1955 Chevy Bel Air Gives C8 Corvette a Scare at the Drag Strip
It’s unclear what’s powering this 1955 Chevy Bel Air, but good driving nearly secured the owner a win over a C8 Corvette.
There’s no doubt that newer performance-focused vehicles (and even some that aren’t traditional models of that type) are rather quick, and in many cases, far quicker than pretty much anything built in prior decades. This is what we like to call progress, and these days, one can get something like, say, 300 horsepower in anything from a hot hatch to a minivan, numbers that were reserved for only the top sports cars not terribly long ago. However, when we add modifications into the mix, vintage machines like this 1955 Chevy Bel Air are obviously capable of holding their own against newer rides like the C8 Corvette.
That fact is on full display in this video from SSDRacer, which shows a modified 1955 Chevy Bel Air racing a C8 Corvette at an eighth-mile drag strip. Unfortunately, we don’t have many details to go by in terms of what’s been done to the old Bow Tie sedan, save for the fact that it’s modified. The C8, on the other hand, is reportedly bone stock, though, in all fairness, we are talking about a car that does 0-60 in less than three seconds from the factory while covering the quarter-mile in the low 11-second range.
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This particular 2023 Corvette belongs to the purveyor of the channel, who has previously raced it against all kinds of machines, such as a pair of Teslas, some modern BMWs, Mopar machinery, a Ford Mustang GT, and some Mercedes-AMG models. On this particular fair weather day, he’s lining up against something totally different, however – a four-door 1955 Chevy Bel Air that’s in quite nice shape.
On this non-prepped surface, the driver of the vintage Bow Tie manages to cut a far better light than his newer rival, which helps him jump out to an early lead. This would obviously come as shocking to most – though in all fairness, we have no idea what’s under the hood of the Bel Air – but it isn’t long before the C8 takes over and secures a win by running 8.04 seconds at 70 mph versus the Bel Air’s 8.72-second pass at 81 mph. Not exactly what we’d expect to see, but then again, that’s why we love drag racing so much – after all, it’s almost always full of surprises.
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