Hailee Steinfeld photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and edited into collage). Rat rod images via Autotopia LA/YouTube.
Hailee Steinfeld is known for the screen and the stage, but the horsepower in her family belongs to her older brother, Griffin Steinfeld. A former NASCAR driver, he now builds and drag races some of the wildest street-legal machines around, including a twin-turbo pickup that makes roughly 2,000 horsepower.
From NASCAR to the Drag Strip
Griffin was racing on the NASCAR circuit at 17 while still a senior at Westlake High School, then ran three seasons in the K&N Pro Series West, according to Motorious. He also raced off-road trucks and circle track before moving into drag racing and the radial-tire events at the heart of small-tire racing.
He made his Radial vs. the World debut in the Miller family’s twin-turbo “Bumblebee” Camaro, has driven Jeff Miller’s 3.6-second car, and warmed up Antron Brown’s Top Fuel dragster at the Winternationals, Drag Illustrated reports.
The Builds
The headliner is his twin-turbo 1956 Chevy Apache pickup. It makes about 1,400 horsepower at 20 psi and roughly 2,000 at 40 psi, runs on radial tires, and is street-legal, with an estimated 0.8-second 0-60 mph time. It has run 4.60 seconds at 167 mph in the eighth mile. Griffin did much of the work himself, and his philosophy is simple: “Slicks are for slow cars.”
His newest project is a 1932 Ford rat rod from fabricator Rat Rod Jeff Jones, the builder behind the blown, 900-plus-horsepower rat rod we covered earlier. Dragzine reports it packs a 565-cubic-inch aluminum big-block Chevy with a supercharger reworked from Don Schumacher Racing’s Top Fuel program. It currently makes low 900s horsepower at the tire, and Griffin says pulley changes could push it to about 1,700.
The build took 10 months from the ground up, starting with a half-buried 1932 Ford body Jones dug up on his property. Griffin found Jones on Instagram and got weekly photo updates, and his logo is hand-rolled into the wheel tubs. The car has no track passes yet. Griffin credits his father, Peter Steinfeld, with part of the spark: “My dad and I always loved rat rods.”
Where Hailee Comes In
The two worlds crossed on the set of Bumblebee (2018). Griffin was there with his sister when the production needed someone to drive the film’s Volkswagen Beetle for a time-sensitive scene, and he got the stunt job. It was a fitting assignment for a car that has long been a pop culture icon. He later met the Miller family after spotting their Bumblebee-themed Camaro at a South Carolina movie theater promotion.
What’s Next
Griffin has said he wants to race in the NHRA, with Pro Mod, Top Alcohol Dragster, or Top Fuel on his radar, depending on funding. Celebrity gearheads are having a moment, from Sydney Sweeney’s ’65 Mustang and Syd’s Garage trademark to the Steinfeld garage, and Griffin’s rat rod hasn’t even made its first pass yet.
Featured image: collage using a photo of Hailee Steinfeld by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped and edited; collage shared under the same license) and rat rod images via Autotopia LA/YouTube.
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