Dave Barcelon’s SS: Concours Beautiful, Race Car Fast

Text by Whit Bazemore

While Southern California may be the birthplace and the spiritual home of drag racing, the Pacific Northwest can lay claim to being home to some of the nation’s best drag racers. Jerry “The King” Ruth, TA/FC champion Pat Austin, his uncle Bucky, the Green Elephant of Frank Hall, Canadian Gordie Bonin, and of course, TF champions Rob Bruins and Gary Beck all have roots in the NW. These days, while there may not be a “big show” fuel team racing out of the area, there are a handful of national event-contending sportsman racers. Among these, Bremerton, Washington’s Dave Barcelon and his stunning Super Stock ’67 Chevy Nova may be one of the best, if not the nicest.

Barcelon, a self-made businessman with a high-end used car dealership among his investments, is a perfectionist in the truest sense of the word. Everything about his race team, indeed his life, from his shop to the immaculately landscaped grounds of his house, appear to be perfect, not a blade of grass or a wrench out of place. And so it is with his latest race car. To call the car perfect is almost an understatement, not a single detail has been overlooked, from the 1967-era tach to the black paint behind the grille, to the Spartan engine bay and the original Marina Blue paint, the car is literally as perfect as a race car can be.

Barcelon has owned “30 or 40” race cars thoughout his career, but calls this Nova his favorite by far. “The Nova is the most fun to drive, and I think it is also my favorite because of where I am in my life right now, it takes me back to my roots and makes me feel like a kid again. It is not my best car, because I’ve had Ness, McAmis, Davis, lots of great cars, but this one is my favorite.” It’s easy to see why.

Two years ago, Barcelon bought the “mostly stock” ’67 factory Super Sport Nova from a local racer. It had been bracket raced, but was street legal and driven to the races. Importantly, it had been garaged all of its life and was in near perfect rust-free condition. Wanting to keep the Nova project local, Puyallup, Washington chassis builder Patrick Skahan was contracted to do a ground- up rebuild and turn the Nova into a real race car. Skahan and his Ultra Motorsports Fab shop enjoy a reputation for building top-notch cars and the Nova is no exception. It wasn’t an easy task, but the finish work is immaculate, and the awards the car won last year suggest that Patrick may be one of the best automotive fabricators in the country. Patrick said building the front suspension was the biggest challenge “as we were trying to take a ’67 Nova and turn it into a modern Super Stocker. Getting the front suspension to work is critical, it has to help lift the front up when the car leaves, and then it also has to let it land softly and smoothly. The whole car was a huge challenge, but the front suspension was probably the most difficult thing.”

Skahan has built about 50 cars, and while he says all of them have been this nice, he also says that Barcelon’s Nova is “like a show car that we take out and hammer the crap out of. We race it hard.”

They may race it hard, but like a world-class female athlete who also models for Vogue on the side, the Nova turns heads based on its looks alone. In its national event debut at last summer’s Northwest Nationals, the Nova won Best Appearing Car, and later in the fall at its second National event (Las Vegas), it won Best Engineered. Those are nice awards, but they’re not the reason Barcelon is racing. Like every hard-core racer, winning is really the only thing that matters to him. He’s no stranger to the winner’s circle, having won the Jegs All Star race in 2005, and the Bracket Finals in 2011, as well as many divisional races, and he has set a dozen national records. In spite of all this, the one thing he really wants is a national event victory. “I’m motivated to win a national event, it is what I really want,” he says. “We are going to go to maybe five or six national events this year, as well as five or six divisionals to try and make that happen.”

As anyone who follows today’s Super Stock racing knows, the competition is mind-blowingly competitive. There are Super Stock operations today that look like fuel teams from just a few years ago, and they spend about the same, too. The class has reached a new high level in performance and professionalism.

Barcelon may not have the biggest Super Stock team, but when it comes to his car, he probably does have the nicest. For him, though, that’s not good enough. Barcelon wants his on-track results to mirror his on-track appearance. When that happens, and it will soon, his first national event win will become a reality.

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