Dodge Daytona

Today, we’re used to the news that the Daytona 500 is the biggest event in stock car racing, but it hasn’t always been so. In the early days of NASCAR races, the greatest prize was the Southern 500 – a gruelling, rough-house 500-mile slog around a 2.19km speedway that kick-started stock car racing’s love of high-speed circuits.

Built on 70 acres of cotton and peanut farmland in Darlington, South Carolina, the egg-shaped raceway opened in 1950. It soon gained the nickname ‘the track too tough to tame,’ thanks to the incredible difficulty in setting cars up to handle both the tight banked turn and the flatter, wider high-speed corner at the opposite end. Still, despite its coarse racing surface and challenging layout, more than 80 competitors turned up for their chance at the epic $25,000 prize purse at the first Southern 500, held on the Labour Day long weekend, in 1950.

The Southern 500 remained NASCAR’S only 500-mile race for nearly a decade, until the Daytona 500 began in 1959 – while Darlington was also recognised as NASCAR’S first super-speedway. NASCAR legend Buddy Baker grew up behind the pit walls of Darlington. His dad Buck was a two-time series Champion in NASCAR’S formative years and won the Southern three times (’53, ’60 and ’64).

Buddy spent 34 years racing in stock cars premier class, taking an impressive 19 wins and having a reputation as a driver who’d race flat-out and as fast as his car would take him. While the Hall of Famer won the 1980 Daytona 500 at a crazy average speed of 177.60mph (285.82km/h) (a record that stands to this day), his only win at the Southern 500 came in 1970. However, he absolutely stomped the field on that Labor Day in September ’70, even lapping secondplace Bobby Isaac, before driving his 200mph (321.87km/h), #6 Dodge Charger Daytona into Victory Lane. And it was just a slice of the epic achievements for the Mopar wing car that year.

The Daytona, and its Plymouth Road Runner Superbird stablemate, were Chrysler’s tilt at the aero wars after Ford’s Torino Talladega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II cleaned up the Charger 500 and Road Runner in 1968. Chrysler threw the subtle aero tweaks in the bin for their wing cars and planned an all-out assault. Because the name NASCAR refers to stock cars, many people think the machines Richard Petty, David Pearson and Buddy Baker were running back in these days were almost off the showroom floor. The truth of the matter is that they had been ground-up, highly-specialised, handfabricated race cars for nearly a decade by the time #6 rolled out of Cotton Owens’ garage, ahead of the 1970 season. And it meant that that season was one for the books. Owens had raced against Buck Baker in the

’50s, and had later wound up as Mopar’s leading NASCAR shop. Charger Daytonas were all built in 1969. While Plymouth used its updated 1970 Superbird to lure star driver Richard Petty back into the Mopar fold – after he’d shockingly driven a Ford Talladega in 1969 because he couldn’t get an aero car from Plymouth for that year. The chiselled nose and sky-high rear wing are easy to spot, but there were other important aero tweaks, like flush-mounting rear glass, making them good on the highbanked ovals. Ten-inch wide reinforced steel wheels and dual shock absorbers lived at each corner, over finned aluminium drum brakes, which hid heavily reinforced frames. While the big 426ci Hemi was limited to running just one Holley carburettor on a fat ‘bathtub’ intake manifold, instead of the street cars’ dual-quad setup.

Factory brochures may have rated the snarling, high-compression Hemis at ‘only’ 425hp (683.97km/h), but the race versions had far, far more than that figure.

Some were claiming spicier qualifying tune-ups exceeding 600hp (965.61km/h)! The street Hemis didn’t have external oil tanks, cowl-induction, or hand-welded tube headers, either.

After a tough 1969, in 1970, wing cars took 38 wins of the season’s 48 races. This landrocket placed second in qualifying for the 1970 Daytona 500 and led 101 laps at the brutally fast Talladega super-speedway, in Alabama. Chrysler knew the wing cars would run hard on the long-tracks, as their test-mule car had recorded average lap speeds in excess of 204mph (328.31km/h). Even more impressively, it is claimed that Buddy Baker, in Charger #6, recorded NASCAR’S first racing lap of 200mph (321.87km/h) – the huge, big-block V8s had recorded peak speeds of more than 200mph, but this was the first time as an average. Buddy Baker and Cotton Owens set another record, in March 1970, when they took the

THE SOUTHERN 500 REMAINED NASCAR’S ONLY 500-MILE RACE FOR NEARLY A DECADE, UNTIL THE DAYTONA 500 BEGAN IN 1959.

RIGHT: The big 426ci Hemi was limited to running just one Holley carburettor, but that didn't stop it putting out a thumping 600hp (965.61km/h)!

Chrysler engineering Daytona mule car to Talladega Speedway and cracked 200mph, a first for a closed course speed record. Today, many people mistakenly believe the #6 car, Baker’s regular ride with Owens, was the machine that he used to break the two-way, closed-course record. This largely stems from Chrysler illustrating its press release, announcing the record-breaking run with photos of the #6 race car and not the blue #88 development car that was specially prepared for the event.

Charger Daytona #6 raced for the last time in October 1970, at the Charlotte 600 – where Buddy Baker led for more than 20 laps, before he was taken out in a crash. Thankfully, the damage was light enough to repair. However, NASCAR had already announced hefty capacity limits for the aero warrior racers (305ci, down from over 420ci) for the ’71 season.

This meant that the Southern 500 winner would be left in a mildly modified – but largely race-ready – trim, and put on a tour as a display item for Chrysler dealers in 1971, before being displayed at the NASCAR museum, at Darlington, for the next for 34 years.

In 2005, the Daytona was returned to Cotton Owens and he sold it to Ralph Whitworth. Then, Whitworth sold the car to famed collector, and Le Mans 24-hour winner, Bruce Canepa.

Since then, the Canepa team (which also looks after an epic collection of top-tier racers – Le Mans, sports cars, and more) carried out some work to preserve the restoration done by Cotton Owens at the tail end of 1970. Today, it stands as a fantastic, largely original, look back into one of the wildest periods in NASCAR history – as factory money launched a southern pasttime into a big-dollar industry.

While his career would go on long after the wing cars were legislated out of NASCAR, Buddy Baker held fond memories of the bigblock brutes, saying in an interview, ‘It was a time in the sport when you looked at the car and knew you wanted one of ’em; they were fast! When it cranked up, everybody looked because the car had a certain mystique about it that people still remember.’

IT IS CLAIMED THAT BUDDY BAKER, IN CHARGER #6, RECORDED NASCAR’S FIRST RACING LAP OF 200MPH (322KM/H).

RIGHT: Stock woodgrain dash and a classy gaffa tape wrapped steering wheel. Safety first.