By Jehran Naidoo for the POST
The commonly held adage that ‘men do not grow up, their toys just get more expensive’ is personified in Durban drag racer, Logan Chetty, 44, from Glenashley.
Having owned more than 20 vehicles, mainly Ford’s from the supposed ‘golden era’, including the mk1 Escort, mk2 Escort – 1600 Sport and a Datsun GX named Axle, Chetty has earned a reputation on the track for his bespoke builds and quick quarter mile times.
Chetty owns and runs a telecommunications business called LCK Communications out of his workshop in Durban North, a premises that also houses his ‘toys’.
Currently in his garage, sits a blue Chevrolet Apache with a V8 engine and his two dragsters, a Ford Escort mk1 and a Toyota Corolla box shape with a 2JZ turbo conversion, which he traded his Datsun GX for with Johan Bothma.
He also owns a host of other ‘project’ cars and ‘daily drivers’, including a turbo swap Toyota Hilux bakkie.
But his love for cars extends mainly to the track, where he is now chasing a time of 9-seconds flat in his orange Escort.
Starting out in a front wheel drive Volkswagen Golf mk1, like many others from his generation and the present cohort of racers, Chetty decided to make the shift to rear-wheel powered cars as they offer more potential.
“I started in a Golf 1 but did not do too well, then I moved to a VR6 engine in the golf then I tried a Caddy [VW].
“Then eventually once I jumped into an Escort, I could not go back. There is a big difference between a front wheel drive and rear wheel drive car. The launch, the acceleration. It is a big difference and once I got a hang of that, I couldn’t go back,” Chetty said.
But designing a car built in the early 1970’s to go down a 400 metre stretch in less than 10 seconds is no easy task, which prompted Logan Chetty to contact a legendary car-builder from Shallcross, Yogan Naicker of Yogan’s Trix.
Yogan and his son Sugan Naicker are responsible for building some of the fastest 4-cylinder engines in the South African race scene, including the Mazda FE2 Engine, which powers Chetty’s orange Escort.
They do all this in their backyard in Shallcross.

“I was racing the golf 1 at Mtubatuba drags and I remember spending the entire day changing CV joints and shafts because we broke about five sets. I came back and sat in my office and I remember looking through a Gas Magazine and Kovilan’s Escort was on the cover.
“There was no number for Yogan’s Trix but it was on the sticker of the car. So I tried to decipher the numbers and got a hold of Yogan and told him I wanted to build a car. First he said no, he’s retired but after a few days he got back to me and said come have a look at the car and we started,” Chetty explained.
“It took about a year to build but every time that it has been out, it has achieved more. The first time out it ran in the 11’s, second time out it was low 11’s and third event it was in the 10’s,” he added.
Sugan Naicker said they first met Logan Chetty around eight years ago and asked him to build a drag Escort but Yogan initially said he was no longer building cars because he was working at a trucking company at the time.
After a couple days, Yogan returned Chetty’s call and agreed to build a race car.

“My dad went to Logan’s place of business to meet him and have a look at the car and my dad told him if he was really keen on building it, he should buy the engine and send it to our house. My dad did that just to see if was really interested or not.
“The next day, at around 10am, the engine was delivered to our house and then my father knew Logan was serious about building the car.
“It took us about a year and a half to build from scratch. The third event he entered the car, we ran it at a 2 bar boost and he did 10.6 second quarter mile. But from there, he just progressed and got faster,” Sugan Naicker explained.
But entering a single-digit time on the quarter mile is an excessively costly affair, which Chetty attests to but with Per4ormance Tuning’s Imran working the numbers, it could just be done.
The parts that go into a car are not only bought, but built and fabricated to suit that specific car and its specific needs.
The father and husband said he is lucky to have a wife that is understanding of how stressful the life of a businessman can be, and that his need to race is more of an escape from a life filled with responsibilities.

But the Logan Chetty that jumped into the Golf 1 over a decade ago is not the same man in the Escort today, nor is his outlook on the track and in business the same.
“I think I am pretty much the same person but I like to better the car and better myself. With the car it’s hard to explain but let’s say you build a car and its 500 horsepower: the first time you drive it, it’s exciting, the second time it’s exciting by the third time you get so used to this thing that it’s like a daily driver now.
“Now it’s no longer exciting, now you need to change the game. And when you change the game its bigger turbo’s, more horsepower, bigger motor and bigger gearboxes. It has gone to the point where some of these gearboxes cost the same as a flat [apartment],” Chetty said.