AJC CAR NEWS
Superbird replica recalls NASCAR glory days
1970 Plymouth aided Petty’s career; auction of replica to aid charity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, November 15, 2008
During the recent Pep Boys Auto 500 weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, legendary NASCAR driver Richard Petty, drag racing icon Darrell Gwynn and Kevin King of Braselton-based Year One unveiled a replica of a 1970 Plymouth Superbird.
Year One built the replica, which will be auctioned at Barrett Jackson next year with the proceeds to benefit Gwynn’s foundation. Gwynn, who suffered a severe spinal injury that left him in a wheelchair, now works to help others with similar injuries.
RUSTY BURROUGHS/Harold Hinson Photography
Year One President Kevin King (left) and crew produced a one-of-a-kind Superbird to be auctioned for charity.
RUSTY BURROUGHS/Harold Hinson Photography
Richard Petty (from left) Kevin King and Darrell Gwynn with the 1970 replica Superbird that will be auctioned. Proceeds will go to Gwynn’s foundation, which helps people with spinal injuries.
The group couldn’t have picked a more appropriate car. When it comes to unique and historic vehicles, the Superbird is in a class of its own. It was built strictly for racing, back in the day when NASCAR required manufacturers to offer to the public a significant number of the cars it planned to race on the track.
As any child who has watched “Cars” can attest, the Superbird looks as if it could live up to its name and fly like some extraordinary bird. Its shark-like nose has been extended 19 inches beyond the car’s normal length, and it has a wing on back to further aid its aerodynamics. The wing is so high the trunk lid will open and shut without striking it.
One of Plymouth’s main goals in building the Superbird for the 1970 season was to lure Petty, a longtime Chrysler driver, back into the fold after a stint with Ford.
Couldn’t give them away
In the beginning, Plymouth dealers shouldered a good bit of the burden. NASCAR required the company to build two Superbirds per dealership before it could hit the track. Ironically, the cars that now easily fetch six-figure prices were duds at dealerships.
“They couldn’t hardly give them away,” Petty said. Indeed, many of the nearly 2,000 Superbirds originally built sat on dealer lots for months. Some were converted back into regular Road Runners to entice buyers.
But on the NASCAR scene they were a proven commodity. The Superbird was basically a carbon copy of the winged Dodge Daytona that was perfected in a wind tunnel — just like today’s NASCAR racers — before it hit the track in 1969. Dodge and Plymouth both were under the Chrysler banner.
“All Plymouth did was modify what [Dodge] already had,” Petty said. “They had proven the wing worked on the Dodge on the race track before we ever got one. [The Superbird] had a Plymouth logo on it, and it was a little bit different but most of it was shaped just like the Dodge was.”
Petty won 18 times in 1970 and got five of the Superbird’s eight victories, including one at Atlanta. Pete Hamilton, a former Norcross resident and teammate to Petty, won the other three. The next year, NASCAR clipped the Superbird’s wings, limiting winged cars to 305 cubic inches while its competitors were allowed more than 400.
Car fans went away
Petty and his Superbird were stars at a time in NASCAR when the cars mattered almost as much as the person behind the wheel. At Charlotte, fans were segregated by manufacturer loyalty, with separate sections of the grandstands for Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler fans.
Today, the cars aren’t as important to most fans. With NASCAR’s rules for the current vehicle, the Car of Tomorrow, a Ford looks the same as a Chevy, Dodge or Toyota, with the brand differentiated mostly by decals. Mechanically, the cars bear little if any resemblance to the street versions they’re supposed to represent.
Petty has been around throughout the shift, first as a driver and now as part owner of his Petty Enterprises team, part of which was recently sold to an outside group, Boston Ventures.
In the Superbird days, he said, “lots of fans were car fans. Over a period of time, the car fans went away and now we have personality fans. “A lot of the draw now is not because of a particular kind of car, it’s more about the person, the quarterback, that’s in the car.”
He said he doubts it will ever be different in NASCAR.
“The way the cars are made for the road, we’ll never go back,” he said. “They’re just not raceworthy. There are a lot of front-wheel-drive cars, a lot of them have smaller engines. There are different size cars, aerodynamics are so different.
“We may never again see wing on car and know it’s a Dodge or Plymouth.”
Mix of old and new
And that makes the Year One Superbird that much more special. That particular car isn’t an original Superbird; it’s a mix of old and new.
The folks at Year One, the restoration specialists, started with a plain old 1970 Plymouth Satellite and put their creative ability to work.
“Originally it was a car that needed a lot of work, lot of rust here and there,” said King, the Year One president. “We just extended it as it would have had to be for a ‘70 Superbird and put the rear window plug in.
To get the shape just right, the Year One folks took a trip to the racing museum on the grounds of Talladega Superspeedway, cameras in hand, to take photos of actual Superbirds on display there.
“We did that so it would be a more period-correct race car,” King said. “That’s how we came to this.”
Under the hood, it looks more like one of the Dodges Petty’s team campaigns today. The engine is a 358-cubic-inch powerplant built to modern-day NASCAR specifications by Evernham Motorsports, which supplies Petty’s engines. It’s painted a blue much like the Petty colors of old, but unlike Petty’s original cars it’s black on the sides, making it look the part of just what it is — one of a kind.
