No, your eyes would not deceive you if you looked inside Wayne Linder Jr.’s Super Street 1957 Chevy and saw a radar detector and a stereo tape player.
Although Linder, 41, who won the 2010 Division 6 Super Street title, has raced the car 20-plus years, it is more street car than race car. Take away the cowl hood, wheels, tires, competition number, S/ST designation, and bright yellow paint, and the Chevy looks stock.
One statistic explains why the Chevy is no ordinary racer: It weighs a hefty 3,800 pounds. Linder has retained the stock sheet metal (except for the fiberglass hood), windows, trim, and bumpers. The inner fenders, heater, stock wiring, and window mechanisms are in place, and the headlights and turn signals work. The car even has mufflers, good for when he drives the Chevy two times a year to car shows near his home in Outlook, Wash.
No, your eyes would not deceive you if you looked inside Wayne Linder Jr.’s Super Street 1957 Chevy and saw a radar detector and a stereo tape player.
Although Linder, 41, who won the 2010 Division 6 Super Street title, has raced the car 20-plus years, it is more street car than race car. Take away the cowl hood, wheels, tires, competition number, S/ST designation, and bright yellow paint, and the Chevy looks stock.
One statistic explains why the Chevy is no ordinary racer: It weighs a hefty 3,800 pounds. Linder has retained the stock sheet metal (except for the fiberglass hood), windows, trim, and bumpers. The inner fenders, heater, stock wiring, and window mechanisms are in place, and the headlights and turn signals work. The car even has mufflers, good for when he drives the Chevy two times a year to car shows near his home in Outlook, Wash.
Why not put the car on a diet? “I would not want to tear up the car like that,” Linder said. “I can always put in a mild big block and drive it on the street.” The car’s speed is limited to 135 m.p.h. to get by with a rollbar instead of a cage, prompting more interior modifications.
“I get a lot of compliments in the pits and staging lanes,” said Linder, who has worked as a mechanic for the City of Sunnyside government since 1997. “Guys my age tell me the car is like the cars they remember driving when they were younger. It’s one of the cooler cars because it’s not like the Corvette roadsters and dragsters that all look the same.”
Linder received the ’57 stock as a 15th-birthday gift in 1985 from his father Wayne, a long-time Northwest racer who lives in Sunnyside, Wash., and runs a Top Sportsman 1995 Dodge Daytona. Linder Jr. wanted a yellow ’57 after seeing one in the 1980 movie “Hollywood Knights” about rebellious car-club teens in Beverly Hills.
The Linders replaced the original 283, three-speed trans, and rearend with a 400-inch small block, Turbo 400, and Dana 60. In 1987 Linder Jr. began driving the car on the street and bracket racing at Renegade Raceways in nearby Yakima, Wash. He did his share of street racing, too, and was defeated just once.
With the 1997 inception of Super Street, Linder found an on-track home for the car. For the first three years he was in the top 10 in division points. Midway through 2000 a broken rod ended his season. In 2001-07 he drove the Super Gas roadster of Sunnyside resident John Dalrymple, winning five division events, a national open, two years on the division Jeg’s All-Stars team, five top-10 division points rankings, and a Renegade track title. Linder returned to his Chevy in 2008, runner-upped at the ’08 Seattle national event, and gained another division Jeg’s All-Stars position in 2011.
The car has a 555-inch, 900-horsepower Chevy engine built by friend Rob Asbury of Yakima. Linder assembled the Turbo 400 trans with a Hughes converter, and the rearend has 4.56 gear and Hoosier 14×32 slicks. The engine revs 7,500 at the finish line, where the Chevy has recorded a best of 9.82 at 134.
Rod breakage June 17 at the Spokane County Raceway divisional cut short Linder’s season. Asbury loaned Linder an engine for the All-Stars race and the Seattle national event and is building a new engine, but it won’t be running this year. In 2012 Linder will step away from Super Street and concentrate on big-dollar bracket races.
“The car works well, and I feel really comfortable in it,” Linder said. “I’ll never get rid of it. I’ve had it 26 years already, and I’ve had a lot of good times and good memories with it.”
And no doubt many more to come.
