I don't remember that, but I can find out. Of course they made the
Charger Daytona's with the pointed nose and the high wing just for
NASCAR. The Charger Daytona was the first full-bodied car to exceed 200
mph on a closed circuit race track. I think that was 1969, and it was
at Talladega during a testing session. Interestingly enough, the car
that allegedly set the record is in the museum at Indianapolis, or at
least it was at one time. A few years ago I met a young tech guy who
works at Chrysler. He told me that some of the old timers had told him
that the car in the museum wasn't the real record holder. It was just
another Daytona painted up to look like the one that set the record.
They told him that the real one had been given to a dirt track
racer/farmer in Iowa shortly after the record run. In those days no one
realized that the car would become valuable, and they owed this dirt
track guy a body and chassis. Well, the young tech guy thought he'd go
looking for the original, so he called the old farmer to see if he had
any idea what had happened to the car. "Yep," the guy answered. "I know
where it is. It's out behind the barn." So this young fellow hightails
it to Iowa, finds the car behind the barn all rusted out with weeds
growing through it. He bought it for $1000 and hauled it back to
Michigan. It's now sitting in his garage. Slowly but surely, he's
restoring it. Most of the experts I've talked to figure it will be
worth a quarter million when he's finished. Pretty good return on his
money.
Paul
On Aug 14, 2004, at 11:10 AM, frank theriault wrote:
--- Paul Stenquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Thanks Frank. Yes, it's a 72 Charger RT, an original
hemi car.
Wow! I'm almost never right when it comes to old car
stuff. It was the black stripe on the back that made
me guess R/T though.
So, tell me, Paul, since you're a car guy. You've got
me thinking about Chargers now, and I recall that
Dodge made a Charger back around then with a flush
backlight (as opposed to the usual concave one). They
only made a small amount of them (like maybe a couple
thousand or less), basically the minimum so that
they'd comply with NASCAR (or whatever the stock car
governing body was called then) regulations, so they
could race that car. Seems that having the backlight
flush was aerodynamically superior, and allowed them
to get a few more mph out of it.
It was pretty successful racing, IIRC. Apparently,
they're ~real~ rare and expensive now (if you can find
one).
Do you (or anyone else) remember which Charger that
was?
cheers,
frank
=====
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The
pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
