If you caught last night’s two-hour season premiere of Street Outlaws on the Discovery Channel, then you no doubt saw a fresh new face in Oklahoma native Shane McAlary join the shows’ now-famous Top 10 list. McAlary defeated fan favorite Sean Whitley, known affectionately as “FarmTruck”, to gain entrance into the Top 10 upon his first appearance on the hit reality show.

McAlary’s shot at the show and “The List” was made possible by Kamikaze Chris voluntarily dropping his spot, which opened up No. 10. Show producers decided to have a three-round runoff for the spot, and McAlary downed each of his foes handily in his 1977 Chevy Vega known as the “Black Bird”.

McAlary’s Vega is powered by a 437 cubic inch small block Chevrolet fed by an F2 ProCharger. It’s then backed up by a Gen X torque converter from our friends at ProTorque. Interestingly enough, with McAlary’s joining of The List, five of the ten cars in the top 10 are all running ProTorque converters, including, including Justin “Big Chief” Shearer’s GTO, James “Doc” Love’s Monte Carlo, Shawn Ellington’s Murder Nova, and Chris “BoostedGT” Hamilton’s turbocharged Mustang.

The Black Bird Vega, although showing its prowess on the street with authority last night, has some impressive longevity on the highway, as well. McAlary entered the car in the Unlimited category at Hot Rod Drag Week last year, and despite bringing a knife to a gunfight, finished the marathon event 10th in the class with best of 8.32 at 166 mph.

To learn more about ProTorque converters and the racers who use them, log on to protorque.com.