While out looking for cool videos to share with our readers, we came across a video of John Martin’s Chevelle launching hard and, unfortunately, coming back down to Earth as quickly as it went up. His eight second Chevelle looked incredible at the strip; the burnouts were flawless and the launches were well under control as he hit consistent high eight-second passes. He put the front wheels in the air each time, and it made for some great video.
Then it happened. While Martin was staging, the car got a little wicked on him as the front end jumped around lining up at the tree.”We were shooting for 8.50’s on that pass but missed the suspension tune and N2O progressive timer set up,” he told us. When the Christmas tree lit up, the Chevelle launched and stood the car up touching the rear bumper to pavement, and the front end slammed down to Earth hard enough to crack the trans pan.
Martin saw the awesome video of his Wheelie of Misfortune, and let us know that he has redeemed himself with a clean pass on the repaired Chevelle. This time, he still put the front end in the air, but he controlled the wheelie and brought it down under power for an 8.71 pass at 153 mph, his best ET to date.
Martin told us the car is all steel with the exception of the hood. He has NOS fenders and quarter panels, and the street legal car is registered and insured, with a full interior and comes in at about 3650 lbs.
The car doesn’t get much street duty, and we can see why. The 540-inch BBC has a nitrous pro flow plate, and is backed by an ATI TH400. He’s providing the launch-time entertainment on Mickey Thompson 28×10.5 M/T tires. He plans on running the Chevelle in the 8.50 index class at Cecil County Dragway’s streetcar shootout series in 2015.