Darrell Wallace Jr is really good and he should make it. ***** T Ribbs sucked. But I absolutely hate Darrell Wallace Jr's name. It doesn't even sound like a real name - more like a parody or a Hollywood driver name compliation. There is not one thing original about that name. And its kinda a big thing because Nascar needs to market the name if he is going to make it....

 

The Daytona was based on the Dodge Charger, The Super Bird was based on the Plymouth Roadrunner.

 

Exactly. they were two different cars.


1969 Dodge Charger Daytona. As a 1969 model car, it had to meet 1969 rules, and about 600 were built (minimum 500).





The next year, one had to make either 2000 units or a number equal to 1/2 of the auto makers total national dealerships. About 2500 Superbirds were made, and many had to be converted back to Roadrunners to sell to the public because most people thought the heavier Superbird kits were ugly....


1970 Plymouth Superbird, built to get Petty back in a Plymouth. Notice the difference in the doors and the quarterfender. It is hard to see, but the nose piece and nose do not actually interchange. The Plymouth people thought their Plymouth model was a tiny bit more aerodynamic due to it being a bit more smooth and more finesse...







Rear bumper shots comparing the two...

 

I got that part of it...
They didnt race the roadrunner at daytona or anywhere else as far as I know!
Just the charger....
Hence the "UN" superbird?

 

Admittedly, the caverns of my mind that I'm trying to access are a bit dusty and full of cob webs, but didn't Petty drive a Roadrunner in '68?

 

Petty drove a Roadrunner in '68, a Ford Torino in '69, and a Plymouth Superbird in '70, but a Roadurnner on short tracks.


Petty got tired of getting beat by the more aerodynamic Dodge's and the really aerodynamic Ford's on the bigger tracks in '68..... he asked the Chrysler people to give him the more aerodynamic "Charger 500" that was coming down the line but they wanted to keep Petty in a Plymouth, since he had won 92 races in tehm....

Some people get the "Charger 500" and the "Charger Daytona" mixed up... for reference, here is a standard, run of hte mill Dodge Charger... .kind of like what you see in the Dukes of Hazzard...


Note that the grill is recessed in the front and the rear window is recessed into a cavity in the second picture.










The Charger 500 by comparison, looked like this, and ran much of the early '69 season.....








But Mopar refused to give Petty the Charger 500, so he got a lucrative, intentionally 1 year deal with Ford... Ford savored the opportunity.... and there's a lot of back story to how the other Ford teams didn't want Petty to take their stuff, apply his "winning formula" and start beating them on every race... so they actually didn't help Petty figure out the front end geometry... Petty spun out and had a lot of handling issues since he was used to setting up teh Mopar torsion bar and didn't know much about the Ford A-frame system. Plus, Maurice Petty, his cousin and engine builder, had a hard time figuring out how to build Ford engines like he could Mopar engines.....






Well the rest of the story for Dodge is that they never won a superspeedway race with the Charger 500.... since Ford, knowing a more aerodynamic Ford was coming, made a Ford Talladega for the '69 season as well... with the "aero nose." So Dodge made a Charger 500.... already told that story and showed the picture.

But by September ,Dodge still wasn't winning superspeedways... so they developed the Charger Daytona model... sometimes called a "Daytona 500" model in some literature. It was made to fit the 1969 rules of 500 production models. By 1970, one ahd to have 2000 models or a number equal to half of their nationwide dealerships... whichever numnber was greater.... for the Superbird, it ended up being 2500 or so.


The Superbird may have never been made if not for the fact that Mopar wanted Petty out of that Ford and backinto a Plymouth model for the 1970 model year. So the Plymouth people got the Dodge parts and made their own version and called it a Plymouth Superbird..... tada



First man to win a race in one? It was actually a guy named Ramo Stott who won an ARCA race in one at Daytona right before the Daytona 500 was run....





First man to win a superspeedway race in one? Pete Hamilton, in the Daytona 500...








In summary, it was all politics and sales... Petty was a good Plymouth salesman after winning 27 races in one in 1967, plus the championship. In 1968, he won only 10 races and none of them were on superspeedways... Mopar didn't want to just dump the Plymouth... they figured Petty just wasn't driving as hard apparently. But if Petty had been a dodge man since 1960, tehre may have never been a Superbird....

 

There for meaning:

There never was a roadrunner "superbird" ever run on the BIG tracks...
Even if that roadrunner ran on a short track....it wasnt a SuperBird.


Thus the Charger 500 "superbird" is actually a misnomer..since it was designed around a Charger...Not the roadrunner...

 

The (Dodge) Charger 500, The (Dodge) Charger Daytona and the (Plymouth) Roadrunner Superbird are all different animals. The Superbird was based on the Roadrunner - not the Charger. I don't think they made a Charger 500 Superbird.

 

according to Duane:
The Superbird may have never been made if not for the fact that Mopar wanted Petty out of that Ford and backinto a Plymouth model for the 1970 model year. So the Plymouth people got the Dodge parts and made their own version and called it a Plymouth Superbird.....


Plymouth took dodge parts to make the "SUPERBIRD"...(Charger)

 

Finish the sentence...

and made their own version and called it a Plymouth Superbird.....

Plymouth did not make the Charger...