Garage Gold: This 1961 Impala SS 409 Once Ruled the Quarter Mile
Check out the rare Impala SS 409 that helped Don “The Dutchman” Uhr carve his name into drag racing history.
Long before restomods and barn finds became viral content, the real treasures of American performance history were quietly aging in garages like Don “The Dutchman” Uhr’s. His 1961 Chevrolet Impala SS 409 (a car so rare only 42 were reportedly built) wasn't just a showpiece—it was a race-bred machine that carved up Texas dragstrips throughout the 1960s. Competing against legends like Dick Harrell and using gear swaps and tuning tricks, Uhr turned the SS into a class-winning powerhouse. The story of this Impala SS 409 from the September 2012 issue of Muscle Car Review is pure octane nostalgia. —HOT ROD
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This September 2012 article from Muscle Car Review highlights a 1961 Chevrolet Impala SS 409, a rare race-winning car from the 1960s. The owner used tuning tricks to dominate Texas dragstrips, winning 250+ trophies. The car was discovered and looked to be restored to its racing glory.
This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article
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This incredible garage find was uncovered by San Antonio’s Gordon Chisenhall, who seems to have a penchant for unearthing relics from hot rodding’s bygone days. The ’61 Chevrolet Impala SS 409 used to belong to one of the unsung heroes of Texas Stock and Super Stock racing, Don “The Dutchman” Uhr.
“I bought the car new from Mike Persia Chevrolet in San Antonio,” Uhr said. “It was late in the year, around August 1961, I think, when Chevrolet started installing the 360-hp 409 Turbo-Fire V-8s in the ’61 model Impala Super Sports. To the best of my knowledge, there were only 42 of those cars built that year.” Uhr originally campaigned his ’61 Chevy in the NHRA/AHRA/NASCAR A/Stock and B/Stock classes but quickly moved up the ladder with a little help from his friends.
The Super Sport trim level was introduced with the all-new ’61 Impala.
“J.E. Kristek of CKC Racing happened to be good friends with the late Dick Harrell,” remembers Uhr. “Almost right away Dickie got us one of the Z-11 dual-quad setups, a set of the later-design 409 cylinder heads, and one of the newer-style solid-lifter camshafts. Since these were all ’62 model production parts, they weren’t legal for Stock Eliminator—on a ’61 car, anyway—so that put us in the B/Modified Production class instead.”
Uhr made good of it, winning the B/MP class at the 1963 AHRA World Championships in Green Valley, Texas, running a 12.99 at 106 mph. He says, “There were 10 to 12 cars in that class, which included Dickie Harrell, who was running a ’62 Chevrolet Impala lightweight. We got past him with a hole shot for the win even though he was faster than we were. The trick to shifting those close-ratio M21 four-speed transmissions was to use the sloppy Muncie shifter these cars came with. All you did was adjust the clutch, leaving a lot of clearance, and you could actually swing Low with the shifter and bend it to the next gear. Then all you had to do was slap the clutch, and she would go right in.”
Don Uhr’s B/MP champion Impala SS was put into storage after he won more than 250 trophies racing it in the ’60s. Gordon Chisenhall bought the hidden treasure and plans to restore it to “as-raced” condition.
Uhr revealed that one of the secrets to getting his Positraction 409 to launch off the starting line was to change out the 2.20:1 low gear. He says, “Hayden Proffitt once told Dickie Harrell that a Ford 406 or Ford 427 four-speed used a lower First gear than the Chevrolet did. If you changed the five-spline input shaft and used a Ford clutch disc behind the Chevrolet pressure plate and changed out the main drive gear and the cluster gear, it gave you a 2.64:1 low, making second and third gears closer spaced. When you were running on a cement track like Victoria, Texas, where you really needed to get those Caslers to hook up, it spelled the difference between winning and losing.”
A local paper covered Uhr’s AHRA B/MP championship in 1963. “I’ve been wanting this title for a long time, but I didn’t think this would be my year,” reads a quote in the story. “Funny but when you think you’re going to do your worst, you usually come up with your best performance.”
Uhr ran his SS 409 from late 1961 to late 1966, and many a competitor saw his taillights. “We were what you would call ‘drag race crazy,’” he says. “We would run at Alamo Dragway on Friday and Saturday nights, then run either Houston or Corpus Christi on Sundays and just have a good old time.”
Uhr won more than 250 trophies, and his fastest and quickest time with the dual-quad setup was a 12.85 at 113 mph on 7-inch Casler cheater slicks. He would go on to campaign a ’66 Chevelle with a 427 L88 engine throughout the late ’60s and then switch over to Mopars, campaigning a Hemi Challenger for a brief time. The SS was put into storage and eventually dismantled. In 2011 Chisenhall purchased it from Uhr and plans on a complete restoration “as raced.”
Uhr dismantled the car prior to putting it in storage; here are just some of the parts that went with the Imp.
Uhr says, “If I’m still alive by the time Gordon gets the car finished, I think we’re going to have a whole lot of fun doing the same thing we did some 50 years ago all over again!”