Big Chief’s CROWMOD @ Lights Out 7

Big Chief’s new Crowmod wasn’t just a replacement for his wrecked LeMans – it was a full rebuild around a twin-turbo Pontiac engine that survived that crash, wrapped in a lighter 1968 Firebird body. Taking it straight to Lights Out meant getting a brand-new combination race-ready under serious time pressure. Here’s the story behind one of drag radial racing’s most recognizable Pontiacs.

When Big Chief showed up to one of drag radial racing’s biggest showdowns with a brand-new car, most of the paddock had no idea what they were actually looking at. The Crowmod wasn’t just a fresh coat of paint on his old ride — it replaced a car he’d wrecked on camera, and it arrived built specifically to erase every weakness that wreck exposed. Underneath a Pontiac Firebird body sat an engine combination that had already survived one violent crash and come out the other side still making serious power. Getting a car this new and this radical race-ready for a marquee event in a short window is no small feat. What did it actually take to get the Crowmod ready to fight at Lights Out?

Built From the Wreckage of Its Predecessor

Justin ‘Big Chief’ Shearer’s previous car, a 1972 Pontiac LeMans nicknamed ‘The Crow,’ got wrecked hard enough during filming that it needed a full replacement — but rather than just repair the old car, his team built something lighter and sharper from the ground up. The new car, wrapped in a 1968 Pontiac Firebird body and built by Terry Murphy, came in a full thousand pounds lighter than the LeMans it replaced.

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The Engine That Survived the Crash

The heart of the combination, though, wasn’t new at all: the Butler Performance-built Pontiac engine, packing twin turbochargers, had actually survived the LeMans crash intact and got transplanted straight into the new chassis.

A Pontiac V8 Doing Real Damage in a Sea of Chevys

Running a Pontiac-based combination in a scene dominated by small-block Chevy power is its own kind of statement, and the Crowmod backed it up — Shearer drove it to the number-one spot on Oklahoma City’s 405 Top 10 list, ran it into the threes in Radial versus The World competition, and even brought it to the NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis to run Pro Modified against purpose-built cars that never see a street. Getting a car with that much new engineering ready to race at an event as big as Lights Out, on a timeline that short, is exactly the kind of pressure that separates a serious team from a hobbyist one.

The Show Behind the Car

Street Outlaws built its audience by filming grudge racing on public roads rather than a sanctioned drag strip, and that no-prep format — racing on street pavement with minimal or no traction compound applied — puts a premium on cars that can put power down without the benefit of a perfectly prepared racing surface. It is a fundamentally different engineering challenge than building for a prepped eighth-mile track, and it rewards chassis setups and tire management that translate directly to what a car like the Crowmod has to survive.

The Chassis Builder Behind the New Car

Terry Murphy has built a reputation in the radial-tire and no-prep racing scene as a go-to fabricator for cars that need to survive repeated violent launches on inconsistent surfaces, and getting tapped to build Big Chief’s replacement car after a highly publicized on-camera wreck says as much about Murphy’s standing in the sport as it does about the car itself. A chassis builder’s name attached to a car in this scene often matters as much to fans as the engine combination underneath it.

Big Chief’s Role Beyond the Driver’s Seat

Justin Shearer built his profile on the show as the captain of the 405 street racing crew out of Oklahoma City, which means the Crowmod’s on-track performance carries weight beyond his own results — it reflects on the whole crew’s reputation in a scene where team rivalries and grudge matches are as much a part of the draw as any single quarter-mile time. That added pressure is part of why getting the car race-ready on a tight timeline mattered so much before a marquee event like Lights Out.

Turbos in a Field Full of Superchargers and Nitrous

Twin-turbo combinations remain a minority choice in radial-tire drag racing compared to centrifugal superchargers and nitrous-assisted setups, largely because turbo systems can be trickier to tune for consistent spool-up on a short track, but they also offer a broader powerband and less abrupt power delivery once dialed in correctly. A turbocharged Pontiac combination running competitively against a field dominated by small-block Chevy power, whichever forced-induction method those cars use, stands out for exactly that reason.

Why Fans Follow the Build, Not Just the Race

Part of what keeps an audience invested in a car like the Crowmod is watching the entire arc — the wreck, the rebuild, the first pass, the eventual results — rather than just tuning in for race day itself. That serialized storytelling is a big part of why grudge racing shows built their following in the first place, turning individual cars into recurring characters that fans root for across an entire season rather than a single event.

The Rivalries That Give These Races Their Edge

Street Outlaws built much of its drama around long-running rivalries between individual racers and entire crews, where a loss on camera can follow a driver for seasons afterward regardless of how many wins pile up in between. Bringing a brand-new, unproven car like the Crowmod into that environment raises the stakes considerably, since a poor showing at a high-profile event risks becoming just as much a storyline as a strong one would.

Why Turbo Spool Matters More on Radial Tires

Managing turbo lag becomes especially tricky on radial-tire equipment, where the tire’s relatively narrow contact patch compared to a dedicated slick can only handle a certain rate of power coming on before it simply breaks traction. Tuners building twin-turbo combinations for this kind of racing spend as much time dialing in boost curves to match the tire’s grip window as they do chasing peak horsepower numbers, which is exactly the kind of fine-tuning a new chassis and engine combination needs before it can be trusted at a marquee event. Getting that balance wrong on a car this new, in front of a national audience, was exactly the risk Big Chief’s team had to manage under a tight deadline.

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