In 1957 win I was a high school the 50 Oldsmobile had been King for awhile replacing the Ford Flathead. The hot setup was a high-performance cam, 4 barrel carburetor or three two barrels, and a 37 Cadillac Lasalle close ratio transmission. A few kids in school could afford new cars such as the 57 Chevy with fuel injection, I was not one of those kids. I used to hitch hike to school and tell a was able to pick up a 49 Studebaker four-door champion.

In 1959 I bought a new Chevrolet, cheap model with a two barrel V8 engine and I stick shift. Over the next few years the engine and that car underwent numerous changes from high-performance CAM sheds 2 4 Berle's one 4 Berle carburetor. The best money never spent was for a set of 61 Corvette heads from the Chevrolet dealer, really brought the digital live. Somewhere in this time. I picked up a 39 Chevy business coop for $25, bought a used 348 Chevrolet engine with three 2 barrel carburetor's from a wrecking yard and installed in the 59 Chevy. This left at 283 engine available for insulation and the 39 Chevy.

The 59 Chevy by now also had a four-speed transmission, but the 348 engine that I purchased was not a high-performance model and was disappointing, probably didn't run as good as the 283. Eventually I picked up a 409 engine and some 409 high-performance heads in a single high-performance 4 barrel carburetor. Because this was my family car I opted for a standard hydraulic cam shaft which did restrict the performance greatly, but the car was still capable of turning 97 mph with an ET of about 13.50. The car was the real sleeper having standard high-performance factory mufflers it made no particular sound worth noting until you put your foot in it. At that point you can hear the throaty sounds of the big holly 3310 carburetor as that car moved pretty good.

At some point in time I had replaced the 283 engine with a 327 Corvette engine and newer set of 2.02 high-performance heads and had pretty much dedicated this car to organize drag racing on weekends. I raised his car every weekends until the drag strip closed have not quite sure of the year that that occurred. The final racing configuration of the 39 Chevy was a 327 Corvette engine and high-performance heads, four-speed close ratio transmission, 5.38 P. ratio with 12x16 M & H ripple wall tires with 7 psi pressure. Incidentally the cam shaft I used was a factory 30 30 Corvette cam and a single holly 3310 carburetor. I didn't want to use a more radical cam shaft because I occasionally like to drive the thing on the street, although the car and mostly the toed to the drag strip on Sunday and it consistently turned 117 miles an hour with any ET 12.70 seconds, not to Bedford Street machine in those days.

My 59 Chevy was the toe car which my wife drove in the guys at the drag strip but always pare her up with other guys wife's in their toe cars. Those were great days and I guess we thought they would go on forever but the drag strip closed, my 59 Chevy was the rare ended by a drunk driver and totaled, by then I had four kids in less time and money for this sort of thing, I sold off the high-performance stuff out of the 39 Chevy and transplanted the 409 engine into the 39 Chevy, installing street tires in changing the rear and ratio to 3.07. This made a nice street machine but unfortunately I got in the middle of a divorce and eventually my ex-wife tried to get that car away from a former new boyfriend.

To prevent this from happening I traded for a 67 Chevy's station wagon which was a piece of junk, I rather set it on fire then let her get hands on it not to mention that we're in the middle of a gas shortage by then and no one was interested in car with 400 plus cubic inch engine they were looking for four-cylinder Japanese cars. I did have some other racing cars back in those days but the two cars and I described here were or my loves. It's been over 30 years since I had those two cars and I still missed them and I sometimes dream about having another similar car that it probably won't happen, I will probably have to settle for going to places where people congregate with their old cars and just looking with fond memories of my old cars.