2007 Nitto Tire King of the Street - Battle For The Throne

'97 Cobra
Holt, MO
Horsepower: 5
Ride and Drive: 6
Engineering: 7
Drag Race: 8
Fit and Finish: 6
Popular Vote: 3
Total Score: 32.55

We weren't able to see Tommy Kreisler's '97 Cobra in person prior to the Nitto Tire KOTS, but the Huber Performance camp reported the car might not be the nicest because Tommy really drives it. We almost didn't see the Cobra at all. Just prior to the KOTS, Tommy piloted the car on Hot Rod magazine's Drag Week. He had a respectable showing there, so he thought the drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky, from his Holt, Missouri, hometown would also be without incident. Tommy was way wrong, though. He had a serious fuel delivery problem all the way to Bowling Green. At various mile intervals, the car would just shut off, but Tommy and his brother Paul Whalen kept working on it, and they were able to get the Cobra to the event.

Once at the event, we realized Tommy's Cobra was longer in the tooth when compared to other KOTS contestants. What do you expect from a car bought as a repo? Evidently, the previous owner was unable to get the car running to a satisfactory degree, so he let it go. Tommy snapped it up, figured out the problem, and he's kept his foot in the water pump ever since. He says the Cobra was used by Precision Turbo to prototype its 76mm single turbo kit, and that it had previously made 800 hp to the tires at a higher boost level. For Drag Week, Tommy put 1,600 miles on the car and knocked down an astonishing 23 mpg while running a best of 11.0 at 139 mph.

However, at the KOTS Tommy's Cobra made a corrected 690 hp, and ran a best of 11.12 at 139 mph. His horsepower number left Tommy in the middle of the pack for that category, but his quarter-mile numbers left him in Third Place in the Drag Race category. Editor Turner gave Tommy's Cobra a 6 in the Fit and Finish category while Tech Editor Jones gave the Cobra a 7 in Engineering. For the popular vote, it seemed Tommy had few friends in the NMRA World Finals audience as he scored near the bottom of that category.

For the Ride and Drive portion, our notes pointed out that even though Tommy's Cobra resembled a stocker, the car was really fast, as evidenced by his trap speed. However, the A/C "kinda" worked, and the car didn't like going over bumps at all. Since Tommy drove the car to Bowling Green, everything was in the trunk of the car Drag Week-style, which meant every hard bump jarred something else loose. Our notes say that the car "made a lot of racket." That means it wasn't so nice to drive around, and the rigged-up electric fan switch did nothing but add to its poor Ride and Drive showing. In the end, Tommy's Cobra earned a 6 in the Ride and Drive segment, which hampered his total score. Tommy would like to thank MC Racing, Centerforce, Huber Performance, Scott Clark, and especially his brother Paul Whalen for his help on the car.