Thursday, March 26, 2015

Chrysler test driver Buddy Baker took the No. 88 Dodge to a 200.447 world record. That vehicle is now inside a 73 Charger body


Above, the 200.47 Mph world record setting Daytona.

Below, what became of it as Nascar couldn't cope with such high speed cars with low tech tires that weren't up to a 500 mile high speed races, and so little in the way of safety at tracks to prevent racers from dieing in crashes. It was rebodied and forgotten, and spent around 30 years behind a garage in Iowa



Above, the original nose

Below, the plate between the radiator and the nose ended up as a splash guard



the original wing

the car in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talledaga that represents the 200.447 record setter? Is another test mule that was going to be junked as it was of no use to anyone, so instead, it gets to sit in a museum in perpetuity.

Backing up this information was an inter-company correspondence memo written by G.W. Porter and dated July 31, 1970, which was uncovered by Tim Wellborn (director of the Talladega Museum) in 1997. Key parts of this memo include the following: "In May, we received a request from NASCAR relative to the possible donation of the subject car to NASCAR for their speed museum.... Contingent upon your approval, we will take our old No. 71 car, DC-74, paint it to look like the Engineering car No. 88 car, which we used in breaking the 200-mph speed record, and present it to NASCAR. This No. 71 car has outlived its usefulness and would be scrapped in the event we weren't to use it for this purpose."

read all about it at http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/1969-dodge-daytona-rare-finds/ar-AA9QEe0?ocid=U146DHP#image=5

No comments:

Post a Comment