The Belvedere began life as a cruiser, attending car shows and being driven to work frequently. Initially those were the only plans for the car, but then one day it happened: a trip to a local open-track day had us pitting our 47-year-old hunk of Detroit against some modern machines at Willow Springs International Raceway. Fitted with a set of sway bars and an EFI conversion, we didn’t expect much from the car but it completely surprised us. Then we were hooked, and Project “Track Attack” was conceived.
Even though the car did well, we knew that the antiquated suspension and braking needed some big improvements if we wanted to be more competitive. We installed a disc brake conversion from Master Power Brakes, and upgraded the wheels to 18-inch pro-touring wheels from Weld Racing, covered with Mickey Thompson Street Comp tires. As part of the first phase of the build, we also installed QA1’s tubular front control arms and their dynamic strut rod, which allowed us to dial in the handling a lot more than we could do with the stock suspension.
More upgrades are slated to make this Belvedere perform better at the track, and we’ll keep updating our readers with that information as we make additional upgrades, so stay tuned!