During a quarter-century of commuting to school and work, Shane had plenty of time to fantasize back-halving and front-halving the slug into either a Pro Street or Pro Touring terror. However, he couldn’t shake old film that he’d seen of the mid-1960s Factory Experimentals that bridged the brief gap between steel bodies and fiberglass replicas. Shane still hadn’t determined the build’s direction when he dropped off the original 1966 SS coupe in the tiny Sierra Nevada town of Rough and Ready, California, with second-generation chassis builder Bill Fitting. After two weeks, Fitting called Shane to say, “I’ve been looking at this thing. Let’s put an axle under it.”

“That changed everything,” Shane explains. “This would be a full-frame race car that was legal and practical for street driving.” The A/FX theme was further encouraged by the original Jackson brothers, Shane’s dad Jamie and uncle Sonny. Both roofers by trade, they’d been shooting 8mm movie film since 1964—the same season that the gas-burning Dodge Chargers and nitro-burning Sachs & Sons Comet respectively changed the face of drag racing. Those young brothers were out there on the starting line when “real” Funny Cars peaked around December 1965—the last month before Mercury unleashed the one-piece fiberglass “floppers” that would render heavy door cars obsolete. Besides, paperwork in the glovebox indicated that Shane’s lightweight economy car was sold new to the deceased neighbor lady on December 16, 1965, in Oakland. Had such a vehicle been delivered instead to a talented sportsman racer, how might some Fremont Raceway regular—like, for example, Chevy-guy James Russell Liberman—have modified the innocent compact for match-race madness?

Indeed, the stock-appearing body belies all that it took Fitting Fabrication to achieve such a period-perfect stance, starting with 2x4x0.120-inch-wall, full framework that cleverly retains the factory wheelbase while sliding forward the front and rear axles by 3 inches each. Fitting designed a chromoly tube axle to accept the early Ford spindles and steering arm repopped by Speedway Motors. Oregon Spring Company built the leaf stack to Fitting’s specs.