Stick Shift GTO is a Drag Strip Beast.
A fast stick shift GTO is a rarity, but thankfully this work in progress has been caught on camera tearing up the drag strip.
This video comes from the YouTube channel BigKleib34 and gives us a great rundown on the car, as well as footage of it in action. If you wonder about the drivers slow reaction off the line, this is a test and tune day. We suspect the owner will be a bit quicker to get his clutch up on race days.
The owner is a gentleman called Dalton Winfield. His GTO is a 2005 model he bought in 2008 and promptly started giving the bolt on treatment. Then he added cams and nitrous, and it’s snowballed from there.
Currently, it has an ERL Performance 366 LS2 with a full head package and around 18 pounds of boost. The owner claims around 800-hp at the tires, and after seeing the footage there is no reason to doubt that. It could even be the fastest stick shift GTO of its vintage out there.
Dalton plans to get suspension issues worked out next. He’s also been nursing a clunky transmission. The back end of the drivetrain has been beefed up, but the transmission is still the original and having a full rebuild before he brings it back to the track. He knows it will run 9-second quarter-miles with an auto, but Dalton wants to be the first (that we know of as well) stick shift V-body GTO to run under 10 seconds. He acknowledges that with a better chassis the engine could even go to 8-seconds. We love that Dalton is stubbornly pushing this monster as far as it will go before doing so.
We certainly hope to see more of Dalton’s beastly behemoth soon. Preferably running those 9-second quarter-miles.
