Dodge Built the Daytona Because the Regular Charger Wasn’t Fast Enough
By 1969, NASCAR’s superspeedways had turned aerodynamics into an arms race. Dodge’s Charger 500 was an improvement over the standard Charger, but Ford and Mercury were still giving Chrysler serious trouble on the fastest tracks. The answer was the Dodge Charger Daytona, a radically reshaped Charger with an extended nose cone, a flush rear-window treatment and a towering rear wing designed to keep the car stable at speeds that were becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Wind-tunnel work helped reduce drag dramatically, and Chrysler engineers quickly discovered that the Daytona was capable of speeds far beyond what a conventional stock-bodied Charger could achieve.
NASCAR rules meant Dodge couldn’t simply build a handful of race cars and call it a day. To homologate the Daytona, the company had to offer a street version to the public. Dodge ultimately produced about 503 U.S.-market Daytonas, most with the 375-horsepower 440 Magnum and roughly 70 with the 426 Hemi. Those road cars carried the same outrageous basic formula—pointed nose, flush rear glass and huge wing—that had been developed for racing. They could be bought from a Dodge dealer just like any other new car, even though their appearance was dictated largely by the need to win NASCAR races.
Buddy Baker Becomes the First Man Over 200 MPH on a Closed Course
On March 24, 1970, Buddy Baker climbed into Chrysler’s blue No. 88 Charger Daytona at Talladega Superspeedway for a high-speed test. Baker had already developed a reputation for being unusually comfortable at extreme speed, and Chrysler knew the Daytona was approaching a milestone nobody had officially reached on a closed circuit. With NASCAR timing equipment in place, Baker first turned a lap at 200.096 mph. Then he went faster, circling the 2.66-mile Talladega oval at 200.447 mph and becoming the first driver officially timed above 200 mph on a closed course.
The car was not simply a showroom Daytona with numbers painted on the doors. It was a Chrysler engineering development machine that had begun life as a Charger 500 before being converted during the Daytona program. But that makes the accomplishment even more relevant to the production cars. The aerodynamic ideas that sent Baker beyond 200 mph were the same basic features Dodge had been forced to put on cars sitting in dealership showrooms. Suddenly the Daytona’s absurd nose and skyscraper rear wing didn’t look quite so ridiculous. They worked.
The Daytona Led Directly to the Plymouth Superbird
By the time Baker made his record run, Chrysler had already given Plymouth a wing car of its own. The 1970 Plymouth Superbird applied lessons learned from the Daytona to the Road Runner, adding its own extended nose, flush aerodynamic treatments and enormous rear wing. The car was developed partly to improve Plymouth’s NASCAR performance and partly to lure Richard Petty back after he had left Plymouth for Ford in 1969.
NASCAR had also tightened its homologation requirements, forcing Plymouth to build far more street cars than Dodge had with the Daytona. Roughly 1,900 Superbirds were produced, meaning ordinary buyers could walk into a Plymouth dealership and purchase something remarkably similar in appearance to the machines screaming around Daytona and Talladega. The wing-car era was spectacular but brief. Charger Daytonas and Superbirds became formidable competitors, and Bobby Isaac won the 1970 NASCAR Grand National championship driving a Daytona. NASCAR responded for 1971 with rules that severely handicapped the aerodynamic cars, effectively ending their usefulness at the highest level of stock-car racing.
That short lifespan is part of what makes the Daytona and Superbird so fascinating today. They weren’t wild styling exercises dreamed up simply to attract attention in dealer showrooms. They existed because Detroit was fighting an all-out speed war in NASCAR—and the rules required manufacturers to sell versions of their racing technology to regular customers. Buddy Baker’s 200.447-mph lap may be the ultimate proof of just how serious that war had become. Dodge built one of the strangest-looking production cars in American history because it wanted to go faster than anyone else in NASCAR. Then, for a brief moment, you could walk into a dealership and buy one.
