I'll say this, I was running bottom 11's in my chevelle back in the late 90's, and there were a few other classics doing the same at that time. My fathers GTO was another one. I was doing it with a very simple pump gas 454 combo, good aluminum heads, hydraulic roller. Very docile engine I drove to and from the track on drag radials, race the car and drive it home. Most guys were trailering stuff back then. To make things worse, the car scales 4,108 lbs. and has working A/C. If I could take 3-400 lbs. out of the car it would have tickled the high 10's back then. My father was doing the same with a similar built 455 Pontiac.
Fast forward today, I still have the chevelle, still the same untouched combo it was then. I drive the car everywhere and it still runs strong. However as strange as it may sound, today the car isn't fast, it's considered fairly slow among a lot of other classics. I can attend a local cruise here with 400-500 cars and find 2-3 cars in every isle way that are likely much quicker than my heap. A lot of them today run more than 500 cubes, and if that's not enough, quite a few of them equipped with Pro-chargers making silly power. I probably don't stand a chance with some of them and I'm okay with that. My father on the other hand still has that bug. The 455 got replaced with a pump gas 571 making 200 more HP than before. I can't compete with that so I tend to leave my junk at home and ride with him
