Words & Photos: Lara Wilde

To build a car is not the same for everyone. For some, it is as basic as to handpick the perfect colour and paint it themselves. For Ron Kloprogge, Managing Director of Matchport Materials Handling in Cairns, to build a car is to handpick a blueprint for a chassis and then build every element himself.

Over the past 15 years, Ron has built, researched, developed and fine-tuned every part of his front-engine dragster that he calls the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’. Today he has a six-cylinder, eight-second car that he can be proud of.

With a thick accent and a cheeky grin, Ron is someone you can instantly warm to. Born in Dutch Indonesia, Ron grew up in the Netherlands and Belgium Congo and as a young man, he completed his trade as an electrician and truck mechanic in Europe. Upon arriving in Australia, he converted his qualifications to become a qualified Diesel Fitter Class III.

Generous with his time and his experience, Ron is the first to help a fellow racer in the pits.

“I am always amazed by the generosity of other drag racers,” he says. “They will quickly give you a part that you need to keep racing and not ask for money in return. So I make it a point to always take spares that I can give away when someone needs them.”

Ron lives and breathes racing.

“As far back as I can remember I have raced anything I could that ran on fossil fuels, made noise and polluted the air!”

His passion for racing and building cars has taken him all over the world – while he didn’t take a race car to the mecca of speed known as Bonneville Salt Flats, he did test the limits of his hire car and had a great time doing it.

Unlike the common everyday hire car Ron took to the salt flats, Ron’s race car is anything but common. He isn’t sure why he chose to build a front engine dragster, but he does not have a history of building common cars.

“This car was built by us from the ground up,” he says. “I believe the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’ is one of two slingshots in the world with a roots supercharger. I like to believe that this set-up is quite unique.”

Ron purchased the plans for the front-engine dragster from a guy in California in 2005, and the plans were fully approved by the SFI Foundation for a dragster top fuel car. Ron went shopping, buying up plenty of chrome moly, and made a jig for himself and started putting the chassis together. Before long, the pile of tubing was starting to look like a race car and it was time to find a motor for her.

Drawing on his experience working on engines in Europe, Ron chose a V6 motor with an aluminium TA block and heads.

“At the time, we purchased the best we could afford,” he says. “The gear box is from Coan Transmissions in Indiana, who I have a long-standing relationship with. It has a 6,000 stall converter and the transmission is a 2-speed Power Glide. The nine-inch back axle was built by Ultra9 in Brisbane.”

Once the car was built it was time to add some personal touches such as the 1927 Buick tail lights, welding rifle sights on the end of the exhaust stacks (for the six banger) and the ducks.

The duck is not an animal that is known for its speed, but as the mascot for Ron’s race car, the ducks attached to the front wing and dash have seen some significant speeds.

Why did Ron choose ducks?

“Why not? I love cartoons, especially the Road Runner… hmmm that’s not a duck – oh well.”

‘Why not’ appears to be the driving motivation behind much of Ron’s builds.

Since building the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’, Ron has dragged it all over the country to compete.

The 6 Banger Nats in Warwick did not go well thanks to a busted head gasket, but 2019 was Ron’s first year with a full racing season as the previous years were dedicated to tweaking and fine-tuning the car.

“Our problem is when you ask for advice and you mention that it is a V6, everybody seems to break out in a rash,” says Ron. “There was a fair bit of trial and error.”

More than 10 years of that trial and error has resulted in an 8.33-second pass at 159.6mph (256.8km/h), and Ron believes that with a larger supercharger and some more fine-tuning, the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’ can pull a high seven-second pass close to 170mph (273.6km/h).

You might think that building a car from the ground up and then driving it to an 8-second pass would be a racing career highlight for Ron. But you would be wrong.

“My favourite racing moment was being pit crew for my son while he raced a Holden VY ute with a blown V6 that I had built. He beat V8s all day and walked away with a silver Christmas Tree. That was a great moment.”

So apart from pushing the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’ to the limit and170mph, what else does Ron have planned for the future?

“My son and I are getting the VY ute ready to race again – with a V6 of course,” he says. “I am also playing with a Holden VC Commodore Sedan. It has an OEM engine from the late 1980s that was originally used in the Indy and Indy-lights race cars. The VC is turbocharged and should rev up to 9,200 RPM. Our goal is to finish it within a year and make it street legal.”

In the meantime, Ron and the ‘Sweet Smell of Cyanide’ are regulars at drag strips as they iron out the bugs in the search for an elusive seven-second pass. If you see the duck in the pits, be sure to stop and say hello. Ron would love to talk about cars and racing with you.

Source: Motor Trader E-magazine (October 2020)

12 October 2020