The Class of 2003: Be Quick Or Be Dead’s Featured Cars
In the spring of 2003, Be Quick Or Be Dead ran a simple feature: one street car and one drag car each month, sent in by their owners, photographed on driveways and in garages across metro Detroit. Four cars defined that first season — and together they map exactly what the scene cared about.
March: the 1937 Ford
The featured street car for March 2003 was a 1937 Ford — pre-war steel, the kind of car that anchored hot rodding before the term muscle car existed. The '37 remains one of the most-rodded bodies in the hobby: rounded fenders, a waterfall grille, and a frame that has swallowed everything from flathead V8s to modern crate LS engines.
Alongside it sat the month's drag pick: a 1970 Camaro known around the crew as the "Yellow Bullet" — second-generation F-body, the shape Chevrolet got right on the second try and racers have been exploiting ever since.
April: the 1933 HighBoy and Jim Monson's Mustang
April brought a 1933 HighBoy — a fenderless Ford roadster sitting high on its frame rails, the oldest silhouette in the hot rod playbook — and Jim Monson's Mustang, the drag side of the month's pair. The contrast was the point: seventy years of speed separated the two cars, and both belonged on the same page.
The class of 2003
| Month | Featured street car | Featured drag car |
|---|---|---|
| March 2003 | 1937 Ford | 1970 Camaro "Yellow Bullet" |
| April 2003 | 1933 HighBoy roadster | Jim Monson's Mustang |
What the selection says about the scene
- Pre-war Ford steel was already heritage by 2003 — the rodders' answer to the question of where it all started.
- The second-gen Camaro and the Mustang were the working-class heroes: cheap, light and endlessly modifiable.
- Every featured car was owner-built — the email address in the original feature invited readers to send pictures and specs, and they did.
Why featured cars mattered
Before social media, a site like this was the garage wall: the place where a local build got seen beyond its own driveway. The monthly feature turned readers into contributors and gave the crew a rolling archive of what Detroit-area hands were actually building — not what magazines decided was news.
The formula still works. Pick two cars, tell their owners' stories, publish the photos. The internet got bigger; the garage did not change.