Cars, Paint Schemes Represent the Best of Eras

I’ve never made any bones about my feelings of the Car of Tomorrow. Aesthetically, it’s crude, boxy and generally ugly. Yes, it has some obvious safety benefits, but in the looks department, it is definitely lacking something. Well, actually, everything. The day that many long time fans of NASCAR knew would eventually come has finally descended upon us; homogenized bodies have created indistinguishable racecars. Part of the attraction of stockcar racing has always been the design and appearance of the vehicles themselves. A clean looking racecar with an appropriately fitting paint scheme seldom disappoints, and it got me to thinking of days gone by and some of the more attractive examples of what a stock-bodied (or appearing to be stock-bodied, at least) racecar should look like:

Marshall Teague/Herb Thomas’ 1951-53 Hudson Hornet
Marshall Teague showed up with it first, winning seven races in 1951 and ’52 with his Hudson, leaving NASCAR during the ’52 season after a dispute with founder Bill France Sr. Herb Thomas, meanwhile, in the aqua blue No. 92, scored championships with the “Fabulous” Hudson Hornet in 1951 and ’53. All told, he won 38 races with his Hudsons from 1951 through ’54.

The Hornet looked like a factory hot rod as delivered, with its chopped top and low-slung bodywork. The Hudson Hornet was further immortalized in the 2006 motion picture, “Cars” with its voice supplied by actor and racecar driver Paul Newman.

Richard Petty’s 1964 Plymouth Belvedere
The car that brought the name “HEMI” into NASCAR’s vocabulary, Petty’s Plymouth Belvedere/Fury harkens back to a time when stockcars really were stock cars for the most part. It’s pointed nose and roofline made for inherently good aerodynamics; a slight kink in the roof by the C-pillar helped to redirect air down towards the rear deck lid – a trunk so large it could swallow a pool table.

Petty won the pole for the Daytona 500 in this car and dominated the event, leading 184 of 200 laps en route to his first 500 win, and eventually his first of seven championships. It was this car that led NASCAR to instituting a sell-what-you-race mandate, banning the 426-Hemi from competition until Chrysler offered it as a regular production option. This also led Chrysler to boycott the 1965 season, returning in ’66 after the 426-Street Hemi was offered to the masses in a host of Dodges and Plymouths.

Bobby Isaac’s 1969 K&K Insurance Dodge Charger Daytona
In 1969, there were two wars being waged. One was 10,000 miles away in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the other in Detroit. The muscle car era was in full swing and manufacturers were in pitched battle both on Woodward Avenue and Daytona Beach. The Charger Daytona was Dodge’s second salvo in what became known as the “Aero Wars” between Ford and Chrysler. Plymouth’s Roadrunner was a cinderblock with wheels, but the Dodge Daytona was picking up where the Charger 500 left off.

With a pointed nosecone and a four-foot tall wing on the back, it looked as if it was something out of the Apollo space program. The car was campaigned from mid-1969 through the 1970 seasons. Isaac would capture 17 wins in ’69 (also running the Charger 500, the forerunner of the Daytona), and 11 wins and the 1970 NASCAR championship driving the K&K Insurance #71 Dodge. Buddy Baker would use it to eclipse the 200-mph barrier at Talladega on March 24, 1970, setting a closed course record in the process. Isaac and company would use the car to set 28 speed records at Bonneville with their Daytona in September of ’71.

Darrell Waltrip’s 1981 Mountain Dew Buick Regal
This was the first year of what was to be known as the downsized cars, and the Buick Regal was the dominant make, winning 22 of 31 races that year. It looked like a real car you could buy, and unlike many of today’s domestic makes, was actually made in Detroit.

Waltrip won his first of three championships in ’81 in his Junior Johnson-prepared Buick. The duo won 12 races that season, including a modern era record of four in a row, which is shared by seven other drivers. Waltrip’s double digit win total and resulting championship helped dispel the myth that green cars were bad luck in racing. Look for a reproduction of the paint scheme on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 Chevy at Darlington in two weeks.

Bill Elliott’s 1985 Coors Light Ford Thunderbird
It should have been called the Wonderbird. Elliott won 11 races in his swoopy Ford that season, and finished second to Darrell Waltrip in the final point standings. During the Winston 500 at Talldega, he would make up two laps lost in the pits under green, on his way to a most improbable victory.

Elliott also became the first driver to win the Winston Million (in its first year of existence), by winning three of NASCAR’s four crown-jewel races. Bill’s torrid driving and brother Ernie’s lethal engines made driving a Ford on the Cup circuit cool again. Particularly when the car was about a 7/8” scale version of the actual car. Elliott’s team constructed the Thunderbird so that it would fit NASCAR’s templates, but was in actuality slightly smaller, dimensionally, than it should have been which created less aerodynamic drag on the big tracks.

Michael Waltrip’s 1991 Pennzoil Pontiac Grand Prix
There was no way you could miss this thing on the track. Blindingly bright yellow paint, and with an absence of contingency decals on the fenders, it was a landmark sponsorship deal at the time, and set the tone for future expenditures by other NASCAR teams.

Unfortunately it yielded only modest results, as the Chuck Rider-owned machine recorded zero wins with Waltrip behind the wheel in five seasons. A win at the 1991 TransSouth 500 was thwarted on the final pit stop as an air gun jammed, the tire changer frantically beating it against the fender of the Bahari Racing No. 30 machine, resulting in a 37.4-second pit stop. The Grand Prix at the time was probably the car that most looked like one you could buy at a dealer, although by then the cars had been hand built from the ground up for well over a decade.

Mark Martin’s 1997 Valvoline Ford Thunderbird
This car looked fast just standing still. What could be more American than wheeling a red, white and blue Jack Roush Ford in NASCAR competition? The paint scheme on the Roush Racing winged aviator was carried over from the previous year, while a similar version was run in the 1995 Brickyard 400.

Martin set the record for the fastest 500-mile stockcar race in his Thunderbird at 188.354 mph at Talladega in May of that year, after winning the week before on the carousel configuration in Sonoma, Calif. The final event of the year at Atlanta saw Martin leading the event, having clinched the championship at one point during the race, only to lose a cylinder with a handful of laps remaining, relegating him to a third-place points finish to Jeff Gordon and Dale Jarrett.

Dale Earnhardt’s 2000 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet Monte Carlo
It was the first year of Chevrolet’s redesigned Monte Carlo. Unless your name was Jeff Gordon, you were out to lunch in the previous iteration on an intermediate track, as Ford’s new Taurus oozed with downforce. Chevrolet got back in the game with this car, though it would be another year until it would really come into its own.

The new Monte Carlo had a distinctive and attractive shape, and after undergoing many template revisions throughout the years, would serve Chevy teams through the 2007 season. This particularly menacing-looking car is noted for two of the most exciting finishes in NASCAR history: Earnhardt holding off Bobby Labonte at the March Atlanta race by a scant few inches, and his final win at Talladega in October, when he drove from 17th to the lead in the final four laps to score his 76th and final victory.

This past weekend’s race at Talladega was one that may very well be remembered as one of the first great races that has been run with the Car of Tomorrow. There were 52 lead changes among 20 drivers, four-wide racing, two-car breakaways and tandem drafting that once again saw speeds eclipse the 200-mph barrier. To some however, they may still be left wanting.

For long time fans of the sport, one of the most appealing aspects of NASCAR has been brand identity and manufacturer loyalty. If your driver dropped out, you could always pull for the highest running make that was your favorite, a make that possibly resembled what was in your own garage. The common template and cloned bodies of the new car have relegated that notion to little more than headlamp stickers and a grille appliqué. While it has been nearly 30 years since stockcars stopped looking like vehicles you may have actually been able to purchase, they now do not even rate a passing resemblance to what resides on the showroom floor. Some will argue that because of this, racing in effect has suffered because of it.

 I tend to agree.

Del.icio.us | Digg it | Athlon Sports RSS Feeds