Stephanie & Rose Car
Model:
1964 Beetle
Name:
My grandmother was Rose, my middle name is Rose, my granddaughters are Rose. “Every Rose Has Her Thorns,” because they say I’m a little spicy. And I got some thorns.
Color:
White with red-rose wrap.
Mileage:
No odometer.
Motors:
We have had a few different motors over the years—we try to make them last as long as possible. Faster is always better, so in this case, the bigger the better.
Owned since:
2002
Owners:
At least three: The guy who chopped the top and sold it to my brother in 1992; my brother sold it to me in 2002.
Location:
California
Favorite driving song:
Sometimes when I win a round, I sing to myself “Another One Bites the Dust” all the way back to the ticket booth.
I grew up on the track. My dad races, and my brother and I were dragged out to the track as little kids. I can’t ever remember not wanting to race. It was always a thing. I’m like, Man, this sucks just sitting here watching these races. I can’t wait to get in that car and go down the track.
When we became teens, my dad started teaching us how to drive. We’d drive in the fields, drive everywhere. Then we started coming out to the track and driving. When I was in high school, I had a ’70 Bug. I would come out to the Wednesday-night high school drags and give kids a run for their money. I got second place in the Point Serious, even though I had only raced for half a year. I raced my first Bugorama in 1992 in the Street and Hobby Class. I continued to do very well in the Street class year after year.
Winning feels pretty darn good. I hate losing. So even second place to me is just a loss.
Then I bought Rose Car from my brother in 2002 and started moving up the classes as we added more power to the car. I was known for being a great racer who killed the competition right off the lights with my consistent .004 to .039 reaction times.
Rose Car is mostly a ’64 Bug. My brother purchased it in 1992 from somebody who had chopped and topped her. It was a fully automatic car at the time and ran pretty consistently. He raced it and did pretty well. When he was done with racing and sold it to me, he kept coming out to the events and supported us—he was our pit crew. He tragically passed away in 2015. We think about him all the time.
At the time, I was thinking about getting something faster because we could only get it to go so fast with an automatic, and we kept blowing transmissions. It was getting pretty costly. So we decided to gut it out and put in a manual transmission, plus a bigger engine. A standard Beetle comes with a 1300 to 1600 from the factory. Now it has a manual transmission with a 2332 engine. You can imagine the difference in power. It lifts the wheels up off the ground—that’s why it has wheelie bars in the back. The faster it went, the more the car bent because it’s not a true convertible. So we had to add a whole bunch more bars in the back to hold the car together. Now we finally got it dialed in. It took about five years to get it running to where we needed it to be.
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We had three roses painted on the front to begin with. It was supposed to be me, my daughter, and my granddaughter. Now I have two other Rose granddaughters—the name grows. We’re gonna have a whole dozen here soon. When my dad saw the paint job, he asked, “Where’s my name on this car?” (I put my brother’s stuff on the back.) And my husband said, “Yeah, mine’s not even on there, and I paid for it.” And I said, “It’s right there”—pointing to the thorns—“you two are the thorns in my butt.”
My dad and I often race against each other. We try to stagger each other, but sometimes they ladder us and we have no choice. About four weeks ago, in Redding, California, we got lined up for the first round both days, and so I beat him the first day. And he beat me the second day. We’re about fifty-fifty on the wins as far as who beats the other.
We’ve had a couple Bugoramas where we’ve been in the final round together. Our joke was if we ever get back to the final round together, we were going to go up to the front and swap cars. Last year we forgot. We got to the start line and just went. Afterwards, we were like “Oh man! I forgot about that.” My dad says, “Do you think you could even fit in my car?” So I went inside, and I couldn’t reach the pedals. That might have been a problem if we had swapped.
Not to toot my own horn, but I do win a lot. Many racers don’t want to race me. At the last Bugorama, no cars would line up with me. They stopped way behind the line and would wait. It got to the point where they were running all the other races, and then they would get to our lane, and I was the only car sitting up there. I thought, Do I get a bye? They said, “No, somebody’s gonna have to come up and race you.” At the last minute, somebody came rolling up.
The fastest I’ve ever gone is 116 miles per hour. The big rush is the takeoff, because it’s not so much about going 116—it’s that first two seconds of taking off. When you take off, the g-force pulls you back. That’s the best part of the race.
People ask if I have any fear. Fear of losing sometimes, but that’s pretty much the only fear. A couple of weeks ago, we put new brakes on. Then, on the track, I hit the brakes a little too hard and made an unanticipated illegal U-turn down at the turnoff. That doesn’t really scare me. What scares me is hitting the guardrail and ruining the car.
Years ago, when I first started racing, there were very few women, but now there are a lot. Women are better racers. They have a better reaction time. They drive the car better. Most girls I know that are regular racers win. They pay attention to the details where men don’t. It’s an advantage in that aspect.
My daughter races the Powder Puff Class, and I race the boys. It would not be fair for me to race that class with all of my experience. She has won a couple of times now.
Racing takes a lot of dedication. It takes up a lot of family time, and a lot of men who race will complain “Ah, my wife doesn’t want to do this with me . . .” But I have the support of my husband, and I couldn’t do it without him. We actually met here on the track. Right here in the staging lanes. We were both eighteen years old. We met a weekend before Bugorama and have been together ever since—almost thirty years.
I’ve won a lot of races, but I’ve lost a lot of races. Many times I lose against myself. Make errors. The car can only be so good. The driver’s got to do it.
Bugorama was America’s longest-running VW drag racing event, car show, and swap meet. It took place at Sacramento Raceway Park, Sacramento, California, from 1978 to 2023.