Nitrous Oxide Fed Hoopty Impala Drag Races Shelby GT500 & LX – 1/4 Mile Video – Road Test TV

A nitrous-fed 1970 Chevy Impala, a four-door family sedan by any normal definition, lines up against a Mustang LX and a supercharged Shelby GT500 in this quarter-mile footage. The results have viewers arguing for years about sandbagging, wheel size, and whether an unglamorous big-block sedan deserves a spot in the same conversation as a factory-supercharged Mustang. Watch to see who actually crosses the stripe first.

A four-door 1970 Chevy Impala is not supposed to be the fastest thing at the drag strip. It is a family sedan, built to haul kids and groceries, not to embarrass purpose-built performance cars a generation newer. And yet here it is, lined up against not one but two Ford Mustangs, an LX and a supercharged GT500, and holding its own well enough that the comments underneath this video are still debating exactly how much faster it could go if the driver stopped sandbagging.

A Family Sedan That Should Not Be This Fast

Road Test TV’s footage shows this nitrous-fed big block Impala running quarter-mile passes against both a Mustang LX and a Shelby GT500, two cars separated by roughly a decade of engineering advancement and, in the GT500’s case, factory forced induction. That the Impala is even competitive in this field says everything about what a nitrous-oxide system can do to an already stout big block, injecting a burst of extra oxygen that lets the engine burn more fuel per cycle and generate a genuine, if temporary, horsepower spike exactly when the driver needs it most, right off the starting line.

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What Nitrous Actually Does at the Starting Line

One commenter, watching closely, argues the Impala’s driver is “sand bagging,” pointing to the holeshot and how “soft its running down the track” on an eleven-second pass as evidence there is more in reserve than the car is showing on this particular run. That kind of second-guessing is common in drag racing footage, where elapsed time alone rarely tells the whole story, reaction time, gearing, and how hard a driver is willing to push a decades-old sedan on camera all factor into what actually shows up on the time slip.

The Sandbagging Debate That Will Not Die

The comments also reveal an owner’s perspective buried in the thread: one viewer says a 1970 Impala four-door was his first car, and watching this footage has him “thinking about dragging it too.” That casual aside is a reminder of just how common full-size Chevrolets were on American roads in period, everyday family transportation that, in the right hands with the right combination under the hood, could suddenly become a legitimate drag strip contender without anyone outside the car knowing what was hiding under that long, unassuming hood.

An Everyday Car With a Second Life

Wheel choice draws just as much debate as the actual race. Commenters argue over whether the car is running 22s, 24s, or 26-inch wheels, and opinions split hard on whether the big rims help or hurt the car’s classic lines. One viewer calls the combination a way to “ruin a perfectly good classic,” arguing the car “looks like garbage” dressed this way, while another simply shrugs that “a win is a win,” regardless of what is bolted to the corners. That tension, between period-correct restoration and modern show-car styling, shows up constantly in muscle car culture, and this Impala sits right at the center of it.

22s, 24s, or 26s: The Wheel War

Nitrous-fed full-size Chevrolets occupy an unusual niche in drag racing history. Unlike purpose-built muscle cars from the same era, cars like the Chevelle SS or Camaro SS, a big-block Impala sedan was never marketed as a performance flagship, it was simply the biggest, heaviest car in Chevrolet’s regular lineup, available with the same big-block options as its more glamorous siblings. Builders who took that unglamorous starting point and added nitrous were making a deliberate statement, that a genuinely quick car does not need a badge that says SS or Super Sport to back it up at the strip.

Why Full-Size Chevys Are the Sleeper Choice

Whatever the final verdict on wheel size or sandbagging turns out to be, this Impala’s biggest achievement is simply showing up on the same sheet of quarter-mile times as a Shelby GT500 and holding its own. Four decades of engineering separate these cars on paper, and yet a nitrous bottle and a stout big block were enough to make the fight genuinely competitive, which is exactly the kind of underdog story that keeps drag strip footage like this circulating long after the actual race weekend has been forgotten.

An Underdog Story Fifty Years in the Making

Big-block Impalas of this generation typically carried a 396 or 454-cubic-inch engine depending on trim and order sheet, both of which were also available in Chevelles and Camaros wearing far more aggressive badging. That shared parts bin is exactly why a sedan like this can hang with dedicated muscle cars once the right combination of compression, cam, and nitrous is dialed in, the underlying hardware was never far off from what GM was bolting into its performance flagships, it just arrived wrapped in four doors and a much larger, heavier body that most drag racers overlooked entirely.

The Shared Engine Bay Behind the Badge

Road Test TV’s format, filming real quarter-mile passes rather than relying on dyno charts or manufacturer claims, is exactly what makes a matchup like this worth watching decades later. A magazine road test from 1970 would never have paired a family Impala against a Shelby GT500 built years after the Impala left the factory, there was no reason to in period. It took footage like this, and an audience willing to argue about sandbagging and wheel choice in the comments, to give this unlikely pairing a second life online, long after either car’s original owner could have imagined the comparison. Whether the final word belongs to the Impala or one of the two Mustangs, the footage has already done its job: it turned an unassuming family sedan into a genuine talking point among drag racing fans who never expected to spend this much time debating a four-door’s quarter-mile potential. That is a bigger accomplishment than any single elapsed time on a time slip, and it is exactly why this pass keeps resurfacing in muscle car circles years after it was filmed. Long may that debate continue.

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