Mark Deacon's "Red Rider Two" ghia

[Brian Watts]

What ever happened to this car? It only ran a few times that I am aware of.

Anyone know the story or what happened to it? It was a huge story while being built and caused allot of interest with twin engines turbocharged!



I had heard he burned bridges and owed money to allot of people but don't know that?

But I never saw him at a race or in the magazine after that so........

[axm48ida]

I saw it run......Mark lived in Santa Cruz area for a while, then moved back to the islands
He was out here in Northern ca last summer.
 Last I heard the car was in Colorado area.....someone put a smblk cheby in it.
 The single engine chassis was a neat car, I never cared for the twin engine set up

[werksberg]

To test this twin engine I was told he would chain it to steel posts (in Santa Cruz) and water under the tires to run it ti figure out how to stop it shotting ducks down the strip... he never did figure it out....

[LittleGiantKiller]

                                                                                                                                                                                                               Never could  figuer out what the big #1 stood for. 

[Tom Simon]

According to a couple of my Salinas friends, the guys at Volks Cafe in Santa Cruz still have some of the engine parts, and the story (I've heard it but only remmber some of it)  The guy you want to talk to Brian, is Greg "big air" McNair

[Brian Watts]

I'LL TRY HIM ,THANKS

[oghawaiian67]

I used to work with Mark Deacon in Hawaii where he started the red rider ghia.
All steel convertible no top just a button down tonneau cover.
first it was run with an old tired 1900 48Ida motor with centerlines all the way around.that combo ran at Hawaii Raceway Track at around 13.0.
Then he kept building up different combos and kept going faster!...mid 11's by now.
year was 1982. He heard about Dave Kawell (KRE) called him up and he became Daves phone buddy. Dave sold him on his turbo setup for his customers at Marks shop in Kailua,Oahu (Auto Enthusists) and it was a success! 1776 turbo carb set up (sidedraft 45) it ran high 12's in a full bodied 67 bug 1st pass! so Mark kept building turbo setups with his bulletproof transmissions that he had a reputation for.Finally saved up enough money for a Kawell turbo injected setup and built a 78x90(1985cc motor) with Pele bug heads by Bob Simpson (another vw guru machinist) and a great guy! the car ran 10.07 first pass! then started to dip into the high 9's and then on to beat Bob Mclure record(he was the first bug in the 9's(1978)with a 1700cc (crazy ha)and sad that he passed on in an airplane that he turbocharged! well Mark finally beat his record to (9.03) @154 mph..

not bad for a full floorpan vw.

[oghawaiian67]

Mark moved to California to start match racing his cars at different events all over Califonia.The most famous being the 7up willys truck. that race took place at another great track that closed down(Baylands at Freemont Ca.) damn idiots theres still nothing over there! still with his single engine Ghia.He spanked that truck bad!1 for vw's 0 for Hot Rods.lol.
then Mark had this wild idea to make his dream car (Red RiderII) twin engine 1 in front of each other mated at the crank was a sleeve he designed and a distributor that had 8 plugs that ran into 1 shaft(crazy wild thinking again) and it ran the new Scat Enterpises split design heads which he got for putting his car on there site plus all kind of other weird legal problems(thats another story)
the car ran but ran like crap spittting and popping all the way down the track at Baylands Raceway but still managed a 10.00 shutting it down at half track.(thats fast!)
Mark could not figure out why the car ran so crappy until he sold 1 of the engines  to Bear in the big island in hawaii.bear ran the msd setup in his car and it spat and spuddered all the way down.sent msd box back to msd and they sent him back another fixed box. what a pisser. theretically speaking that car should have ran in the 7's

[cj011]

wtf... A bug did nines in 78. Unreal.  Thats a great story to read.  It's still a shame that Campbell closed. 

[sbc4me]

I used to work with Mark Deacon in Hawaii where he started the red rider ghia.

Who is this? ...

I am the fool that that drove (and almost suffocated in) the anchor vehicle (Blue Transporter Truck "Rover") the night the Red-Rider first broke into the 9s... (9.98 to be exact) ... we later consumed a lot of Pizza & Beer that night!

You are either John? or Ed G.?

You can't be Ed M. or Quinton ... R.I.P.

[Pyrofytr]

Wow. What a blast from the past. I don't know what ever happened to the car. I managed the Bugformance in Santa Cruz when Mark came to California. He leased the building behind us and started work on the car. Part of the rules to the lease was he could not compete with Bugformance for general VW repair. Soon he started just that and was kicked out of the building. He moved in across town at Wright Way Machine. I started working there and watched the car get built. I remember he made his own fiberglas intake manifold which kept popping apart under boost. He did run into some financial issues and the car really never did get developed past a few runs at Baylands.

[axm48ida]

It may be a rumor, but Mark may be coming back to Nocal for the summer??

[disneymike]

Aloha all,
I remember watching Red Rider race at Campbell Industrial Park back in the 80's as well and always wondered what happened to Mark.