The Car So Fast NASCAR Rewrote the Rules to Ban It, Then Nobody Would Buy It

In 1969, Dodge and Plymouth were losing the fastest war Detroit ever fought. On the new superspeedways, Ford had rewritten the rules of speed, and Chrysler's beautiful Charger was getting humiliated at nearly 200 miles per hour. Chrysler did something no car company had ever tried. They handed the problem to the engineers who built rockets. What came out of the wind tunnel didn't look like a car. An 18-inch steel nose cone. A towering rear wing standing almost two feet in the air. Under the hood, the mighty 426 Hemi. And in March 1970, Buddy Baker took one of these winged Dodges around Talladega and became the first man in history to officially break 200 miles per hour on a closed course. They were called the winged warriors — the Dodge Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Superbird, the car built specifically to lure Richard Petty home from Ford. In 1970 they didn't just win. They won 38 of 48 races and dominated so completely that NASCAR rewrote its rulebook to legislate them out of the sport. And then came the strangest twist. Nobody would buy them. The cars sat on dealer lots so long that dealers pulled off the noses and wings and sold them as ordinary Road Runners. Today, the very same cars sell for millions. So tell me — in the golden age of aerodynamics, who really had it right: the winged Mopars, or Ford? And be honest: if one sat on the lot, would you have bought it?