In the quest for racing supremacy, creative engineering becomes the tool of the imaginative and certain cars push (and sometimes, exceed) the boundaries of the established rules. You know several race cars from different sanctioning bodies over the years that are infamous because they were engineered to win: the Tyrrell P34, the Chaparral 2J “Fan Car”, or Smokey Yunick’s NASCAR Chevelles, for example. But without any question, the strangest vehicle I’ve ever seen designed from the floor up to bend the rules has to be Kenny Reece’s “3-to-1” super modified. One look will tell you just how strange it is, but the stranger thing is that not only did it work, but it worked pretty damn well.

The reasoning behind the design was simple: Reece wanted to be able to run the second racing line better than most drivers wanted to run the first. By loading up the contact patches of the tires on one side and balancing the frame with a fourth wheel in the center of the car on the left, Reece could lean more of the vehicle’s weight onto the right side with less of a chance of traction loss. A center-mounted drive axle hooked to a quick-change rearend drove the vehicle, with the front and rear-right wheels mounted to A-arm suspension systems. Steering was controlled via the front and rear right-side tires, and power was contributed via a .030 ZL-1 427 Chevrolet engine from a Can-Am racer.

The car was tested at Honda’s TRC facility in Ohio in April, 1979. Reece convinced friend and future racer Tim Richmond to strap into the car and give it a shot. After some impressive short-track blasts, which created enough g-forces to undo Richmond’s helmet, the car was re-geared for a run on the 7.5-mile track. The resulting 200 MPH run proved that the car was stable, with Richmond only complaining about the unnerving feeling of not seeing another front wheel in his line of sight. Reece was lining up to bring the car out to race when Oswego Speedway caught wind of the freakshow and changed some rules. Once Reece learned that Oswego had specified exactly where the four wheels of the car had to be, he realized the game was up. He salvaged the good parts of the car out of the frame and sent the rest through a crusher.