Forget basic footbrake bracket racing. “When I got this car, I found out real quick that you can’t see out of it. I’d forgotten that part. So I decided to make it strictly a drag car,” he says. Not ANY drag car, but a gasser right out of the 1960s, just like the ones he saw at the Bowling Green NHRA reunion.

So when he got home, he took some measurements and realized that it wouldn’t be that big a deal to change the ‘41 over to a straight axle car, “up in the front and up in the rear. But if I did that, I had to have more horsepower. A weeny 350 wouldn’t make it. So I built it and put in a killer small-block and now it runs in the 9’s,” McLendon says.

Surprisingly, the Willys would make a perfect Super Gasser/Hot Rod --- it has run a best of 9.79 at 135 mph, weighing in at 2,300 pounds, with the weight just about evenly distributed between front and back.

It took about three months of working ‘till midnight to get the gasser going. He cut the Mustang II front end out, used a Speedway Motors (Lincoln, Nebraska ) straight front-axle kit with early Ford spindles and Wilwood disc brakes and built a new subframe for it, found a used Vega steering box for steering and changed the old column to angle it more at an upright stance. He kept the original ladder bar but raised it up about four inches, and also included the original the 9-inch Ford rear end, for strength at launch and speed.

McLendon’s 355-inch small-block Chevy engine, complete with 6-71BDS blower and new Hilborn four-port  injector with scoop, would probably put the Willys in the old C/Gas Supercharged class, but it fits nicely into the reunion’s F/Nostalgia Gas with its 10.10 quarter-mile index. The motor’s “good stuff” includes a Callies crank and Manley rods, an o-ringed block with copper head gaskets, Brodix Track 1 heads and a Sig Erson camshaft ground specifically for the blower. Gauges are Auto Meter. A CRT (Clearwater, FL) TH-400 three-speed with B&M 4,000-stall converter backs everything up. Best ET is 9.79 at 136 mph at Gainesville Raceway, McLendon’s home track. “And that wasn’t really a bad-ass run either,” he says. “I had a transmission going away and didn’t realize it. I think it has more.”

Keepin’ on with the old gasser look, Larry got a pair of Rodlite/Weld wheels that were offset to the outside, then mounted some 13-by-31-inch Mickey Thompson slicks that pooch out just a tad beyond the rear fenders, just like in the old days. He kept the red paint, but had “Midnight Oil Garage” lettered onto its sides. By now, you can figure out why the moniker “Midnight Oil Garage.” “That was the only time I had to build it, from dinner ‘til midnight,” McLendon says.

Competition Engineering wheelie bars are a must. “When I first ran it, the Willys stood straight up,” he says. At the 2005 Hot Rod Reunion, he lost first round against a ’55 T-Bird gasser in the F/Nostalgia Gas class, losing by one-and-a-half thousandths of a second. “I had to back the engine down from the 9.60 class to make the 10.10 class, and I broke out by just that much,” McLendon says.

Larry’s wife Shirley likes the Willys so much she had shirts made up with “Midnight Oil Garage” printed on the front and the coupe blasting out of an old garage on the back.

“Absolutely it’s a gasser,” McLendon says. “And I’ll keep it on gasoline, not alcohol. Some of these gasser clubs are real particular about that. And besides, it runs great on gasoline.” That’s why it’s a true gasser.