In the days before the popularity of pro-touring, gearheads would build muscle cars solely for the drag strip. Known as pro-street, the trend was about taking a car and making it as wild as possible, utilizing mountain-like big-blocks and compressing massive amounts of air down the chambers through the use of a roots-type supercharger, all the while maintaining at least some streetability. The trend took the country by storm and held the title as the thing to do from the late ‘70s through most of the ‘90s.

Thankfully, times have changed and now it seems that everyone wants to take corners more than just race in a straight line when it comes to building the street machine of today. However, it’s pleasing to see that there are a few holdouts among us and Mike Ramsey is one of those gentlemen.

Mike’s been restoring classic Camaros and Novas for years but until now, never undertook a Chevelle project. It was his wife actually, who convinced him to find a ’68 Chevelle to build for her as she has been a fan of the car since she was a teenager.

Amazingly, Ramsey found this legit Super Sport example sitting in a field sans drivetrain. Having restored nothing but matching number cars in the past, Mr. Ramsey was ready to try something new. After gaining his wife’s approval, Mike set about his project by tearing it down to its bare essentials and set the empty shell onto a body rotisserie.

Once the old paint was sandblasted off, Ramsey decided to do it right and simply replace every body panel that was not up to his standards. That meant ordering new sheet metal through Ausley’s Chevelle Parts. Once the initial body work had begun and the new panels had been collected, the Chevelle was sent off to the body shop.

With the shell out of the way, this allowed the build to focus all of its efforts on the rest of the car’s crucial components. Ramsey started by cutting two-thirds of the rear of the frame up to allow the adaption of a four-link suspension. He then called upon a built, Ford 9-inch rearend stuffed with 35-spline rear axles, 4.33 Richmond gears, and a Moser spool to handle the power he had planned for the old Chevelle.

Yup, this badass A-body packs a 572ci. big-block under the hood, courtesy of the boys over at GM Performance parts (GMPP). If that wasn’t enough, Ramsey decided that no real pro-street car can be complete without a blower.

So, if one supercharger is good, he figured that two would be better, and that’s exactly the reason why the Chevelle has a pair of Vortech V-7 YSi blowers forcing compressed air into the Rat’s Holley HP Race Series carburetor.

The 572 also benefits from a Comp Cams custom grind camshaft, Callies Dragonslayer crank, Dart Big Chief heads and Jesel shaft rockers. Backing this monster of a plant is a TCI TH400 with a 6,000 rpm stall JW Performance torque converter, while a custom aluminum driveshaft spins that 9-inch in the back.

The fruits of all of Mike’s efforts rewarded him with a grand total of 1,320hp at the rear tires and 995 lb-ft of torque to the 15-inch Weld Wheels. We caught up with the Ramsey’s Chevelle on the Vortech Superchargers blog website; which also happens to feature the company’s power steering unit, BV57 Bypass Valves, and pulley system from the forced-induction company. We think it looks amazing, and would like to see more of this SS in the future.

When a 572 just isn't enough..