Many people underestimate the PT Cruiser of Jay Workman. Then, they see it on track. It’s fast. So fast that it won six of nine races at Ona Speedway and the track championship. The PT Cruiser wasn’t an overnight success, though.
Workman acquired the PT Cruiser in 2021.
“I picked it because it was different,” Workman said. “I’m a Dodge guy, and [with] Dodge, you don’t have a lot of options. I wanted to fit Vores [Compact Touring Series] rules … and you couldn’t have engine swaps at the time. So, I needed a motor that was good, and the PT Cruiser motor is going to make pretty good horsepower. I could have gone with a Neon, because some Neons came with the 2.4, but all the Dodge guys had a Neon, and I didn’t want a Neon. I wanted to be different.”
Being different doesn’t come easy, though. Yes, Workman set a track record at Ona in one his first outings with the PT Cruiser, but that speed didn’t last.
“It would lose handling,” said Workman. “The problem you have with a front-wheel drive is that out of the turns you start pushing, and as the race goes on it gets worse.”
With a PT Cruiser, you don’t simply call a car builder and ask for a baseline setup. Workman had to build his own. It took him roughly two years to perfect the car. He went from a track record of a 19.89 to now regularly running 19.40s. The consistency is the key, said Workman. That helps toward the end of the races. Ona Speedway has halfway breaks, and that’s when Workman’s PT Cruiser shines.
“My car’s way faster than anybody else’s because their tires have given up,” Workman said. “Mine is still pulling off the turns good.”
Look around Workman’s PT Cruiser and it starts becoming apparent that it’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster rather than a pure PT Cruiser. The hood? A Nissan’s, because it’s aluminum. The rear “trunk”? The hood off a Chevrolet Monte Carlo short-track body. The front bumper is an old-school Camaro bumper off a late model or street stock. Workman installed a safety hub on the right rear intended for a Cavalier, for safety purposes.
Under the hood, it’s the 2.4-liter Dodge engine, with a block out of a Stratus that features different oiling than a PT Cruiser’s. An SRT4 turbo intake manifold adorns that block. Stock transmission, but custom gearing. The front suspension comes from a 2000-and-up Neon.
A lot of ingenuity? Absolutely. Anything super expensive? Hardly.
“The reason why I stick with front-wheel drives is because I can go to a junkyard,” said Workman. “You don’t have to go to a race shop to buy your suspension parts and chassis. I can go to a junkyard, and I can make it work … I enjoy that more than anything.”
Workman also loves penny-pinching, too.
“A lot of guys are buying brand-new struts,” Workman said. “Some guys are sending out struts and having them rebuilt. I go out and buy worn-out ones. If it ain’t worn out enough, I don’t want it. I want it to compress how I want it to and rebound how I want it, too. The worst part about using the old ones is sometimes you’ll use them for a few races, and they’ll be leaking oil.”
Jay Workman said he still has some areas of the car he wants to try tweaking to squeeze some more speed out of the PT Cruiser. He doesn’t intend to run for another championship, preferring to race when he wants to race, but he does have one goal in mind. Workman wants to win the Vores Compact Touring Series race at Ona Speedway. He’s been fast but he never earned that win. His last Vores race he broke a right-rear hub while running in third with five laps to go. Only Ona Speedway regulars have won it, but one of the fastest cars there has yet to score a victory in the biggest sport compact race at the West Virginia oval.
Workman’s not only fast at Ona Speedway, though. He’s traveled to other tracks, such as Bristol Motor Speedway, The Freedom Factory and Franklin County Speedway, where he made an impression.
“When we rolled my car out, people were staring,” said Workman. “Down there we were racing against mini stocks – the rear-wheel drives that look like late models. We ran into a guy I somewhat know, and he said, ‘All those guys were laughing when you pulled your PT Cruiser out.’ That guy told them not to laugh.”
Workman was running second in the first race before he got spun. He recovered to finish third. The next race he won. Workman said he doesn’t believe the winning magic is in the car choice, but instead what he did with it.
“I believe you can take any front-wheel drive car, especially if they allow engine swaps, and make it competitive,” said Workman. “I had a lot of people [say], ‘Why you build a PT Cruiser? It’ll never be fast. It’s too top heavy. Too tall.’ I wanted to prove that I could take this car and make it fast. I just kept working at it and it became a dominant car.”
Workman certainly makes good with what he says. He’s contemplating a new build, a new challenge: maybe a Dodge Omni with a 2.4-liter Dodge engine. Hold on tight, it’s going to get interesting.
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
