The original McGee drag racing engine concept was radical and sweeping.
“Phil proposed to dad and me that we build what was originally intended to be a one-piece crankcase with two 270 cube Offy speedcar blocks as a V8,” Chris McGee explains. “But the more we got into researching it, it became obvious that there was far superior technology, with valve angles and chamber designs, in Indianapolis and F1 engines, so it all changed. Had Phil proposed the idea of a whole engine I doubt that it would have happened, but the smaller project grew into a big project.”
The core idea for the V8 with a girdle was to contain a Chrysler 426 billet steel crank. This latter seems presciently significant, with Phil explaining in a 1974 interview that it had been chosen for a simple reason: “We thought the Americans may have thrown up some rules to block us if we looked like succeeding over there – dragster power units are supposed to be based on auto engines – so we built it around a production crankshaft.”
“We had consulted the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association, by far the largest drag racing sanctioning body in the USA) before we went too far,” Phil recollects today, “and basically it was agreed that as long as it used a Chrysler crank that it would be considered just a modified form of that production engine. The NHRA loved it and gave it a really good write-up in their National Dragster magazine. We didn’t even have an engine running at the time.
“Steve Gibbs (NHRA director of competition) gave us the green light in 1974. He is a straight-up guy who you could look in the eye and shake his hand and you knew you didn’t need contracts. But as time progressed, different people entered the NHRA, and as the self-described stewards of drag racing they wanted to make sure that it was a good economical deal for all race teams. It had to be commercially available to everyone, not something built just for yourself. The NHRA is an association, so a lot of anti-trust stuff doesn’t apply
