Alan Nyhus – Benchrest Shooting Two Time National Champion

Alan Nyhus grew up in Sioux Falls South Dakota, where he still lives today. Growing up, he was drawn to anything mechanical. Drag Racing and the cars were his passion. Alan’s room was stacked with Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines and the shelves packed with model cars he had built. He was lucky that the local drag strip, Thunder Valley Dragway in Marion South Dakota was only 35 miles away. Thunder Valley was home to some of the best NHRA Stock and Super Stock racing as well as Modified and Comp in Division 5 for many years.

Lucky for Alan, his older cousin was accomplished racer in the Stock and Super Stock classes, so at age 14 he allowed Alan to start tagging along to the races with him. In High School, Alan met Steve Koppien, whose older brothers Chuck and Bob were also good racers in Stock and Super Stock. They were also friends with his cousin, so Steve and  Alan were fortunate to become involved in a pretty tight knit circle of racers right from the start. Steve and Alan quickly became good friends and they remain so to this day.

After High School, Alan built a bracket ’65 Chevelle with a 396-375 and a T400 that ran well. Steve converted his ’68 L79 Nova to a Super Stocker and Alan helped him with that car. They decided to make a serious effort to build a Super Stocker, so they bought a low mileage ’65 Chevelle 300 4 foor door and put a Herman Chapman 327-250 with an A1 Powerglide in it for SS/MA. Steve’s brother Chuck took over Alan’s part of the partnership later that year and he and Steve ran the car for a while.

For the next few years, Alan worked at Thunder Valley in the Technical Inspection area. This was a time when every weekend there had a full slate of Stock, Super Stock, Modified and Comp fields. With Thunder valley hosting a Division 5 Divisional Points race each season, he became acquainted with Larry Bargman, the Div. 5 Technical Inspector. Larry invited Alan to work several Division 5 events over the next couple of years including Points Races and National events in Brainerd and Denver. Through this time period, he also helped several friends with their cars, Larry Nagel, Marv Wachendorf and Ron Roddel.

In 1980, Alan built a ’67 Camaro SS/IA. Larry Nagel helped him tremendously with the car and built the motor for it. Most of the SS/IA ’67-’68’s were the 350-295 combo but Alan’s was a 327-275. It was quite a bit lighter than the 350 cars and thanks to Larry’s help, it was very good car.

In 1983, class racing at Marion was starting to decline, largely because of escalating costs. Modified Eliminator had been eliminated by NHRA and most of the local Modified racers didn’t make the switch to Super Stock. The NHRA points races didn’t pay much more than Thunder Valley had paid when we had full fields. There was also talk of opening up the cylinder head rules in Super Stock, which Alan knew was going to be an expensive leap to make. He had just gotten married and purchased a home and felt it was time to concentrate on more important things and sold everything that had anything to do with racing. Wife Nancy loved racing and the people, and wasn’t too keen about Alan getting out. Alan tells us “Kind of the reverse of many racers situations!”

Alan stayed involved with cars, buying and selling 348-409 cars, engines and parts as they became collectors. Nancy and Alan also bought a local one owner low mileage ’68 Chevelle 396 bench seat 4 speed that they both enjoyed. In ’86, he put together a F/SA ’67 Camaro 327-275 but his heart just wasn’t in it and he sold it soon after. Alan didn’t attend another drag race for 20 years, but he kept in touch with some of his friends.

In the late ’90’s, Alan became involved with competitive Benchrest shooting and was fortunate enough to win two National Championships. “Benchrest is a lot like drag racing as you’re constantly tweaking to small mechanical details to get better performance while staying within the rules. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of ‘car guys’ in Benchrest.”

In 2008, he went to Thunder Vally to watch one of the the Midwest Class racers Stock/Super Stock two day events and came away very impressed by what they were doing and the number of cars they were getting. At breakfast the next morning, Alan remember Nancy asking him with a smile: “Well, are we going racing again?”

In late December of 2008, Nancy was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive breast cancer. It goes without saying that everything else took a back seat to this. When Nancy passed away in June of 2010, it was some of Alan’s old race car friends that gave him the most support and encouragement. Alan’s kids were grown and out of the house and he found himself asking “What do you really want to do?.” Alan knew he wanted to race again.

Alan had a few shooting events that he wanted to compete in. He had also been making handmade Benchrest bullets for himself and some competitors and needed to finish those obligations and fill outstanding orders. In September of 2013, Alan competed at his last Benchrest tournament, winning the Two Gun overall title. He decided that it wouldn’t be a bad way to finish his shooting career with a win.

John McLeod on the left and Steve Koppien on the right make some observations on a 427 Stocker engine

Good friend and Midwest Class Racer spokesperson John McLeod had been on the lookout for a car for Alan. Steve Koppien had retired his ’68 Nova from Stock class racing, the same one he’d raced right out of high school. So Alan stopped by Steve’s shop to see if he might be interested in selling the car to Alan. They talked about different possibilities. Steve really wanted to keep the car and return it to the way he had it as a street car, so his search continued. During one of there conversations, Steve asked Alan where he was going to keep the car. “Why don’t you keep it here?”, Steve said. So just like that, Alan had a great shop to work in plus the benefit of Steve’s knowledge and experience.

Alan remembered there was a Nova 327-275 stocker for sale on the Class Racer classifieds and looked it up. I was sure it must have been sold, but called anyway. It was still available and a couple of weeks later it was sitting in Steve’s shop. The build section on Class Racer pretty much takes it from when he first picked it up to where Alan is today.

As Alan puts… “What got me back into Class Racing was the whole Midwest Class Racers package that they’ve put together along with the continued friendship and help of people like Steve Koppien, John McLeod and Ron Roddel just to name a few. The MCR payout and schedule makes it attractive (two races in one weekend) and the car numbers continue to grow. Lots of former racers are getting back in and new racers are moving into Class Racing from the brackets.”

Alan tells us that his girl friend Julie really enjoys the people involved in Class Racing. “Drag racing is really a family sport.” Very true Julie, I could not have said it better!

Check out Alan’s build on Class Racer…. Nova Stocker Project