Top Super Stock

Not long after winning the Stock Eliminator trophy at the inaugural Winternationals in 1961, Don Nicholson was back at the dragstrip with his Impala. The editors of Motor Life magazine had invited him to Riverside Raceway to see what it was like to drive “the hottest stock drag racer in the country” and also learn from Nicholson what made the car so fast. “His best time (although he didn’t run this fast while winning) was 109.48 mph in 13.19 seconds,” wrote the magazine’s Wayne Thomas, “a speed which rocked the spectators no more than if a DC-3 had broken the sound barrier.”

- Drew Hardin

A big factor in Nicholson’s success at Pomona was Chevy’s brand-new 409. “The 409 is Chevrolet’s newest, hottest, and biggest-ever engine,” Thomas wrote, “a bored and stroked successor to their highly successful 348-inch mill.” Southern California Chevy performance guru Bill Thomas had ordered a fresh 409 from the factory—“one of the very first on the West Coast,” said the magazine—and Nicholson spent a few days going over the motor, making what few modifications were allowed under NHRA’s stock-class rules.