As anyone that regularly follows the digital pages of DRAGZINE has figured out by now, we here in the office are real suckers for some good old class racing. And why not? The cars in Stock and Super Stock are, as Bob Frey would put it, way cool, and the racers are as hardcore as they come.
So when we came upon this nearly two-decade old footage of some exciting Super Stock action, we just had to share it. The site of this clip is South Carolina’s Darlington Dragway and the event is the 1992 IHRA Winter Nationals. For those with a god ear, you’ll notice that NHRA statistician extraordinaire Lewis Bloom is actually on the mic, most likely sharing the booth with Bret Kepner to call the racing action.
Identifying some of the cars is rather difficult, but in the second pair you’ll notice the famous “Good Ol’ Charlie Brown” 1957 Chevy Bel Air wagon of longtime IHRA runner Mike Boyles. In addition to Boyles’ machine, several other high-winding, gear-jamming stick shift machines are seen competing in the class, which has taken a departure toward virtually all-automatic racing in the last two decades.
This period of the early 1990’s could easily be considered the end of the traditional Stock and Super Stock era, as the muscle cars began to replaced with Cavaliers, Beretta’s, Dodge Daytona’s, and other front wheel drive conversations just a short time later.