I love that photo.
The class designation "A/FX" has always had a degree of magic associated with it, especially when it's painted on a clone build. And many folks that were not born when the Factory Experimental classes were going strong seem to make the mistake of thinking that any (or all) match racers of that era were A/FX cars. 98% of the match race cars were not FX cars at all, they were modified well beyond what would have been permitted in the NHRA FX classes. Many of the factory backed racers had a match race car and also a FX car for NHRA National Events. This was especially true with the Mopar guys who raced an Altered Wheelbase Dodge or Plymouth on the match race circuit, and an ex-S/S car with a 2% wheelbase modification in the FX class. Most of the independent guys could not afford two cars, and so they chose to go match racing (follow the $$) instead, and since Chevy racers were all "independents", that's the direction they took.
n 1963 and 1964, I knew several local (SoCal) racers that built match race cars, usually out of Chevelle's. It was actually easy to do and it did not take a big bankroll to do it. The engine of choice at the time was a 409 (punched out to over 420+ cubic inches). As far as the car itself, it was just gutted. To make them light, all you needed to do was to remove every single thing inside and outside the car that you did not absolutely need. Do you know how much the OEM dashboard weighs? Who needs a dash board? The cheapest way to lighten the OEM windows was to remove them completely. Gut everything inside the doors. Just cut everything out or off. Do you really need headlights and tail lights, and all the wiring? The stock body panels were actually pretty light. I helped a guy cut out 90% of the framing on the underside of the hood (no hinges, just a few hood pins), and the result was it was as light as a lift-off fiberglass hood. Light weight inner fender panels? Heck no, just throw the stock ones away. Cheap. Most of the effort in "building" a match race car was removing almost everything inside the car. I helped a friend "build" a match race Chevelle. We started working on the car itself on Friday afternoon, we worked on it all night (we were mostly drunk) and worked on it more on Saturday and Sunday. By dinner time on Sunday, we were pretty much done with the car. We had a shell and suspension, and a modified 409 engine (from another car) under the hood. All the stuff we removed from the car we stored in large trash cans. When we were done we weighed the cans and found out that we had removed almost 700 lbs. from the car, and it still looked like a Chevelle. From the grand stands at a drag strip, you could not tell the difference, it looked pretty stock. Cost to do this over a long weekend, zero, other than several cases of beer and some bandages where we cut ourselves on the sheet metal.
Most of the early match race cars (pre 1965, and especially the Chevys) did not have an altered wheelbase. Most even used OEM front suspension. The suspension on some of the straight axle and leaf spring conversions I saw weighed more that the stock independent front ends. The majority of the independent match race cars were pretty crude, and unless you planned on touring the nation, a tow bar and a pick-up truck or a station wagon was as good as a ramp truck. Gasoline was cheap and there were LOTS of drag strips just in California alone, and most of the drag strip operators would pay a couple of hundred to book the car in to match race some other guy. It's like any business, keep the expenses down and you have more money in your pocket.
It was the best of times and it ain't coming back...
