As any diehard NASCAR fan will tell you, the early days of the sport looked quite a bit different from the high-dollar speed circus we know today. Back then, NASCAR saw a plethora of competitors and teams hit the track on a regular basis, with the sort of cars that were actually purchasable at local dealers – you know, stock cars. Roy Mayne was a racer during that era, competing as an independent driver between 1963 and 1974, with 139 races to his name. The 1965 Chevrolet Impala featured here was the machine that Mayne drove to his career-best fourth-place finish at Darlington in 1965.
Mayne’s Chevrolet Impala faced stout competition from the Ford Galaxies that dominated NASCAR at the time. After the car had competed in a total of 14 Grand National Races, it was parked and promptly forgotten.
Fast forward to 2010, the Chevrolet Impala racer resurfaced on the net as a rusty barn find, and was eventually purchased by enthusiast racer Shaun Coleman. Coleman then set about restoring the old NASCAR competitor to its former glory with a complete period-correct rebuild.
The restoration included a respray in the car’s original factory color. The shade is dubbed Evening Orchid, and was offered as a special order paint color for the 1965 model year.
As boldly emblazoned on the body work, the car was also fitted with a period-correct NASCAR-spec 427 cubic-inch V8 engine, which produces 450 horsepower at 5,500 rpm and connects to the rear tires through a four-speed manual transmission.
Immediately following the 40-day rebuild blitz, Coleman brought the revitalized Chevrolet Impala to Laguna Seca for the Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where it competed on track against similarly prepped classic race cars.
Now, the Chevrolet Impala NASCAR competitor is on loan to LeMay – America’s Car Museum in Tacoma, Washington, which recently opened a new exhibit dedicated to manufacturer and racer Steve Saleen, as covered by our sister publication, Ford Authority.
Check out this Chevrolet Impala NASCAR racer in our exclusive photo gallery below, and make sure to subscribe to GM Authority for more Chevrolet Impala news, Chevrolet news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Comments
Giddy up Evening Orchid!
Back when win on Sunday, sell on Monday was a real thing
That car harkens back to a time when stock car racing was actually interesting and worth watching. The days of car originality, where they were all different from each other rather than all 30+ cars in the field being nearly identical copies other than a few decals on the hood. NASCAR long since killed off any chance for mechanical innovation, again stifling any real competition among brands. Shoot; they mandated carburetors up until 2012 or so, 30 years after fuel injection became commonplace on even econo-boxes. “Stock “car racing has been turned into little more than a celebrity contest.
Evening Orchid use to see a lot of that color back in the day, a guy in our town had a 1965 GTO that color . Now I never see it at all not even at the Woodward Dream Cruise!
I understand these NASCAR Chevy 427’s had a cross ram intake and twin 4 barrels. I’ve googled these engines and can find nothing but I guy I knew had one sitting in his garage and it had a cross ram and twin barrels and he said it was ex-1960’s NASCAR. Am I correct?
AFAIK, all factory-backed stock car teams back then ran Chevrolet big-blocks with a single 4-barrel carb. As far as RPO engines were concerned, the 400-and 435-horse 427 engine option in late-60s Corvettes ran a 3, 2-barrel carb setup, but it never showed up on any stock car engines.
In the very early 60s, however, some independent stock car racers were known to run whatever they could get away with; Smokey Yunick, among a few others racing at the time, comes to mind here.
You may be thinking of the Z28 small-block (302) option in the early 60s which offered a 2, 4-barrel setup on a cross ram intake. This was an extremely rare option, and only a handful of cars ever left the factory so equipped, most of which went to Trans Am series teams at the time. An original Z28 sporting this setup would be very valuable today.
the 2×4 cross ram set on the Z/28 was in the late 60’s. maybe really late, like 1969 late. not sure if any left the factory with that setup. dealer(customer) installed, same way with factory headers. they were in the trunk. almost every review i’ve ever read said the 2×4 setup didn’t do much of anything for the street but was great for Trans-Am racing
Yes, late ’60s Camaros, not early.
And indeed, that manifold (and the 2nd carburetor) didn’t help below about 4500 rpm, but above, it produced considerable power increase over the regular high-rise single-4 barrel manifold on the DZ engine.
Thanks for all the comments. The engine I saw was not a small block from a Z28, it was definitely a big block engine and he said it was a genuine NASCAR 427 from the late 60’s. It had a cross manifold on it and twin 4 barrels so my guess now is that it was a vintage Edelbrock XC-96 big block cross ram manifold (or similar) fitted to that NASCAR engine. Google the XC-96 and you’ll see what I mean. That’s where I got confused thinking the cross ram was genuine NASCAR when only the engine itself was Cheers for all your remarks.
Hi guys, Shaun Coleman here owner and restorer (and sometimes race car driver) of this car — if anyone is interested in seeing the photos of the restoration you can go to my website http://nascarimpala.com