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  • The Real Story Behind Cleetus McFarland’s $425K Camaro Sale—and What It Means for Small Tire Racing
  • Current News

The Real Story Behind Cleetus McFarland’s $425K Camaro Sale—and What It Means for Small Tire Racing

John Lloyd March 30, 2026 4 minutes read
Cleetus McFarland Gives Travis Pastrana A C8 Corvette Z06

Image via garrett_1320video/Instagram

Cleetus McFarland just put the small-tire racing world on notice. His record-setting 1969 Camaro, nicknamed “Eagle,” is officially for sale — and this isn’t just another fast car changing hands. It’s the world’s fastest radial car, and whoever puts up $425,000 walks away with one of the most dominant machines currently running in drag radial competition.

A Record-Setter With Almost No Track Time

Eagle isn’t fast in the ordinary sense — it’s historically fast. The car made its name at the 2025 World Cup Finals with a 261 mph pass on radial tires, a number that put it in territory only a handful of cars have ever reached. What makes the sale even more unusual is how little the car has actually raced. Eagle has only run at three events, meaning a buyer isn’t just getting a proven record-holder, they’re getting one that’s barely broken in, with none of the accumulated wear and unpredictability that typically comes with a season or more of hard racing.

Built for More Than One Rulebook

Eagle wasn’t built as a one-class specialist. Constructed by Cameron Johnson Race Cars around the Pro 275 ruleset — one of the more demanding tire-size classes in small tire racing — the car can also transition into No Time racing, PDRA Pro Street, IHRA Bratz, and Outlaw 28×10.5. That kind of cross-class flexibility matters more than it might sound: it means a buyer isn’t locked into a single sanctioning body’s schedule or rulebook, and can chase points, purses, or record attempts across whichever series makes the most sense at any given time.

What’s Actually Under the Hood

The combination powering Eagle reads like a wish list for anyone serious about radial racing. At the center is a Proline MH7 Hemi, paired with a pair of 98mm Precision Turbos generating the kind of boost needed to push a radial-tire car into record territory without overwhelming the contact patch. A FuelTech engine control unit and a full suite of Rife sensors round out the electronics, giving a driver the granular, run-by-run data control that separates a car capable of one great pass from one that can repeat it consistently. The sale also includes spare heads, rods, and pistons — the kind of consumable, failure-prone parts that determine whether a race weekend ends early or keeps going.

Why This Sale Matters More Than It Looks

On the surface, this reads like a well-known YouTuber and racer selling off a high-end build. The bigger implication is what it represents: Eagle is a level of performance most racers spend years and small fortunes trying to reach, and putting it up for sale hands whoever buys it a direct shortcut to the front of the field. That has real consequences for the classes Eagle might compete in — suddenly there’s a new benchmark on the property list, and everyone chasing the same records has to raise their own game or their own spending to keep pace.

It also reflects a broader shift happening in grassroots motorsport. Turnkey, race-ready programs at the highest level are increasingly available to anyone with the budget, rather than requiring years of in-house development. For some racers, that’s a welcome equalizer — skip the R&D, buy proven performance. For others, it raises a fair question about how much of small tire racing’s competitive ladder is now determined by checkbook size rather than shop skill.

Who Wins, and Who Has to Respond

The clearest winner is whoever ends up buying Eagle: a proven, record-holding car ready to compete immediately with minimal development risk. The ripple effect lands on everyone else in Eagle’s potential classes, who now have a faster benchmark to chase, which typically means more development spending just to stay relevant. Fans get the more entertaining side of that equation — a front-row seat to see whether Eagle keeps setting records under new ownership or becomes the number every other build gets measured against.

Eagle sits at the top of a pyramid that keeps getting taller, as the gap between average builds and elite, turnkey machines continues to widen. Wherever this car lands next, one thing is safe to assume: it won’t be running quietly.

About the Author

John Lloyd

Administrator

John Lloyd is a staff writer at Backfire News, where he writes about the messier, more entertaining side of the car world—celebrity rides, motorsports drama, and whatever weird automotive thing happened to blow up online that week. He's drawn to the spot where cars meet culture. One day that's breaking down why some celebrity just dropped a fortune on a hypercar; the next it's figuring out why a particular model is suddenly all over everyone's feed. He likes giving readers the context behind the headline, usually with a little attitude. The way John sees it, most people don't think of cars as just transportation. They're status symbols, money pits, lifelong obsessions, and occasionally pure chaos—and that's exactly the stuff worth writing about. You'll usually find him covering celebrity collections, viral car-culture moments, motorsports headlines, high-performance machines, and the trends moving the resale market.

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