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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n“I actually wasn’t a Dodge owner until 2013,” Nabb explains. After spending two decades as a NASCAR engineer, including a championship run with Brad Keselowski’s team, Nabb was ready for a change of pace from the NASCAR schedule’s Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving grind. That’s when a friend’s invitation to try endurance racing led him down an unexpected path paved with Neons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What started as renting a seat for $800 turned into a $3,000 impulse purchase of an entire racecar and spare parts collection. But this wasn’t just any Neon \u2013 it was a former spec racing car that would become the foundation of Black Magic Motorsports, named as an homage to Nabb’s father’s Hall of Fame powerboat racing career from the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/NotYourAverageNeon_IMG003.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nHowever, the team’s current flagship car is where things get really interesting. At first glance, something feels a bit… off about this particular Neon. As it screams past on track, your brain struggles to process what you’re seeing: It looks like a Neon, but it is different – by about two feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We took 18 inches out of the car,” Nabb reveals as if shortening a car is as normal as changing its oil. The modification wasn’t just for looks \u2013 it was pure engineering brilliance. By shortening the wheelbase, they moved the weight distribution rearward by 4% and shed about 100 pounds, addressing one of the front-wheel-drive platform’s most significant challenges: excessive nose weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result is a 2,000-pound rocket ship powered by a carefully built 2.4L PT Cruiser motor pushing 198 horsepower to the wheels. While that might not sound like much in an era of 700+ horsepower supercars, it’s all about the power-to-weight ratio \u2013 and, more importantly, reliability. The engine is tuned to peak at 6,100 RPM instead of chasing big horsepower at higher RPMs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach has proven successful. In Black Magic’s first race with the shortened Neon, they qualified P2 and ran strong until a transmission issue sidelined them while fighting for the lead. But that’s racing, and the team took it in stride \u2013 they drove back to Charlotte that night, grabbed another transmission, and were back at it the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Black Magic Motorsports stable has grown considerably since that first $3,000 purchase. Between Nabb, his racing partner Skip, and various team members, they’ve accumulated what they estimate to be around eleven Neons. Some are race-ready, some are parts cars, and some are waiting for their chance to be transformed into the next unlikely track weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The racing bug has proven contagious within the team. Nabb’s partner Angie caught it during COVID and now campaigns her own Neon, appropriately dubbed “Princess Sparkle Pony”. While Nabb’s black and red machine showcases his NASCAR-level engineering precision, Angie’s car rocks a rattle-can paint job that makes it visible from space \u2013 and proves you don’t need a perfect paint job to run at the front of the pack.<\/p>\n\n\n Perhaps the most telling testament to the Neon’s capabilities came during a track day when a Porsche instructor in a Cayman couldn’t shake a bone-stock, $1,000 Neon the team uses as a training car. After getting a ride-along with Nabb, the instructor admitted he couldn’t bring himself to drive his own vehicle that hard \u2013 he was afraid he wouldn’t make it home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s the beauty of these builds \u2013 when you’re only a grand or two into a car, you can push it to its absolute limit without fear. “If it gets wrecked really bad, for $1,000 bucks, we’re just going to leave it,” Nabb explains. “We’re going to call the wrecker and say, ‘Hey, just take this car away.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach, combined with serious engineering chops and a dedicated team, has turned Black Magic Motorsports into a force to be reckoned with in grassroots endurance racing. They’re proving that even the most humble economy car can be transformed into a legitimate track weapon with enough ingenuity. Just don’t be surprised if the next time you’re at the track, you get passed by a shortened Neon that looks like it escaped from a Hot Wheels collection. Drew Nabb and Black Magic Motorsports are doing what they do best \u2013 turning the unexpected into the unbeatable.<\/p>\n\n\n When you think of endurance racing, a Dodge Neon probably isn’t the first car that comes to mind. But don’t tell that to Drew Nabb, the mastermind behind Black Magic Motorsports, who’s been turning these humble economy cars into giant-slaying race machines. “I actually wasn’t a Dodge owner until 2013,” Nabb explains. After spending two decades as a NASCAR engineer, including a championship run with Brad Keselowski’s team, Nabb was ready for a change of pace from the NASCAR schedule’s Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving grind. That’s when a friend’s invitation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":83351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2624],"tags":[2957],"class_list":["post-83359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owners-clubs","tag-road-racing"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/NotYourAverageNeon_Feature.jpg","social_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/NotYourAverageNeon_Social.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83563,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83359\/revisions\/83563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/NotYourAverageNeon_IMG004.jpg\")
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