1961 Chevrolet Impala SS: The First Super Sport and the 409 That Came With It

At the Pomona Valley Timing Association meeting on August 6, 1961, several big Fords were on hand, but the decision came down to two sedans from General Motors. National Dragster's report, reproduced in an NHRA retrospective, has Hayden Proffitt winning in Mickey Thompson's Pontiac at 13.14 seconds and 111.11 mph, with Don Nicholson's 409 Chevrolet only a couple of feet behind at the lights. Chevrolet's new engine had arrived late in the model year and it lost that night to a Pontiac, but by feet rather than lengths. It came wrapped in something else new that year, a package Chevrolet called the Super Sport.^1,2

The engine came first in the headlines. NHRA's history of the 409 describes it as the 348 grown to 409 cubic inches for 1961, with a 4.31-inch bore and a 3.5-inch stroke, breathing through a single four-barrel carburetor and rated at 360 hp. The Newport Car Museum's history adds the peaks, 360 hp at 5,800 rpm and 409 lb-ft at 3,600 rpm, and calls the engine a bored-out 348. Those are advertised SAE gross figures. The Impala SS Registry lists it as RPO 580, alongside the 348s the Super Sport already offered. It went into a car that was itself new: Wikipedia notes that the 1961 Impala was restyled on the GM B platform for the first time.^3,2,4,5

The Super Sport itself was a package, not a model. Chevrolet's introductory folder calls it a complete special package, optional at extra cost on any of the five Impala models, and lists a four-speed transmission, a column-mounted tachometer, a passenger assist bar, power steering, power brakes with sintered-metallic linings, heavy-duty springs and shocks, and 8.00 x 14 narrow-band whitewalls. The Impala SS Registry disagrees on one point that matters to collectors: it gives the option as RPO 240 and says it was available only on sport coupes and convertibles. The two accounts have not been reconciled. Wikipedia's summary adds a Corvette-style passenger hand bar on the dash and a column-mounted tachometer reading to 7,000 rpm.^4,6

The engines on the folder were all 348s: 305 hp and 340 hp with a four-barrel, and 350 hp with three two-barrels. The 409 does not appear in it, which fits the accounts of a late introduction. The registry lists the four engine options by RPO, 572, 590, 573B and 580, and says the SS required the 348 or the 409 along with heavier springs, heavy-duty shocks, power steering, power brakes with sintered-metallic linings and 8.00 x 14 whitewalls on black 14 x 5 steel wheels. Wikipedia, drawing on a HowStuffWorks history, prices the SS kit at $53.80; the Newport museum calls it a dealer-ordered kit at that price.^4,6,2

Almost nobody bought one. The Classic Industries production chart counts 453 Super Sports among roughly 491,000 1961 Impalas, about one Impala in 1,100. Wikipedia splits the 453 into 311 with the 348 and 142 with the 409, so about 31 percent of the first Super Sports had the new engine and the other 69 percent a 348. The registry words its figure differently: only 142 of the 360 hp 409s were sold in 1961, which would make every 1961 409 a Super Sport. Neither source shows the Chevrolet document behind its number, and the chart itself says it has not been verified by the factory. The 453 and the 142 are reported figures, not a reconciled factory count.^7,6,4

The rest of the full-size line shows how small that slice was. The same chart gives about 330,000 Bel Airs and 201,006 Biscaynes for 1961, 177,969 sport coupes and 64,624 convertibles across all full-size Chevrolets. A Super Sport was a few hundred cars inside an Impala series of nearly half a million. For anyone checking a survivor today, the registry's tells are the useful part: a Sun tachometer on the column with its sender on the driver's fender, SS emblems on the trunk and quarter panels, three-bar spinner wheel covers without the standard emblem hole, a padded dash, and a passenger grab bar mounted through oval rather than round holes.^7,4

What the package could do with the right gears was shown in print that fall. NHRA's history reports that Motor Trend tested a 1961 409 Impala SS for its September 1961 issue. With the factory 3.36 axle the car ran the quarter mile in 15.31 seconds at 94.24 mph. With dealer-installed 4.56 gears it ran 14.02 seconds at 98.14 mph. The gap between the two runs was more than a second and a quarter, and the stated difference between them was the axle ratio. Those figures belong to that test car and those two gear sets.³

The opposition that year was Pontiac. On April 21, 1961, Pontiac announced a 421-cubic-inch high-performance engine offered to qualified drivers. At the 1961 NHRA U.S. Nationals, Hayden Proffitt drove Thompson's Pontiac to the Stock Eliminator title at 12.55 seconds and 110.29 mph, and NHRA notes it was the only 12-second car in the class. The retrospective identifies that car, number 809, as a 1961 Catalina with the 421 Super Duty, run in the Optional Super Stock class that became FX in 1962. Chevrolet's 409 was a regular production option; Pontiac's 421 was offered to qualified drivers. The contest between them, and between both and Ford and Chrysler, would shape the next two model years.¹

It shaped them quickly. For 1962 Chevrolet offered the 409 in two forms, a four-barrel at 380 hp and a dual-quad at 409 hp, and the Beach Boys put the engine's name on a record. The Super Sport grew from a few hundred cars to 99,311 in the Classic Industries chart, and the same chart counts 15,019 409 engines across the full-size line. By 1963 the chart's Super Sport count reached 153,271. Don Nicholson, a couple of feet short at Pomona in August 1961, is described by NHRA as the 1962 Winternationals champion. The first Super Sport was a rare, late, dealer-kit car; within a year Chevrolet was building it by the tens of thousands. Wikipedia now describes Super Sport as the signature performance option package Chevrolet has offered on a limited number of its vehicles, and its history of the badge begins with the $53.80 kit of 1961.^3,7,8,6