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This 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee carries the rare A12 package, a 463-dollar option that swapped in a 440-cubic-inch V8 wearing three two-barrel carburetors for one strange mid-year run. Only 1,907 were built before Dodge moved on. Stock, these cars ran mid-13-second quarter miles, embarrassing plenty of pricier machinery on the strip.
A nitro Top Fuel car has no transmission and no gear changes, which means the clutch alone meters roughly eleven thousand horsepower to the tires across the entire run. It is tuned by adding and removing steel counterweights measured in grams, runs at friction temperatures near 3,700 degrees, and gets rebuilt between nearly every round. Here is how the system actually works, and why the clutch is where a nitro race is really won.
Ford named its most famous racing engine after a number that was not even accurate. The block actually displaced 425.98 cubic inches, but the sanctioning bodies had set 427 as the ceiling, so Ford built to the limit and rounded up. That engine went on to win Le Mans outright, get one variant banned from NASCAR before it could race, and become the most valuable set of casting numbers in the Ford world. Here is why it still matters.