Veteran race car driver Buck Kinney has always been quick off the mark.

But admittedly, he was a little slow in realizing what the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) had in store for him on a recent night in Seattle.

Kinney, a Port Coquitlam resident who grew up in Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge, became the first Canadian inducted into the NHRA Hall of Fame and win its Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization's 50th annual awards ceremony.

He was flabbergasted by both honours. “After all the other trophies and awards I've won over the years, this tops them all,” Kinney said.

The 67 year-old owner of Buck Kinney Automotive repair shop in Port Coquitlam competed in the NHRA for more than 45years. He broke many world records in his career, during which he raced ten different cars, and won the North American Super Stock point championship several times.

Kinney called it quits for good from the Super Stock racing class earlier this year and sold his prized race car, an orange 1971 Chevelle Malibu convertible with a 700-horsepower, 402 cubic-inch motor that he owned for almost 30 years. The buyer plans to

BUCK KINNEY - Inducted 2001

Pioneer - Hot Rod, Custom Car and Drag Racing

Camaro at old Mission track, circa 1968  (Murray Chambers)

By Larry Pruner, 2001  (Metro Valley News Service)

Buck Kinney

donate the car, the "Buck Kinney Special," to a racing museum in Florida.

Kinney didn’t discover until after the NHRA tribute that it had been in the works for six months and that NHRA officials had to figure out a clever way to get him to the ceremony.

“They said, “Just come down. We want to thank you for racing all those years,” Kinney said.

He thought that was nice and, considering he'd been thanked many times before for racing in Mission, fell for it

It took several hints at the awards banquet before he clued in. “Then they announced the winner was a Canadian for the first time, and I thought that was great,” Kinney said. “Then they said he raced Super Stock and that's when I figured out what they were up to.”

Forever fond of "speed and competition” Kinney has not left auto racing entirely. He recently built a street-type race car that he plans to offer to budding drivers who want to take a spin on certified tracks nearby.

Kinney started racing in 1951 at age 18, with a group of friends. They called themselves the Pitt Meadows Stompers. Three years later, Kinney raced for the first time on a runway track at Abbotsford Airport.

He began working at Mussallem Motors in Maple Ridge in 1956. The car dealership and garage decided to sponsor him and gave Kinney a 427-horsepower Chevy Impala to race.

He switched to a new 1967 Chevy Camaro the following year and kept getting faster on the track. In 1971, Kinney bought the Chevelle that he would retire with. He set his first world record that year and bettered it nine times.