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Whether it’s been defending lightning-quick running backs on the gridiron or storming down the quarter-mile in seven seconds, longtime and respected West Coast racer Artis Houston has always taken an all-in approach to his greatest passions, leaving nothing on the table in pursuit of his dreams.
Houston, a native of the pop-culturally significant southern California city of Compton, has been involved with cars and racing to some degree for much of his life, and these days, he’s one of the left coast’s most feared competitors at the controls of his 1971 Chevrolet Nova in which he competes in the Wild Street category with the Pacific Street Car Association and in Street Outlaw with the National Muscle Car Association WEST Series. Despite his early affection for high performance cars, however, the natural athletic talent he nurtured in his youth nearly charted an entirely different path for his life.
Houston was a standout defensive back at the University of California-Berkley, graduating in 1994. He later signed as an undrafted free agent into the National Football League with the Dallas Cowboys and played for both Dallas and the Buffalo Bills, as well as a stint in professional football in Germany with NFL Europe. But it was during his freshman year of college in 1991 that the drag racing bug was planted.
Model Corinne poses with Houston’s Nova at the Auto Club Dragway in Fontana, California.
“My roots in racing really started when I was a kid, with my father taking me to the Winternationals and World Finals in Pomona, and even some trips over to Terminal Island back when it was still running in the 1970s,” says Houston. “Of course there were street races in Los Angeles, and I got involved in that. At that point I developed a love for the sound and smell of burning rubber and guys talking a little crap to one another, betting some money, and proving who had the fastest car. That’s how legends were made back in the day.”
See more of Artis’ Chevy Nova and model Corinne in our expanded photo gallery!
Despite a promising career in football that was his primary focus, Houston couldn’t fight the urge to do a little racing. As he tells us, “Everywhere I’ve been, I always made it a point to find a race track, because I always wanted to race.” At the time he had a white Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS that, as he shares, “I thought was the fastest thing on the road.” While clamoring just to put food on the table during his collegiate career, Houston was dropping money into the car for small upgrades here and there to boost its performance.
“It was one of those things — you have something that you take pride in, and [the car] was my thing. That, and school, and football, and trying to set myself up for the future was a big thing for me back then,” he says.
Houston played in the preseason and was a member of the practice squad during his three years in the NFL, but came up just short of making the 53-man roster each time. And in what he calls a case of “opportunity missed,” he nearly made the Cowboys roster the year they defeated Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. After being cut from Dallas that year, Houston says, “my body started telling me if we’re not going to make this happen, it’s time to start a career and pay some bills rather than making this money that disappears just as fast as it comes.”
Houston admits that, for a time, he dwelled on the fact that a long career in professional football simply wasn’t in the cards. But although his playing days were over, that love for cars was still ever-present. After graduating from Cal, he’d purchased a brand new 1995 Z28 Camaro that ran 13.40s, and says he did some street and track racing here and there. He later bought a “ratty” Chevy Vega that never got finished before ultimately purchasing the Nova in 2000 from Maurice Baker, who is a close companion of his in racing today. The car had also been owned and driven by another good friend and fellow racer, Anthony Smith, making the whole thing a case of “coming full circle,” as he tells us.
For him, the Nova was a solid foundation to build a race car from. After tinkering with the car — which had a 10-point cage and a nice, straight body — in his garage for a time, a trip to Orlando for the World Street Nationals set the hook and the car soon became far more than he ever imagined. In short order, it was in the hands of Phil Mandella at PMR Race Cars, who transformed it into a 25.5-spec thoroughbred racing machine. This, of course, was during the time when radial tire racing was just coming to be, but because the PSCA had only just been formed, Houston was unsure if he’d have a place to race or, if there was, if he could afford to be competitive.
Houston and Mandella spent three and half years meticulously building up the Nova as he envisioned, finally debuting it in 2003 in the Wild Street class with the PSCA. He chose Wild Street, in particular, because he wanted to keep the stock, leaf spring suspension setup in the car rather than moving to a full backhalf, as would be necessary in other categories to compete. On its first-ever full pass, it went 8.77 at 155 mph on two nitrous plate kits, giving Houston the ride of his life to that point. “I was just ecstatic — this was like a dream come true.”
Houston won the championship in Wild Street in 2005, and during that season, put a fogger on the car and ripped off a record 8.18 at a time when 8.40’s and 8.50s were mighty impressive. At that point, having a seven-second car seemed like a distinct reality, potentially fulfilling a dream for him as a racer. “My father, Arthur Lee, passed away in 1990 right before I went to college, and that run was kind of like him tapping me on the shoulder telling me, ‘hey, anything’s possible, so do you what you can to make it happen.’” It just so happened that the weekend Houston made the record 8.18 lap would have been his father’s birthday.
Since that original incarnation, Houston and Mike Saiki at Motivational Engineering have redone the Nova to 25.3-spec, making it a certifiable seven-second car. Houston won the West Coast Hot Rod Association 275 Radial title in 2009 and captured the Wild Street title again in 2013 He also nearly had the NMCA WEST 275 Radial title in-hand that same year when a freak incident at the season finale in Bakersfield involving the transbrake and associated electronics sent the gorgeous Nova hard into the guardrail, derailing his title hopes and putting his racing future in jeopardy.
“When I came back and looked at the car, I really thought my racing career was over. The last few years had been pretty tough on me, in terms of finances and all. I’d raced pretty hard, pretty often and it had depleted a lot of funds that I’d saved up. I thought I was done, but some really good guys — Josh Deeds, Jack Avestiyan and John Calvert — came onboard and said ‘we’re not ready to not see you racing anymore,’ and they made this happen.
When I came back and looked at the car, I really thought my racing career was over.
Deeds Performance was tasked with rebuilding the car, and Northwest Auto Body and Paint straightened the front subframe and mounted all of the new Unlimited Products carbon fiber panels, along with applying the stunning Marina Blue paint with carbon fiber accents. The rebuild took nearly a full year to complete, and Houston made his return last November at the Street Car Super Nationals in Las Vegas.
Prior to the crash, the big block Chevrolet-based powerplant, built by Pettis Performance around a Dart Machinery block, was punched out to 598 cubic inches. The short block was filled with GRP rods, a Callies crankshaft, Ross Pistons, and a Comp custom camshaft. An Edelbrock intake with a Dale Cubic-prepped Holley Dominator carburetor sits atop a set of BES-prepared Brodix Head Hunter cylinder heads, filled with Jesel components and PAC valve springs. A set of REF 2-/14 to 2-3/8 headers help empty the cylinders.
A Moroso setup handles the oiling side of things, while an MSD Power Grid takes care of the ignition. An Induction Solutions single fogger setup then provides the additional power needed to run well into the sevens.
Houston backs it all up with a Powerglide from Mike’s Transmission with a ProTorque converter, controlled by a Precision Performance shifter. The power leads back through an Inland Empire-made driveshaft to a nine-inch rear end fabricated by PMR with a Lamb Components third member, Mark Williams 40-spline gun-drilled axles, and Lamb brakes all the way around.
Deeds installed a new Smith Racecraft front suspension setup with Menscer Motorsports coilover shocks. Out back, Houston is still entirely old-school, with Calvert Racing Cal Trac bars planting the power to the pavement. The Nova rides on Mickey Thompson rubber — 275 Pro radials out back — on Weld V-Series wheels. Inside, you’ll find Kirkey aluminum seats wrapped in black cloth covers (soon to be replaced with Carbon Fiber seats from Unlimited Products), a Grant steering wheel, and a RacePak V300SD delivering telemetry to a UDX digital dash.
To date, Houston has been 4.69 at 152 to the eighth-mile (recorded this spring in the Leaf Spring class at Lights Out 6 at South Georgia Motorsports Park) and 7.41-seconds at 187 mph in the quarter, recorded in 2013. Back home, he runs the same combination in Wild Street and Street Outlaw, and despite the car being overweight across the board, he remains one of the toughest racers anywhere he shows up.
Away from the track, Houston’s career has turned toward the automotive industry, as well, as he works in corporate sales for Snap-On Tools — a title that keeps him on the move and makes weekends at the track all the more relaxing. He also has both a son and a daughter in youth and high school sports, and says today he prefers to use the experience he gained in chasing the dream of playing professional football to guide them in their playing careers, and as any loving father would, says he hopes to see them go even further in their playing careers than he did, thus carrying the family legacy he started for generations to come.
With so much help along his journey in racing, Houston would certainly be remiss without mentioning those individuals and companies that have played a role, including Calvert Racing, Mickey Thompson, Pro Torque Converters, VP Racing Fuels, Unlimited Products, Menscer Motorsports, SCE Gaskets, Mike’s Transmission, SmallTireNation.com., Matthew Bernasconi, Eric Lowe of Racepak Data Systems, Mike Saiki, Hank Evans, Dario Yancy, Mark Washington, John Fields, Jim Tanner, Kevin CapsLock, Tommy Kirk of MacFab Beadlocks, Gary Yocum, Mike McConnell, Keith Peguese, and his entire New York/New Jersey crew, who he calls his “brothers from other mothers”.
Of course, much of the credit for his endeavors goes to his wife, LaVerne Houston, and his family, while he owes so much of his inspiration to his brother, Kirk Houston, his late father Arthur Lee Houston, cousin Tommy “Spud” Houston, the late Monty Berney, as well as Al, Tony, and Terry Manning.
