So with this weekend’s upcoming NMCA/NMRA All-Star race we’ll get the season’s second dose of the awesome Holley EFI Factory Supercar class. This is a heads up eliminator where COPO Camaros, Cobra Jet Mustangs, and Drag Pack Challengers (if they show up!) compete in a heads up eliminator, no holds barred, quickest guy wins. It was entertaining as hell at Bradenton and it promises to be even moreso in Atlanta where we’re already hearing about a bunch of cars that have signed on to be part of the program. The people love it, the announcers love it, and the factories love it as well. They all believe that they have a superior product and this program lets them put their money where their collective mouths are. So that naturally leads us to a question.

What’s the Greatest Factory Built Drag Car Ever?

Logically the answer is probably the next one that is built but the reality of the situation is that car guys and girls, especially those that are nutty for the sport of drag racing have long memories and they have long held and passionate opinions on how things are versus how things were. So let’s wade into the murky waters of factory built race cars that are designed to be used in straight line competition. There are probably way more variations on this than you think and frankly we’re not going to list all of them but we’ll give you some sketches to use in forming your own opinion.

In our opinion the early 1960s Super Duty Pontiacs started this craze off. Between the Catalinas with the Swiss Cheese frames and their McKeller #10 grind cams along with the later 421 Tempests, they really got the ball rolling and the escalation started. Chrysler had their “special” models that found their way into the hands of the right people with their Max Wedge engines and insane intake manifolds at about that time, Ford threw down with the Thunderbolt in 1964 which was a full fledged effort that trumped their lightweight Galaxie program and really kicked things in the pants.

Chevrolet was in with their hotted up Chevy II models packing the solid lifter small block, and the Mopar contingent had their Ro23 specials, D/Darts, and other machines as well. 1968 is when the thing completely broke open with the Hurst Hemi Darts and Barracudas along with the Mustang Cobra Jets that kicked butt at the Winternationals that year. 1969 would see AMC jumping into the fray with their Super Stock AMX that was built in conjunction with Hurst. There were 52 of those suckers and then the trail largely went cold for a long, long time. Yes, there was pro stock and that stuff but an honest to God factory race car you could buy from a dealer? It seemed like a long ago memory that would never come back. Cut to 2008.

Ford basically shocks the world by rolling out the Cobra Jet car and they show up and essentially repeat the magic of 1968 winning the NHRA Winternationals and they have been selling 50 Cobra Jets every year since. A variety of engines have been in the cars, same as transmissions, and the machines keep right on rollin’. In 2009 the Chrysler side would fire back with the Challenger Drag Pack and while its life has been a little different, those cars have also had a myriad of engine options and now a supercharged variant. Third to the modern day fisticuffs was GM with the COPO Camaro in 2012. GM has offered these with a wide range of LS engines in both naturally aspirated and supercharged forms.

So there’s an ultra truncated, abbreviated, and short look at some of the factory drag highlights over the years. Now it is your time to go to work and tell us what the best factory drag car of all time is/was/or will be?