Seeing your 1st Mopar 'Upset' a Chevy

Another story from back in HS:

One of my friends had a 1968 El Camino that he and his dad built. The car was way too nice for any of us to believe his dads wallet didnt play a part in the creation. That said, it was a great car. 1968, SS, black on black, 396, 4 spd. He by far had one of the cleanest rides in HS.
Needless to say my burger joint budget built my little Valiant very slowly. He would always give me a hard time. He'd mock my car as did others occasionally. Nothing outside the normal trash talking I suppose.
Anyhow, after I built my 360 and had been working on it for a while, he had been talking trash and I told him "Lets see what happens at the track...." "You may be surprised!"

We would all do the HS drags every Friday night, and it just so happened we lined up that next Friday night.

Keep in mind the conbinations here.
His Elky: 396, 4 spd, 3800lbs-ish?
My Valiant: 360 (with 318 heads) single plane intake, 500cfm, Stock 904 trans. (headers wide open! LOL
My combination of parts was a damn mess!!!

We line up, Ive got the RPMs hanging around 2500, and the suspension is loaded as the /6 torsion bars are still in the car so the front has lifted a few inches, and Im sitting on the homemade pinion snubber.

Tree gives us the go-ahead and before I know it, I dont see him in my peripheral any longer and I realize he had to be spinning! I get half track and cant believe I have such a damn jump on him that I may actually beat him.

Then......... I hear it... I hear that big block screaming and gaining on me. He finally catches me at about 3/4 track. Needless to say he snatched the win at the last second.

What was so great about it was he came back around to say how surprised he was and from then on he gave a little more credit to the Valiant that almost made a mockery of his high dollar big block!

We are still friends today and I may very well get to visit with him after all these years...next month. :)