For the past 20 seasons, Bruce Allen has steered R-M’s entries, racking up 16 NHRA national event wins along the way. After an on-again, off-again 2005 campaign, Allen and Kenny Koretsky were involved in a spectacular and terrifying high-speed crash that destroyed both of their cars last October at Las Vegas. Fortunately, both drivers escaped with relatively minor injuries, but R-M’s season was over. In addition to running R-M Racing Engines, Reher pens the popular “Technically Speaking” column for National Dragster and conducts a highly lauded race engine school several times each year at his Arlington, TX-based shop. DRO recently caught up with Reher, 55, at the R-M shop and asked him about his team’s future, the progress of Pro Stock, rules making, and what it will take to sustain interest in the class. |
By Ian Tocher, Photos by Ian Tocher
and courtsey Reher-Morrison
2/8/06
First, how is Bruce Allen’s recovery coming along?
REHER: Actually, he’s doing quite
well. As you know he injured his hand and had to have some skin grafts,
but they’ve come along very well. He’s in the shop every day,
he works as a machinist, he's a partner in the business, and when he does
machine work he’s at the point now of not even having to wear a
glove on it. So it’s coming along well.
What
about the team? Will you be racing with Bruce as your driver again this
year?
REHER: I’d have to say it’s
tentative, but more than likely we’re not going to be out there
this year.
Is
it a sponsorship problem that’ll keep you away?
REHER: Well, it’s a combination
of a lot of things. I guess you could say that somewhat, but it’s
just kind of the way things are going. You know, there’s not really
sponsorships out there in Pro Stock that will cover the cost of running
something. But I was going to say that we didn’t make the decision
based on having the accident. As you probably noticed, we didn’t
make the summer swing [last year] and we had skipped some races before
that, which we had never done. It’s a combination of the times catching
up with us.
Pro Stock itself has just escalated to the extent that there are just a few teams that have sufficient outside sources and it’s turned into a deal where it’s everybody’s full-time job on these 10-, 12-, 15-member teams and we came from an era where we raced because it was a passionate thing and we raced from within. We never really had outside income, Reher-Morrison Racing Engines has always basically been self-sufficient and we’re just simply not a large enough operation to sustain the escalation that has gone through in the last three to five years—which has been quite remarkable. I never thought I’d see the cost of doing it go up so rapidly. It just went for years and years at something fairly parallel to inflation, but it basically just took off.