Chevrolet Camaro MEGALODON – Procharged Camaro!

Megalodon is a 1969 Camaro named after a sixty-foot prehistoric shark, built alone by Virginia’s Brent Austin in a home garage over roughly a year. Under the shark-silver paint sits a 565 cubic-inch big block with an F3R ProCharger, 800 lb/hr injectors, and a TH400, in a combination Austin estimates is worth around 2,000 horsepower. Here is why a one-man build keeps outdrawing full shop cars at No Prep Mayhem, and what the setup choices reveal.

Most no-prep cars get their names from a hometown, a sponsor, or an inside joke that stopped being funny three seasons ago. This one is named after a sixty-foot prehistoric shark, which sounds like an overreach until the hood comes up. The car was built by one person, alone, in a home garage, over roughly a year, against a field of competitors fielding full crews and shop budgets. By every reasonable expectation it should have been outclassed the first time it rolled through the gate at No Prep Mayhem in Wichita. Instead it became the car people stop walking to watch. The silver paint that earned the nickname is the least intimidating thing about it, and the number underneath the hood explains why nobody laughs at the name.

One Man, One Garage, One Year

Megalodon is the work of Virginia builder Brent Austin, who designed, fabricated, and assembled the entire car himself over roughly a year. That timeline would be ambitious for a staffed shop with a lift, a fabrication bay, and a parts account. For one person working out of a home garage, it borders on unreasonable. Everything from the chassis work to the wiring to the final assembly came out of the same set of hands, which means every decision on the car reflects one builder’s judgment rather than a committee’s. That shows up in how cohesive the finished car is, and it shows up in how quickly Austin can diagnose something at the track.

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565 Cubic Inches and an F3R on the Nose

Under the silver paint sits a 565 cubic-inch big block wearing an F3R ProCharger, backed by a TH400 automatic, in a combination Austin estimates is worth roughly 2,000 horsepower. The F3R is near the top of ProCharger’s race lineup, a centrifugal supercharger built for exactly this kind of application rather than a street car looking for a bump. Pairing it with 565 cubic inches rather than a smaller displacement engine means the blower is not being asked to manufacture power from nothing. The engine already moves an enormous amount of air on its own, and the ProCharger multiplies a large number rather than rescuing a small one.

Why a Centrifugal Blower Instead of a Turbo

Centrifugal superchargers occupy an interesting middle ground between roots-style blowers and turbochargers. They are belt-driven, so boost rises predictably with engine speed and there is no waiting for exhaust energy to spool a turbine. That makes throttle response linear and, critically for no-prep, easy for a driver to modulate. A turbo can deliver more total power for the same package, but the transition into full boost is harder to manage when the track will not hold. On a surface where the difference between a win and a wasted run is whether the tires stay planted through the first hundred feet, predictable delivery is worth giving up some peak.

800-Pound Injectors and the Fuel Problem

The 800 lb/hr injectors are one of those specification details that quietly explains everything else about the build. Injectors of that capacity are not street parts. They exist to feed engines making four-digit power on fuel that has to be delivered in enormous volume, and specifying them means the entire fuel system behind them has been sized to match: pumps, lines, regulators, and return capacity all have to keep up. Fuel delivery is one of the most common failure points on high-boost builds precisely because it is easy to underestimate. A car making 2,000 horsepower that runs out of fuel at the top of the run is a very expensive way to learn about flow rates.

The TH400 Is Not a Compromise

The TH400 behind that engine is not a budget decision, it is the correct one. General Motors’ three-speed automatic has been the default choice for high-horsepower drag applications for decades because it is enormously strong, endlessly rebuildable, and thoroughly understood by every transmission builder in the sport. Its planetary gearsets and case can be built to survive power levels that would destroy more modern, more efficient units. In a car where the transmission needs to take repeated full-power hits on an unpredictable surface without becoming a variable, choosing the transmission with the deepest development history in drag racing is simply the low-risk answer.

Where the Shark Theme Actually Came From

The name came from the look, not the other way around. The metallic silver paint reads like shark skin under the lights, and Austin shaped the side vents to echo a shark’s fins, carrying the theme from the graphics through to the bodywork. Megalodon was a prehistoric shark estimated at up to roughly sixty feet in length, which makes it a reasonable shorthand for something oversized and predatory. The theme works because it is executed consistently rather than applied as a decal package, and because the car backs it up. A shark theme on a slow car is embarrassing. On this one it reads as accurate description.

Built to Hook on Whatever Surface Shows Up

The defining challenge of no-prep is that the surface changes, sometimes between rounds. A car set up perfectly for a sticky lane will spin its way through a slick one, and there is no opportunity to fix that with track prep. Austin set Megalodon up to hook on virtually any surface rather than optimizing for ideal conditions, which is a fundamentally different design brief. It means giving up some best-case performance in exchange for a car that produces a usable run under a much wider range of circumstances. That approach is why the car is a regular headliner at these events instead of a clip that went viral once.

The Advantage of Tuning Your Own Car

Austin also tunes the car himself, which he has described as a genuine competitive advantage on race day. The reasoning is practical: sitting in the driver’s seat, he already knows what the car did on the previous pass, what the surface felt like, and where the combination has margin. He does not need to describe a sensation to a tuner and wait for someone else’s interpretation of the data before making a timing change. In a format where conditions shift between rounds and the window to react is short, collapsing the distance between the person who felt the run and the person who adjusts the tune is worth real time.

Why This Build Resonates With the No-Prep Crowd

Cars like this one are why the no-prep scene grew the way it did. The format’s original appeal was that a determined individual with fabrication skill and a good combination could show up and beat operations with far more money behind them, because the surface neutralizes some of what money buys. Megalodon is that premise proven in public: a one-man, one-garage, one-year build sitting in the same lanes as full shop cars and drawing bigger crowds than most of them. The paint and the name get people to look. The fact that a single builder produced it is what keeps them talking about it afterward.

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