Sport: The Go-Go Karts

Until their engines start, the cars look like casual products of the neighborhood junkyard. The body is an open, tubular-steel chassis with a wheelbase of some 40 in., a bucket seat that rests a scant two inches above the ground. Knees stuffed under his chin, the driver cramps behind the wheel like a frog in a walnut. Then the two dinky, 6-h.p. engines perched behind the seat begin to snarl, and the bedspring contraption becomes a hot, highly engineered racing machine that can hit 85 m.p.h. on the straightaway, drift through corners like a Maserati. Says one driver: "The feeling...

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