Dirt
Wiseco’s Victor Ellinger finds
success with unlikely combination
By Lisa Collier
I
t could be said that Victor Ellinger
didn’t pick the Volvo so much as the Volvo
picked him. Ellinger’s a Mopar guy at heart
and cherishes his ‘70 Duster above many
things in his life, including the ‘80 Volvo Bertone
that, last fall, took him to the biggest win of his
career thus far.
“I happened to be cruising around on Rac-
ing Junk one day and found the Volvo,” Ellinger
told of how his story with the Volvo began. “A
couple weeks went by and it popped up again.
It kept dropping in price,
so at one point we made
a call in to see what the
deal was, because it was
almost too-good-to-be-
true pricing. Being a Car-
penter chassis car, it was a
well-built piece intended
for Top Sportsman racing
originally, capable of going
7.50s. The guy dropped his
price to $7,000 and gave
us two days to go get it. I
figured we could part it out
for what we paid for it. We
wound up getting home
and thought, It’s so ugly
it’s cool. We took it all apart,
painted it, rewired it, went
over the whole car. We weren’t really attached to
it and thought we’d sell it in a couple of years, but
it’s been with us for 10 years now.
“I don’t think it’s going anywhere anymore,”
laughed Ellinger. “The Volvo was by chance, the
black sheep that never left the stable.”
Still, Ellinger is quick to point out he still owns
the Duster he started with at 14, and that it’s a
successful machine as well. And to keep true to
his Chrysler roots, the Volvo is powered by a 440
Chrysler with Trick Flow heads built by Mark
Cook at Badman Racing Engines, comprised
of parts from Cometic Gaskets, Trend Compo-
nents, Comp Cams and Lifters, APD Fuel System,
Pypes Exhaust System, FireCore50, ATI Torque
Converter, and Moser Axles. Ellinger also cred-
its Strange Engineering, Wilwood, Autometer,
Digital Delay, Mickey Thompson Tires, Fleenor
Transmissions, K&R Engineering and Holley with
aiding in the success of his operation.
“It’s a group effort. It’s never just the driver,
never just the car. I have a lot of help from in-
dustry guys. Running a Chrysler’s not as hard
when you have some help from the best in the
industry. There’s a lot of brains behind it to help
make a maybe not-so-common combination like
this work.”
Ellinger’s cars wouldn’t be complete without
pistons built by the company he’s served for the
last decade, Wiseco Piston Company. “I’ve always
used Wiseco pistons and wanted to work for a
company I could believe in. I’ve got to meet a lot
of guys and gals I read about and idolized growing
up. Now I’m helping guys that I used to cut out
pictures of their cars from magazines and hang
on the wall. I’m helping them build their engines
now, which is really cool! It’s been a huge bless-
ing. It’s not too hard to do my job here every day
when you are one of your customers. I’ve got in
my mind what it takes racers to be successful, the
sacrifices they make, like eating peanut butter
and jelly or bologna instead of going to Applebees
after a race. Anything you can do to save money
for the next race – I keep that in mind in my ports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. However, when
time permits, he’ll travel down to an IHRA track,
Thompson Dragway. It was a lifelong goal of his
to win the Summit Super Series Division 3 title.
“I’d been to the semis a bunch of times when
Norwalk held the IHRA Finals, but never won
it,” Ellinger storied. “Then last year I won the
Division 3 Finals at Pittsburgh Raceway and
that qualified me to go to Memphis for the world
championship for IHRA. I was pretty happy with
just winning the Divisional Finals. That was the
goal and all I was really setting out to do. I didn’t
think I would put enough time and effort in to be
a