WHEN IT comes to genuinely street driven cars at Drag Week we reckon nothing beats Frank Saponaro’s ’67 Chevy II Nova wagon. Not only did it complete Drag Week, but it also ran sevens at every track and did the trip without towing a trailer or even changing tyres.

It was a brand new combo; “We only just got it done,” Frank told us at registration, “It’s got about five passes on it.” At that stage the wagon had run a quickest of 8.0@176mph, but Frank blew that time out of the water on the very first pass at Gateway Motorsports Park with a 7.85@183mph. He then backed that up with a 7.86@181mph at Indy, a 7.82@181mph at Great Lakes and a 7.98@179mph at Cordova. The final day, back at Gateway, Frank ran a 7.97@178mph to complete his quintet of seven-second passes.

Under the hood there’s a 540ci big block Chev with a pair of 82mm turbos and an Australian-made Haltech EFI system. Frank was also sourcing some tuning help from Dale Heiler at Castle Hill Performance back in Australia. To help keep the revs down on the highway the nine-inch had a set of 3.2 gears, and there was a Gear Vendors overdrive bolted to the back of the Turbo 400 transmission as well. As we mentioned before, Frank did the whole trip on the same 315 size drag radials. His race prep consisted of emptying out the back of the wagon and pulling the filters off the turbos; how awesome is that?

It’s a killer combo and we caught up with Frank for a short chat before he hit the track on day five; check it out.