Why No 421 Super Duty in current NHRA Guide?

[DeuceCoupe]

Originally Posted by Dwight Southerland

Pontiac did produce 421 SD "Swiss cheese" cars in 1963. I watched one race locally when the cars were new and the driver, Charlie Mitchell, is a local hero. The car he had was a silver Catalina coupe with a 3-speed. Before that, he had a red '62 Catalina light weight car with a four speed. My only explanation is that Pontiac did not produce enough of one model to get approval by NHRA. There is some inconsistency in the decisions that have been made by NHRA for some 1960s specialty cars, and maybe this falls into that bucket.

There could be some logic to the numbers - IIRC, NHRA had a minimum of 100 at one time, then 50 in 1964, but I think it was for a given ENGINE AND a given MODEL.


So, there were only 57 Z11 Chevs, but they were all 427/430hp and all 2door hardtops.
There were only 50 Lightweight Galaxies, but they were all 427 HiRisers and all 2door hardtops.


There were about 74 SuperDuty Cats, but they left the FACTORY as different models (post vs hardtop vs GrandPrix) and with different engines - in fact, all the Swiss Cheese Cats are factory 389-2bbl-3spd cars so they would not count as SuperDuty cars, let alone the holes in the frame.


There are 23 Cat Hardtops with the FACTORY 421/410hp, that is the most common model/engine combo of all the "Super Duty" cars McCarthy lists - and 23 would not meet the minimum.


I bet that's it! So with 74 "Super Duty Cars", a lot of books sorta-rightfully assume they existed, but the 23 common model/engine cars was not enough for NHRA.


I looked for a Mitchell car in McCarthy's book but don't see one - there are only 14 Swiss Cheese cars so it might be possible to hunt it down. McCarthy says in his book (1989) that 11 of the 14 had been found.