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Photographs by Katherine Bish
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“We’ve just always been crazy about cars,” says Clay Kossuth, “but we couldn’t really pursue the hobby 100 percent until after we got our family raised.” As soon as Clay and wife Rosie’s boys left the nest, the couple turned its Catawissa, Mo., home into a full-time garage to maintain the vintage race cars that they compete with, as well as the show cars they drive around town when they want to turn heads. The piston-fueled power couple will bring seven cars to compete and show at the annual Muscle Car Reunion and Nostalgia Drag Races at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill., later this month. But before they do, they let us take a look at a few of their beautiful babies.
1963 Plymouth Fury (red)
“The biggest reason I’m a MOPAR [Chrysler Motor Parts] guy is because when I was a kid growing up down by Rolla, there was a lot of fast cars around there, what with all the college kids,” Clay explains. “One gentleman out there had a ’64 Plymouth Fury with a 426 Max Wedge motor in it, and nobody could beat it on the street. That left a lasting impression on me.” So Clay didn’t think twice about snatching up this one when he found it in 1990.
1971 Dodge Challenger Convertible (black)
“There’s a lot more work involved in restoring a car than most people realize,” Clay says. A healthy rust buildup—compliments of weather conditions in the Midwest—made body work and paint the biggest challenges to restoring this Challenger. “What you do is you take the car completely apart, have it ‘bead blasted,’ and then you paint the car and make everything new again. It’s an awful lot of work. It takes more than a year of your life.”
1964 Dodge 440 Drag Racer
“1999 was the first time I went down the racetrack,” Rosie says. “My husband encouraged me to try it and see if I liked it. I tried it, and I definitely liked it, so we built me a car.” Rosie’s souped-up Dodge, “Lady Max,” goes 126 to 128 mph down the drag strip. And when that’s fast enough to win, she’s usually defeating a male driver. “Men are not sore losers—usually,” she says. “I think they’ve pretty much come to terms with being beaten by a woman.” In one memorable contest, Clay reports, his wife bested him in head-to-head competition at a Wentzville track: “She didn’t cut me any slack.”
