ZL-1s from Sutliff Chevrolet

[sYc]

While at the York show, I spent a lot of time visiting with Bruce Larsen, who was there with his '68 USA-1 funny car. Sutliff was Bruces's sponser for many years and I believe he was employed by them. One of the stories he told me was about the 2 ZL-1s Sutliff received. As did most dealers, they were unable to sale the cars, becasue of price, thus, after a while, they removed the engines and replaced them with L-88s. One car with the L-88 did very well on the drag strip. The engines that were removed were given to Bruce to use in his USA-1 funny car. But, for fear of the aluminum engine not holding up, Bruce never used the engines. Finally, one of the engines was sold to a stock car driver and the other? What made this story even more interesting was that one of the 2 Sutliff ZL-1s was at York, parked next to the DH funny car. It belongs to Mark Hassett.

Another story he told me was about dyno testing his A.C. Cobra drag car at Sutliff. Once they discovered what he was doing, they asked that he not dyno the Ford there anyone, thus, he made the deal with the dealership and switched to Chevys. His first Chevy, and the first to carry the USA-1 theme was a '66 Chevelle, which now resides in Big Daddy's museum.

[mhassett]

Tom, I met Bruce Larson last year at GM Carlisle and he told me that when my car was new the dealer couldn't sell it so they used to make him take it to the drag strip to try and get people interested in buying it!! He sent me a 1969 era license plate frame from Sutliff Chevrolet. I thought it was pretty neat to have my car at the York show being so close to Harrisburg but nobody really paid attention to where it came from. Mark #35 ZL-1 [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[sYc]

Mark, Wow, what a tough job. Being made to take a ZL-1 to the drag strip. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggthumpup.gif[/img] As per interested, folks sure took notice each time you started it. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Ed Cunneen]

I own the other ZL-1 from Sutliff Chevrolet, a LeMans Blue 4-speed car #46. I purchased it from the original owner, Lee Patton of Harrisburg, who told me stories of a street race with the car against Bruce. Lee told me he won the race! The ZL-1 still has 16K on the odometer. My engine ended up with the stock car racers, but [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/burnout.gif[/img] fortunately survived.

[mhassett]

Ed, are you talking about my car?? Mark

[Ed Cunneen]

Lee never told me which car Bruce had at the time they raced. However,I don't think it was your car.