The finished product looks exactly how Chrysler intended, without them ever actually producing it. The Beinekes also did a Superbird variant in red.
Both were fairly aerodynamic already, but wanting to go into NASCAR and take Ford out of the top slot meant that more must be done to better utilize all that power and take the cars to speeds previously unheard of. With a few additional parts and a lot of engineering to make those parts work, Chrysler had a pair of winners capable of two-hundred miles per hour. If you think an old Dodge is loud on the highway at sixty, I can assure you that the driver needed that helmet strapped on tight in one at two-hundred. Needless to say, the Daytona was the car to blow the doors off every car Ford sold, claiming victory as the 1970 NASCAR Points Champion. As I say that, the rules then changed, the credits rolled, and that was kind of it for Chrysler ruling NASCAR, but they did have a plan to continue, they just weren’t the ones to build it.
When I first saw this car, I knew it wasn’t genuine, but I would never have guessed that it almost was. When built by Gary and Pam Beineke, they didn’t just create a “what might have been” art project from their imagination, but in fact, an actual full-scale, running, driving concept from the scale model prototype and documentation that they were able to obtain from people who actually worked on the original Daytona and Superbird cars during development. Apparently, there were plans for the newer, rounder Charger and Roadrunner to become winged warriors like their older counterparts, but NASCAR got sticky and said cars with aerodynamic enhancements couldn’t exceed a three-hundred and five cubic inch engine. Since this car has a Hemi, that was more than enough to cancel the program entirely. Why not still develop it and just sell the cars to the public? Mainly because they were expensive to develop, costly to build, and the previous generation didn’t sell well because they looked weird. Many dealers referred to them as “that thing with the wing.” Not necessarily a term of endearment. Not only does this car have a wing, but a double-decker wing, which apparently worked even better than the single. Rear window louvres were not only the style of the time, but they provided an aerodynamic advantage as well. The coolest part? The Hemi has a Six Pack intake on it. It seems like such a dull point, but Hemi engines were dual-quad engines. That being said, the correct intake manifold for this application did not exist, so a dual-plane, dual-quad intake was dissected and reassembled into a stock-looking Six Pack setup. It’s a detail no one will notice, but a detail that couldn’t be overlooked when creating a perfect concept from half a century ago.
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