1963 Chevrolet Impala Z11 427 is one of the classic American muscle cars. It promised Jet-Smooth luxury, Jet-Smooth comfort and Jet-Smooth driving excitement. It was mainly designed for one and only reason and that is racing.
Although it was made for racing, they weren't directly sold to race car drivers.
In the first half of 1960s, the strong rivalry among American auto makers started to manifest themselves on the dirt and oval tracks in the southern part of United States. The famous car company Chevrolet was in the middle of the fight when Junior Johnson first launched his Impala at the Daytona 500 of 1963. Johnson's Impala instantly caught the competitor's attention when he ran in practice with the speed of 165.183 mph which was 8mph faster than previous year's Daytona 500’s pole speed.
In the same year, Chevrolet introduced the Z11 option package for its Impala line. The Z11 option included fender brackets, front fenders, an aluminum hood, as well as other lightweight parts. These cars had no center bumper backing and bracing. Under the aluminum hood, there was a 427 -cid 430 -hp V8 engine with dual four-barrel carbs.
Engineer Zora Duntov and his group developed the engine as well as body package of 1963 Chevrolet Impala Z-11 427 for drag racing. For the first time, Chevrolet presented a 427 cubic-inch production engine as Z-11 427 in a RPO (Regular Production Order) car. The 427 was a modified 409 engine. To keep down Impala down the track, there was the 427 'Mystery Motor' which featured a newly designed cylinder head called as Porcupine and a four-bolt main block.
Chevrolet learned a lot from the 'Mystery Motor' project and applied those lessons on the track to the design of engine. Within a few years, Chevrolet motors begun to dominate various racing sets all over the world. They produced only 57 Z-11 optioned Impalas and only 7 are thought to be in existence today making then an extremely valuable and rare piece of Chevrolet history.
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