Camaro SS396 / 375 (L78) vs 340 Dodge Dart GTS- 1/4 Mile Drag Race Video – Road Test TV

A 1969 Dodge Dart GTS with a small block 340 lines up against a 1969 Camaro SS 396 packing the rare solid-lifter L78, and the spec sheet says this should not even be a contest. It nearly wasn’t, just not in the direction anyone expected. Watch the quarter mile that has Mopar and Chevy fans still arguing over which engine really won.

On paper, this race should not be close. A 396-cubic-inch big block against a 340-cubic-inch small block sounds like a mismatch before the tree even drops. But cubic inches only tell part of the story at a drag strip, and what actually happens over this quarter mile is close enough that it has been dividing Mopar and Chevy fans in the comments for years. Sometimes the smaller engine is the one that should be worried. This time, it might be the other way around.

Big Block Versus Small Block, By the Numbers

Road Test TV’s footage pits a 1969 Dodge Dart GTS, one of only 3,645 built that year, against a 1969 Camaro SS 396 running the rare solid-lifter L78 option, an engine built in just 4,889 examples. Both cars are legitimate rarities in their own right, but they arrive at the line representing very different philosophies. The Dart’s 340 small block was rated at 275 horsepower from the factory, conservative by muscle car standards of the era. The Camaro’s L78 396 carried an official rating of 375 horsepower, putting more than 100 horsepower on paper between the two combatants before either driver even stages.

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A Tenth of a Second Says the Spec Sheet Lied

What the comments make clear is that the factory horsepower numbers do not tell the whole story. One commenter who owned a 1968 Barracuda with the same basic 340 says it ran mid-14s all day at roughly 100 mph, completely stock, numbers that would embarrass plenty of bigger-displacement cars from the same showroom floor. Another calls the 340 “a giant killer” for a reason, pointing out that even losing this exact race, the Dart trailed by roughly a tenth of a second, a margin so small it barely counts as losing at all against a car rated 100 horsepower stronger on paper.

Why the 340 Has a Cult Following

Mopar’s 340 has a well-earned reputation in muscle car circles as one of the most underrated small blocks Detroit ever built. With a forged crank, big-valve heads borrowed from larger engines, and a compact, high-revving nature that big blocks of the era simply could not match, the 340 consistently punched above the number stamped on its factory horsepower rating. Commenters here echo that reputation directly, with one owner recalling that his own 340 Dart “put away many big block 396s, 440s, and 428 Cobra Jets” during street runs in the early 1970s, and calling factory ratings on the engine “way underrated” across the board.

The L78: Chevy’s Solid-Lifter Secret Weapon

The L78 396 in this Camaro is no ordinary big block either. Unlike the more common hydraulic-lifter 396 offered across Chevrolet’s lineup, the L78 used solid lifters, requiring more frequent valve adjustments in exchange for higher sustainable RPM and a genuinely aggressive powerband built for exactly this kind of competition. Only 4,889 Camaros left the factory with this option in 1969, making it nearly as scarce as the Dart it is racing here, and giving this matchup a rarity-versus-rarity dimension that goes beyond the simple big-block-versus-small-block framing most viewers bring to it.

Rarity Versus Rarity at the Starting Line

Rarity aside, the result on the track is what keeps this video in circulation. Commenters describing the race note the Camaro “cut a good light” while the Dart was “late off the line but still hung in there very well,” suggesting the final margin might have been even closer, or reversed entirely, with an equally clean launch from both drivers. That kind of close-fought result, decided as much by reaction time and driver skill as raw cubic inches, is exactly the kind of drag race muscle car fans replay in their heads long after the video ends.

What the Reaction Times Really Decided

Fifty-plus years after this race happened, the 340-versus-396 debate has not cooled off. Chrysler loyalists still argue the small block should be judged by what it does with less displacement, not penalized for lacking the big block’s raw numbers, while Chevy fans point to the L78’s rarity and race-bred solid-lifter valvetrain as proof that Detroit’s biggest engines earned their reputation honestly. Both sides have a case, and this exact footage, one tenth of a second apart at the stripe, is Exhibit A for either argument depending on which side of the fence you are standing on.

A Debate That Has Not Cooled in 50 Years

Production numbers this low on both sides of the race also say something about how Mopar and Chevy allocated their most serious performance parts in 1969. Neither manufacturer expected huge volume on cars built this way, the 340 GTS Dart and the L78 Camaro were both niche orders aimed at buyers who already knew exactly what they wanted under the hood before they ever set foot in a dealership. That kind of intentional, informed buyer is a big part of why surviving examples of either car command real money today, decades removed from a showroom floor that mostly moved base V8 and small-block cars to a much less demanding customer base.

Two Niche Orders From Two Different Factories

Road Test TV has built a substantial library of matchups exactly like this one, pulling era-correct muscle cars together at real dragstrips rather than relying on stock footage or studio comparisons. That approach gives viewers something spec sheets alone cannot: an actual result, with actual reaction times and actual elapsed times, that either confirms or upends the assumptions built into a magazine road test decades earlier. This particular pairing, a rare small block against a rare big block, is exactly the kind of matchup that rewards watching the run itself instead of just trusting the horsepower numbers stamped on a build sheet. Fifty years on, that is still the appeal of footage like this: two rare survivors, two die-hard fan bases, and one quarter mile that settled absolutely nothing except bragging rights for whoever happened to be watching that day. That is exactly why it is still being shared and argued over more than half a century after both cars rolled off their respective assembly lines.

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