Unless you’re tooling around town in an Air Force rocket sled or John Force’s Funny Car, chances are you don’t have anywhere near the huevos to go head-to-head with Brian Bedford’s ’68 Chevelle.

Subaru-driving apostates and Consumer Reports subscribers may question the judgment – and possibly even the sanity – of a man who drops a fortified fuelie fat block into a car manufactured during the later days to the Johnson administration, but in an age when the automotive landscape is increasingly dominated by porcine sport-utes and innocuous, ovoid "everycars," we say, "More power to him."

Not that he needs any more power, mind you. The burly rat lurking betwixt the frame rails of Brian’s Chevy puts out somewhere on the order of 930 horses, possibly making it powerful enough to wrangle a 10 o’clock tee-time with Vernon Jordan.

"I knew it was going to be a nitrous motor, but it just kind of escalated from there," says Bedford, a roofing contractor by day, and a man apparently endowed with a penchant for understatement. After purchasing the Chevelle for $1,800 five years ago, Brian drove the then-307-powered car home, pulled it into the garage and immediately set about performing the Kafka-like transmogrification that would eventually yield the all-conquering creature you see here.

"The body was pretty good," he relates, but the effete factory 5-liter just wasn’t going to cut it. Out it came, and in its stead went a 1989 vintage LS6 block topped with fully ported and flow-tested Dart 320 heads. Instead of following the prevailing logic and installing a traditional intake and carburetor, Brian took the road less traveled and went with a Kinsler DFI setup. And that, as Frost put it, is what made all the difference.

The system utilizes eight individual 2.89-inch throttle plates and 83 lb./hr fuel injectors, and is fed a healthy diet of racing gas via dual SX fuel pumps rated at 1000 horsepower each. Why the Kinsler rig? "It was the only way to flow enough air," says Brian. "We picked up hundreds of cfm in airflow over the Cutler throttle body I was using before." Better still, the system was a snap to tune and thus far has evinced the impeccable manners of a Carolina schoolboy.

A Stahl camshaft, with a towering .7395-inch of lift, actuates what can only be described as manly Manley 2.25-inch intake and 1.88-inch exhaust valves; an MSD 7AL2 ignition provides the requisite spark to bring the beastly rodent to life. The 468-cuber exhales through Hooker Super Competition headers and into a mammoth 4-inch Flowmaster exhaust system capable of evacuating almost as much waste gas as a dyspeptic GMHTP staffer

An ATI-sourced tranny and 4200 rpm stall converter send the power rearward where it undergoes the ministrations of a 9-inch rear end manufactured by – ahem – Ford. Some might consider the inclusion of the Dearborn diff on a car built to showcase GM-style performance to be a transgression bordering on hot rodding heresy But no one can deny that these rears are tough, plentiful and affordable, and we think the Ford piece detracts not a whit from the overall goodness of this vehicle. A Precision Gear 3.89 ring and pinion and Summers Brothers 35-spline axles and spool round out the driveline equation and put the power to the rolling stock.

But power, as we all know, means nothing if not properly managed, so Brian undertook a comprehensive working-over of the stock chassis and suspension bits to ensure that every last pony was put directly to the pavement. A custom-built backhalf by S&W Race Cars features coil-overs, ladder bars and wheel tubs to house the 33x18-inch M&H Streetmasters necessitated by this kind of obscene torque production. Surprisingly, the front suspension remains stock, save for the inclusion of Koni race shocks to help get things pointed skyward off the line.

The interior features just the sort of simple, utilitarian layout one might expect in a car of this nature. There is no stereo, nor is there any need for one when nearly 8 liters of instant aural gratification are never more than a cracked throttle away. There is, however, a full host of Auto Meter gauges to keep Brian apprised of the goings-on underhood. A full S&W roll cage bolsters structural rigidity while keeping things about as safe as they can be in a car with this sort of performance potential.

An aluminum rear wing helps to obviate the possibility of the car performing a mach-speed Macarena on the big end, and probably scares the bejesus out of would-be challengers in the process. By removing the stock steel hood, fenders, bumpers and trunk lid in favor of fiberglass Harwood pieces, Brian has managed to pare weight to around 3,300 lbs. – quite an improvement, but still none-too-svelte for a full-on drag car

But a track-only trailer queen it's not. Despite the wheel tubs and an imposing 13:1 compression ratio, the car is actually street driven, and racks up somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 miles a week.

While we're on the subject of drag racing – and when aren't we? – we'd just like to reiterate that this is most definitely not a car to be trifled with. The pearl-white Chevy has turned a best ET of 9.60 seconds running 4.56 gears, and the NOS three-stage nitrous system has yet to be employed at the strip. A trap speed of 134 mph is especially impressive when one considers that the 1968 Chevelle body work, though handsome, confers about the same coefficient of drag as a frost-free Kenmore.

"I'm looking to put it in the mid-8s at 150 mph with the nitrous, the 3.89s and some chassis adjustments," says Brian, and we have no reason to doubt him. As to whether or not anyone has actually been foolish enough to test this Chevy's mettle on the street, he just laughs. "No, I can't say that anybody's even thought about it."

Trust us, it's probably just as well.

GM High-Tech Performance; May 1999 " Raising the Roof" pg. 36-9