Antique & Classic Cars Blog
What Has One Wing and Flies?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008If you said “Britney Spears,” not only are you wrong, I don’t think you’re taking the quiz very seriously.
The correct answer of course is these little beauties, which Chrysler built 40 years ago to kick the competition’s butt in NASCAR. That’s exactly what the Plymouth Superbird and Dodge Daytona did–so the competition got them banned.
Both belong to my friend Greg Nelsen, and he was kind enough to allow some photographs today for the book I’m working on on unrestored cars. These have both seen a little cleaning up, e.g., paint, but most of the original parts are still there.
Fortunately to reach homologation as “stock” production cars, Chrysler had to build over 2,000 of them. While some were destroyed on the track and elsewhere, and more than a few fakes have been built, these two genuine cars survived.
Just as they were built to do, these cars hunker down the faster you go. Riding in one is FUN.
2 Responses to "What Has One Wing and Flies?"
Boy, when you said these cars were 40 years old, I thought to myself “That can’t be right. He needs to go back to school.” Then, I did the math, 38 years old. Didn’t make me feel much better….
Some people thought these cars were pretty outrageous, and I agree. But they are so cool. I got a chance to ride in one about 10 years ago. The gawk factor was incredible. In a half hour ride, we were NEVER alone. There was ALWAYS someone cruising alongside, many times rolling down the window and asking “What the heck IS that thing???”
The story I heard on their demise was from Benny Parsons. He said his team was testing at Talladega one weekend. Some NASCAR officials came by and asked them to “test some tires for us, don’t worry about the engine rules, we want to see what the tires will take……” Benny said they put the tires on, and went out and just flew. WELL over 200mph down the back straight. This was with a full bore 426 hemi and an unrestricted carb-you-rettor. As he was pulling back into the garage, same officials were standing there with VERY unhappy looks on their faces and he thought “Oh Oh, that may have been a mistake!” Sure enough, it was a trap. The NASCAR officials immediately limited the engines for these cars to 307 cu/in, thereby rendering the car useless in competition. The next year, they were banned outright.
Excellent info for the readers, Dave–thanks!
In a way, it’s cool the cars were banned. It’s like the great athletes who step out at the top of their careers, legends fully intact. Had the wing cars kept running and the competition learning from them, closing the gap, chipping away at their immortality, it would lessen their appeal, at least to me.
Also, Chrysler would likely have kept building them, making sightings of this endangered species less rare and exciting.
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MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
Your favorite: classic car blog, antique car blog, muscle car blog, vintage car blog. Antique and classic cars for sale by owner.
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