Meet the Fleet – Muscle Cars: ’67 Chevy Nova SS

• BODY: Auto World
• WHEELS & TIRES: Road Race Replicas

“You don’t understand what happens, do you? They make ten thousand cars, they make them exactly the same way, and one or two of ’em turn out to be something special. Nobody knows why.”

• Dean Jones as Jim Douglass in “The Love Bug”

As time has gone on and wear has set in, what was already a fast car has become-comparatively, at least-even faster. The recently concluded 1985 season time trials proved that; what’s surprising is this car’s staying power: its one of my earlier additions to my fleet; I bought it in the spring of 2020, and its been raced hard and has a lot of mileage, yet it still runs as good as new. This car was given the nickname “The Slider” due to its tendency to consistently wipe out on one of the banked turns at Drag City Mk. II when I was still racing on that Tyco track in the toy room; that tendency annoyed me, but it was the car’s prodigious speed that caused that, and once I learned to back off on the throttle at just the right instant, she began consistently winning races. Unlike some of the top performers on that track that didn’t make the transition to the much longer Mk IV AFX track too well, this car took the new length with gusto and seems to have done even better with more distance.

Hard to say why, other than, like real cars back in the day, some cars come off the assembly line tighter and better than others. Other than the Road Race Replicas “Stones” wheels and the low profile tires, this car hasn’t been customized, and still runs with its stock field magnets, stock axles (though clipped to accommodate the wheels), and even still has its original brushes. To still perform like it does is kind of amazing!

All that hard racing mileage is because It took owner Jeremy “Lucky” Logan quite a while to finally make it, but as the 1984 racing season drew to a close, he earned his place as the 6^th inductee into “Team ’67 Heaven.” “The Slider” is powered by a ¾ race 327 small block equipped with milled aluminum 202mm heads, a custom Clay Smith cam, a high rise Edelbroker Performer RPM manifold topped with a Carter 750cfm AFB. While none of this seems like rocket science, the crew at The Outlaw Garage that built the engine in 1982 really outdid themselves. The quick-revving mill backs up to a Muncie M22 “Rock Crusher” 4-speed and connects to a 3:73 12-bolt limited slip rear, while disk brakes on custom machined spindles keep everything in line. Its not rocket science, but all the parts come together to make far more than their sum! Her elegant but subdued “Mist Blue” paint scheme with the restored but original spec matching blue vinyl interior and overall stock appearance make this car a sleeper, but at this point the regulars at Drag City know what’s up: that “Lucky” Logan and “The Slider” are on the short list to be the next tournament champions of the 1985 muscle car racing season!