Chrysler's winged warriors

By BRUCE SIMPSON

The 1960s was a battleground for Nascar stock-car supremacy.

General Motors retired from the scene in 1963, leaving Ford and Chrysler to fight for victory on the super-speedways.

By 1967 Chrysler's 426 V8 Hemi engine ruled, with stock-car "king" Richard Petty winning 27 races from 48 starts with his 1967 Plymouth Belvedere.

The year 1968 wasn't as good, however, with Ford winning the championship. Even worse, Chrysler's beautiful new 1968 Dodge Charger had a blunt and hollow nose and tunnelled C pillars, creating an aerodynamic nightmare at 180 mph (288 km/h).

Things went further downhill in 1969 for the fans as the new Ford 429 Boss semi-hemi-powered Ford Talladegas and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II won consistently.

Chrysler released the 69 Dodge Charger 500 (so named because 500 cars had to be made to homologate the model for Nascar) with a blunt, squared-off nose and flush rear window.

But it couldn't break Ford's stranglehold on Nascar. Even the king of super-speedway, Richard Petty, defected to Ford for the 1969 season.

Something drastic was called for and midway through 1969 the Dodge Charger Daytona was announced.

This car was truly wild with an extended fibreglass nose with spoiler, and a 24-inch (600mm) high rear wing.

The wing was made high so the boot could be opened and only afterwards did Chrysler discover that the extra height enabled the vertical stabilisers to be much bigger, gaining lateral stability with the drivers being able to increase lap speeds.

Most importantly, this car pioneered aerodynamic styling and the use of wind tunnels by a major American manufacturer. Work was done at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Centre by the Chrysler Space Division (which was under contract to NASA for the Apollo/Saturn space program).

All full-sized aero tests were conducted at the Lockheed-Marietta low-speed wind tunnel. The results speak for themselves - the Daytona had a drag coefficient of only 0.29.

Buddy Baker, driving the factory No. 88 Daytona, broke the closed course stock-car record on May 24, 1970, with 200.447 mph (320.7 km/h). Then Bobby Isaac, driving the No. 71 K&K Dodge set a speed record that would remain unbroken for 13 years at 201.104 mph (321.7 km/h).

Charlie Gotzbatch, one of the factory drivers, reported hitting 243 mph (389 kmh) at Chrysler's proving grounds, the Chelsea five-mile oval track, which was probably way beyond the tyre technology of the time.

The 1970 Nascar champion Bobby Isaacs' car builder, Harry Hyde, himself a legend, was interviewed shortly before his death in 1996. On the subject of the winged warriors, Hyde said: "There is no telling how fast they would have run - 280 mph (448 km/h) would not have been out of the question with the tyres we have today.

"But it really is just a guess as they were almost the perfect race car. They had really low drag numbers and we all know how important low drag numbers have become."

In 1970, the Plymouth Roadrunner Superbird was introduced and Petty abandoned Ford to return to the Chrysler fold with the No. 43 Plymouth Superbird.

A bad crash, however, meant he had to wait until 1971 to regain his crown, the Nascar championship.

The year 1971 proved to be bad for the aero-cars as Nascar, increasingly wary of the super speeds the cars reached, banned all aero-cars over 5.0 litres. It was the end of the line for the 7.0-litre monsters, some of the fastest production cars ever built.

For the 505 owners of the surviving 1969 Dodge Charger Daytonas and the 1920 owners of the 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner Superbirds, the chance remained to drive production supercars whose top speeds would barely be rivalled 30 years after their demise.