A friend (a true motorhead) bought a drag car back in 1974 from an old farmer. His son had gotten killed in Nam and this had been his "project" and the old guy couldn't bear to part with it. Finally the day came when he had to sell the property and of course there was no place to put the project car.
It was a 62 Falcon with fiberglass doors, hood and trunk, complete sheet metal interior, wide wheel tubs, tube frame chassis and full race rollbars.
Everything was done except the powertrain. The dash had all the switches, gauges, even a front brake "line lock" for doing burnouts.
We stuffed a blown (Paxton) 440 Chrysler big block with a Hemi-style four speed into it and went racing at the local strip and did pretty well for a couple of years.
The engine was balanced and blueprinted, had a roller cam, hi-rise pistons, race ported heads, the whole magilla.
The cam on that motor had more lumps than a grandpa's butt with poison ivy on it.
It barely idled at 1400 RPM.
Dyno said 940 HP, 890 ft lbs torque.
The car weighed approx 1900 pounds.
I've been a motorhead all my life but I don't know a thing about the modern computerized engines...I am strictly old school.

This car was scary fast, at least for 1974 anyway.
We were pulling quarter mile ET's in the low 10 second range with it and topping out at around 155 plus, but there was a lot more room to go.
I suspect this car could have broken 190 with enough real estate.
Pretty damn good for a "Ford Falcon", even though there wasn't much original Falcon left on it LOL.

I also owned a couple of very nice muscle cars of my own but they were also daily drivers and not full out drag cars.
My two favorite cars I ever owned were a 72 big block 396 Chevy Nova which was cool, and a 66 Dodge Coronet with a very nicely built 440 wedge dropped into it, which was, in a word, deadly.

That Dodge was flat BLACK all the way around, not a speck of chrome on it except the wheels...gorgeous.
And, it was NOT "jacked up" in the back.
I lowered the front end instead.
That car easily passed the "hundred dollar bill test".

Another friend had an actual Hemi Cuda, which was also a blast to drive. I know people are nuts about today's Hemi cars and trucks but I have to tell you there is nothing quite like driving a vehicle with a real 426 Hemi "Elephant Motor" under the hood.

The funniest thing that always struck me were the "published" horsepower figures on this engine.
Chrysler rated it at 425 HP, but everyone will tell you that a well tuned properly built 426 elephant will spew out a conservative 600 w/600 ft lbs torque. Chrysler's figures were to keep the insurance companies happy but they were pure fantasy.
The greatest thing about those engines were the enormously wide
"power band". They just made gobs of power over a very wide range of RPM's...."useable power".

But the biggest motorhead of them all has to be my older brother.



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