1932–1971
Dick Harrell
Drag racer and engine builder — “Mr. Chevrolet”
The dealer-tuner Camaros are filed under the dealerships' names. The engineering behind several of them was often the same man. Dick Harrell built high-performance cars for Nickey Chevrolet from 1966, engineered conversions sold through Yenko's channels, ran his own Performance Center in Kansas City, and did development work on the all-aluminium ZL-1 427 — while racing at the front of NHRA and AHRA competition throughout.
He got the name after GM withdrew from factory racing in the mid-1960s. With Chevrolet officially absent from the sport, Harrell was in effect the brand's unofficial presence — "Mr. Chevrolet" was a description of a vacuum as much as of a driver.
From 1966 he engineered and built high-performance cars for Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago. He is widely credited with installing the first 427 in a Camaro sold as a dealer-installed new car, in 1967 — but both sources located for this hedge the claim in the same words, "it is believed", and neither cites a record. It is recorded here as the widely-repeated attribution it is rather than as an established first.
He later engineered 350 and 427 conversions sold through Span, Inc., marketed as street-or-strip cars, and opened the Dick Harrell Performance Center in Kansas City in 1968, building 427 Camaros, Chevelles and Novas through authorised Chevrolet dealers. No reliable production count has been found for any of it.
The factory connection ran deeper than parts. He is credited with development work on the all-aluminium ZL-1 427 that went into the COPO 9560 Camaros, and with building competition automatic 427 Novas out of Fred Gibb's COPO order to establish NHRA's automatic class — which is the same COPO machinery, and the same Fred Gibb, behind the ZL1 Camaro itself.
His racing record is the part most in need of independent checking: the fullest account of it comes from the modern Performance Center brand's own history page, which is promoting a revived name. The titles are listed here with that caveat attached.
Key beats
- 1962 NHRA Super Stock class champion
- 1963 AHRA Winter Nationals winner; AHRA speed record of 118.57 mph in A/SM that May
- 1969 AHRA Driver of the Year in fuel funny car; named Driver of the Decade in 1970
- Killed 12 September 1971 at a Toronto drag strip, aged 39