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Reigning Stick Shift Nationals champion Mark Charcalla insists on grabbing gears By Van Abernethy
Long before Mark Charcalla parked his 1990 Ford Mustang in the winner ’ s circle at North Carolina ’ s Farmington Dragway after winning the richest stick-shift race in history , he was once a teenager back in 2000 , gazing admirably at this same car , even though the eye-catching Ford was already 10 years old and had more than 300,000 miles on the odometer . Charcalla didn ’ t care that this raspberry red Fox-body Mustang had seemingly seen its better days . He ’ d always wanted one , and he wasn ’ t about to pass up the opportunity . A guy in town owned the car , and it just so happened that he wanted Charcalla ’ s Ford Ranger that he ’ d equipped with a V8 engine . A trade was negotiated , and Charcalla wound up with the worn-out Mustang equipped with a 5.0 engine and factory 5-speed . Fast-forward 22 years and it ’ s safe to say that the trade has served him very well .
Charcalla and his family are lifelong natives of North Bend ,
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Pennsylvania , and have been regulars at Beaver Springs Dragway for decades . While Charcalla couldn ’ t wait to take his new toy to the dragstrip right after he bought it , the Mustang was clearly in need of some TLC . “ The car was pretty much worn out when I got it , so the modifications started immediately ,” he recalls . “ I think initially we swapped rear-end gears and put an exhaust on it .”
Soon afterward , Charcalla rebuilt the engine , installed a different cam , a set of aluminum heads , and a different intake , and swapped carburetors . “ When I first took it to Beaver Springs , it ran like
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14s in the quarter mile and I hardly had a clue how to launch a stick car ,” Charcalla says . “ After watching other people do it and asking questions , I realized I had to feather the throttle – we didn ’ t have line-locks or two-steps in those days .”
Charcalla probably made 10-12 passes that first night at Beaver Springs . “ I finally got the car down in the 13s that night ,” he remembers .
Even though Beaver Springs is his nearest dragstrip at approximately 77 miles away , it ’ s all back roads from rural North Bend and takes every bit of an hour and 45 minutes to get there . The drive was well worth it , though , especially in the early 2000s when Charcalla first got the Mustang . “ Back in those days , there were easily 40-50 streetdriven stick cars that would show up at Beaver Springs on a Friday night ... so many of us , in fact , we had our own stick-shift class that ran on Friday nights .”
The stakes were pretty high , too , as these gear-banging zealots battled it out every Friday for a pizza and $ 5 worth of racing gas . “ Yep , that ’ s what we raced for in those days !” laughs Charcalla .
With every pass in the Mustang , the desire was to go faster , which is only the natural progression in racing . Several decades later , the Mustang still retains the factory look – even the side mirrors are still attached – but the car now
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY VAN ABERNETHY |