Dodge's return off to quick start
Associated Press
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- In 1970, Richard Petty was
king, race cars had wings
and Buddy Baker broke a speed barrier that helped
change stock car racing forever.
All these feats, and so many other memories, came
courtesy of Chrysler, the
carmaker that returns to NASCAR this season after 16
years on the sidelines. Ten
Dodge Intrepids, including one owned by Petty, are
entered in Sunday's Daytona
500.
"It's kind of like a romance for me to see them
back," Baker said. "It's sort of like my history."
NASCAR's too.
Chrysler had several brands running in
NASCAR races as early as 1949. A year later,
Dodge made its debut at Canfield Motor
Speedway in Ohio.
But the carmaker really took off in the
mid-1960s when it designed the 426 Hemi race
engine, a powerful machine that helped Petty lap
the field -- a thought almost unheard of these
days -- in Dodge's sister car, a Plymouth, at the
Daytona 500 in 1964.
"Dodge played a huge role in my racing career,
and that's why Petty Enterprises is going back,"
Petty said.
He was in the middle of a firestorm in 1968, all
centered around the "wing car," a
spaceship-looking contraption that still stands as one
of the funkiest racecars to
ever circle a NASCAR track.
Knowing NASCAR was about to open Talladega
Superspeedway as a sister track to
the speedy Daytona International Speedway, Chrysler
mechanics began working on
ways to improve aerodynamics on the fast tracks.
The result was the new Dodge Daytona, with a severely
tapered nose and a big,
rear-end spoiler that looked like a coat rack glued
onto the trunk.
It was a peculiar look, and created a scene nothing
like what race fans see on
today's tracks, where all the cars look the same and
nobody really bothers calling
them "stock cars" anymore.
"Back then, a Dodge was a Dodge, a Chevy was a Chevy,
and it was very
distinctive," said Dave Marcis, who drove Dodges in
the 1970s.
The Dodge went fast, but when Petty learned the
Chrysler people weren't planning
on fitting his Plymouth with the same equipment, he
took his act "across the street"
and drove for Ford in 1969.
"I knew there was no way I could compete against Ford
and the new Dodge in my
Plymouth," he said.
A year later, Chrysler made amends, Petty came back
and won 18 races in the
Plymouth Superbird, which looked exactly like the
Dodge Daytona.
"They were fun to drive," Marcis said. "They had a lot
of horsepower, a great
aerodynamic package, tons of downforce. They were good
cars."
So good that Baker cracked the 200-mph barrier in a
Dodge Daytona on March 24,
1970, at Talladega.
That was the most jarring evidence of how fast these
cars could go, and it began a
series of steps to slow speeds that are in place
today.
Midway through the 1970 season, NASCAR introduced
restrictor plates to limit
speeds at the fastest tracks. Nearly two decades
later, restrictor plates became part
of NASCAR's everyday lexicon after Bobby Allison's car
went hurtling into a
retaining fence at Talladega.
At end of 1970, NASCAR President Bill France took
another step by outlawing the
wings because the tires couldn't handle the fast
speeds.
After that, NASCAR decided to limit the size of the
engines for "special cars," and
with that decision Chrysler severely scaled down its
NASCAR operation.
Petty survived. After switching from a Plymouth to a
Dodge in 1972, he won 66
more races with Chrysler on his way to a NASCAR-record
200.
In 1979, he traded in his Dodge for General Motors
cars, and Chryslers became
almost invisible on the circuit, disappearing
completely after Phil Good finished 30th
at Pocono on June 9, 1985.
In the next 15 years, Chrysler concentrated its
efforts in drag racing and sports-car
racing. Many people think the impetus to return to
NASCAR came when the
company was bought by the makers of Mercedes, forming
DaimlerChrysler.
DaimlerChrysler announced the return of Dodge in 1999,
and set a 500-day timeline
to have the new Dodge running at the Daytona 500.
Bill Elliott and Stacy Compton took everyone by
surprise by leading the Dodges to
the two front positions for Sunday's race.
And suddenly, nostalgia has been overrun by a cold
dose of reality, Dodge style.
"It's good to see them back," said Marcis, who drives
a Chevrolet. "But now I've
got to figure a way to outrun them."
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:59:18 EDT