old, I read every car magazine I could find. I knew every zero-to-60, every quarter-mile, everything book-smart that you could learn without driving. I grew up in the era of the Muscle Car and it was just emerging then. My father was a
Pontiac guy. In those days you upheld your allegiance to the brand and so he always bought Pontiacs. An older friend lived across the street and he had a four-speed Chevelle. I went for a ride and he power shifted it. I’d never experienced anything like it. That was it. I was hooked. Later, I was the local guy that not only tuned ‘em but drove ‘em, too. My love was driving. Building the engine became a necessity. If you wanted to race you had to learn how to build motors and that was my forte. It was always adjusting, fine-tuning and then gettin’ in and driving it faster than anybody else could. In those days driving really counted. It wasn’t just reaction time and judging the finish line. It was about gettin’ the car down the race track with a four-speed. That was the time I grew up in. It molded me. I was a creature of the times.
