Ralph Kingrey's SVO Profile

Ralph Kingrey - Member 0320

Like many of us, of Ralph has been bitten by the SVO mania bug! Life started out just fine for this 51 yr old GA Tech Engineer, but then he drove a SVO. Life will never be same will it Ralph? Ralph lives outside the Atlanta, GA area and along with his Wife, Carol, owns and operates a Commercial Building Contactor business

He’s no stranger to performance cars. His garage has seen, in the past, the likes of a 67 Shelby 69 Z28, Corvettes, Monte Carlos, and a bunch of other BORING cars. It still houses 3 Harley Davidsons - one of which is Carol’s FATBOY!

Ralph said, “Four years ago when my last kid got out of college, I got a raise , and I went back to cars. I decided that I wanted to fulfill a life long dream and build a cobra kit car. I bought a kit and started the build process. My kit was based on using late model Mustang suspension, so I started research on best possible parts, and that is where I actually became acquainted with the svo. I had seen and heard of them before, but I had never been interested in a 4-cylinder.” Boy would that statement come back to kick him!!

Ralph continues “My cobra project build was going great until I decided that I no longer wanted to use mustang parts and I changed my course and started using an IRS setup with coilovers and wildwood brakes. I really started spending the money at this point, to the point that I was losing interest in the cobra because of cost.”

“During my hunt for parts a pal of mine found a red 86 in Atlanta and bought it with the idea that I would probably want to buy the car. I wasn’t impressed by it. That is, until I drove it! That’s all it took, I was hooked! It wasn’t a nice car, but boy was it a blast to drive. That was 3 years ago”

Ralph not only fell in love with the SVO, but it caused him to put the Cobra Kit Car on the back burner for awhile. Then he soon found 2 more SVOs for sale in Florida and quickly bought them. A 85 1/2 parts car and a pretty nice 86 that Ralph decided to make into a track car

About 2 years ago, Ralph started meeting fellow SVO enthusiast like Ryan Cloud & Ty Burgin from Alabama. “Then [after seeing their cars] I was really hooked. I had to have a nice car, so I advertised for a nice one.” What did Ralph end up buying next? How bout a 1986 1C (black) with a mere 56k miles and a dyno proven 330rwhp! Wow! huh? Ralph’s Cobra is still on the back burner - but he’s burning up the street and track with ‘few good SVOs!!!”

SVO Club of America