Not unlike part of Englishtown's Raceway Park a short drive north, New Jersey's Atco Dragway's immediate future may be as a parking lot, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Fans of drag racing will remember when Englishtown shut down a few years back, with its iconic strip relegated to the duty of storing flood cars from Sandy. Much of that strip is still covered in parked insurance cars, though the near section by the grandstands is now enjoying a second life as host to Formula Drift's New Jersey round. It's a spectacular event, a gift to the car world as a whole.
Whether or not Atco will be so lucky is a different question, but its fate holding auction cars seems more clear, per the Inquirer:
In 2020, it was revealed that an Illinois company had submitted an application to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission to redevelop the 180-acre site. According to the application, the paved sections of the site were to be used for an automobile auction facility. The application was co-signed by Leonard Capone Jr., who was Atco Dragway’s owner.
Capone could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
Officials in Waterford Township also could not be reached for comment.
Indeed, there is little to go on from Atco's official announcement, reposted here from Instagram:
This ends a 63-year history for Atco, open since 1960.
It is frustrating that as America seems more full than ever with Chargers and Challengers, tuned BMWs, and Infinitis hard-charging from every stop light, another low-cost drag strip is closing down. We need more places for people to take racing off the street, more places for people to run out their cars in a safe environment, not fewer.
Road & Track's Deputy Editor who once got a Dakar-winning race truck stuck in a sand dune, and rolled a Baja Bug off an icy New York road, and went flying off Mount Washington in a Nissan 240SX rally car, and...
