Thread: 50 fastest musclecars

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as someone said, few if any folk who owned the sleepers and muscle cars of the day ran them in showroom stock condition, and that applies to the mag articles as well, why ya think they called em CHEATER slicks ?
everyone cheated even if only a lil or THOUGHT they did...Like the 69 Stage 2 GS i saw race. It was actually supposed to have been a class meet but so many cars came that could not tech out they ran a competition/exhibition class as well....
car came drivin in; always being a Buick Fanatic i was quick to check the car out. once i saw the blow proof aftermarket Bell i knew before hearing the car that it wasn't likely SHOWROOM STOCK, since the class at the time only rerquired a blow proof if ur car was a solid lifter engine and even the Stage 2 Buicks were hydraulic lifter altho all CAME with tublar exhaust(headers), and he was on what were then called l 60 x 15 Mickey Thompson tires. When i saw a legal stock 70 Stage 2 455 Skylark GS run basically the same time as the 69 Stage 2 400 i was SURE it wasn't stock...tho the owner was one of the best stick shift drag race drivers i have yet to see in my time.....better than ME NOW AND IM DAMN GOOD MYSELF.
this was back in 72 so neither car was all that old...
The 69 car had a ''Hemi Killer" front plate n tho he ran competition he did indeed bust up a couple Hemi cars, a 69 4gear super Bee and a 71 Hemi Challenger auto....
for the chatter who reminded me about all the hop up shenanigans we ALL used back in the day, thanx, it was a point i knew but overlooked...hindsight isn't always 20/20.
Back in the 60's and early 70's most of the time my hot rod was also my only ride, and my drag racing budget was such that most of my performance improvements were wrench n tune rather than after a-market expensive trick of the week Parts, in fact, at the time there were not a whole lotta A-market parts even out there for the BOP's that i prefered and those that were came at an expense greater than those for other more popular brands for the Buicks and Oldsmobiles....
The after market blew up for Pontiac parts jus before the 64 intro of the GTO, Pontiacs were doin well in competition with their famed swiss cheese framed full body stockers, it was damn hard to get off the line with these cars and almost as hard to run em down once ya did get off the line so suppliers really started to produce and advertise hot parts for em.
Which brings to mind another prevalent thing of those days, that being the wealth of FACTORY hot parts for the hot rods of the day, save for headers for instance, u could easily run into the 11's with a Ram Air Tri-power GTO and have the only parts in or on the car that didn't have a Pontiac part number along with wheels and tires....
same goes for the Hemi cars and the Chevy offerings, go back n look up some of the Stock Class records n u get an idea what was possible....
BTW, in STOCK classes u could do whatever inside the engine so long as ya didn't change the total amount of lift available on a factory camshaft, or raise the mechanical compression ratio, or have more than a .030 overbore, essentually anything not VISIBLE was fair game....
To begin with u used to have to run stock tires and wheels in these classes but THAT only lasted a couple seasons into the 60's
After that tires and wheels were ALSO fair game for change, as were traction aid devices. For instance, back in the early 70's a 383 4 gear Road Runner held the G/SM record at 11.44@117mph, and there was a damn VW Bettle that had an O/SM record at 11.19 in modified production. What later became SUPER STOCK, then PRO STOCK.
The famed Motown Missle Challenger went into the mid 9's to set the 71 Pro Stock record and by 73 folk like Jenkin's, Wally Booth, Dyno Don n others had small block v8 cars in the 9's, all steel or mostly all steel anyway. small block Vettes with q-jets in the 10's....