The truth about Smokey Yunick’s 7/8-scale Chevelle

[Jamie]

A short but interesting read that puts the myth to bed.

[DieselFit]

Whoa this article is quite surprising. I always believed the myth. Thanks for sharing!

[balthazar]

Here's the copy :

>>"Let’s do a straight comparison with the production version, line by line, inch by inch.

Well, look at that. DIsappointingly stock, isn’t it? It’s clearly not a scale model in any sense..."<<

and here's the pic :

The article claims the body was stock, except it was moved forward on the chassis a few inches. The pic has the bodies aligned, and we can see that the axle lines are shifted forward on #13. But look closer; the door handles, the side glass seam and the top of the vent window are NOT aligned. I would initially attribute this to differences in distance & camera angle/distortion, but I dunno here...

The article crows victory in disproving the "7/8th" claim (and the 15/16th claim), when clearly that was hyperbole. The car was NOT stock in many ways beyond those allowed, Smokey was tops in rule book interpretation, and THAT is the myth- just what were all the things done to the car, not the singular 'smaller body' aspect.

You didn't need an inch at 200 MPH when an eighth of an inch made a notable difference.

Edited September 7, 2013 by balthazar

[Jamie]

I like car builders that think outside the box and creatively interpret the rule book.

Like the infamous 1997 Hendrick Motorsports T-Rex car that was specifically constructed to take advantages of grey areas in the NASCAR rule book. It won its first and only race, and then NASCAR rewrote the rule book before the next race to specifically outlaw the car.

clicky