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“Chrysler did us a big favor by showing us the car they were going to race the next year,” says Gray. Charlie Gray, Ford’s then-NASCAR program manager, said a prototype of the extended nose Ford that would become the Torino Talladega was put together from scratch during the rainout week. That allowed Ford’s racing division to scramble to come up with an alternative of its own. The racecar was on display at the track, but then the race was delayed for a week by rain. Something more was needed.” And so the Charger 500 was the first shot fired in the aero wars – but it would be far from the last.ĭodge actually unveiled the NASCAR version of the Charger 500 prior to the National 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Oct.
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The late team owner Cotton Owens described the problem thusly: “The new 1968 Charger hardtop was a beautiful, sleek design, but it wasn’t aerodynamic enough. Called the Charger 500, it featured a blunt front grille and flush rear roofline, both substantially better from an aero perspective than the standard Charger, with its draggy recessed front grille and recessed rear window. Chrysler started ’69 with a new version of the year-old redesign of the Dodge Charger. In both cases, the manufacturers were protesting France’s decision to ban certain high-performance engines.īut by the time the 1969 season rolled around, the two automakers found new ground on which to escalate their NASCAR rivalry: Aerodynamics. Chrysler boycotted NASCAR for much of 1965, as did Ford a year later. and Chrysler on race tracks across the country. When Dodge unveiled its Charger 500, it was the first shot in a brief, but spectacular aerodynamic arms race that changed NASCAR and produced some legendary cars.Īs years go, 1969 was one of the most remarkable and turbulent in the recent history of the United States: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon half a million people partied for four days and nights at Woodstock Richard Nixon was sworn in as the 37th President as the Vietnam War raged on, and Joe Namath stunned the world by leading the upstart New York Jets to victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.Īnd, fueled by millions of dollars from Detroit, an arms race escalated to unprecedented proportions in NASCAR, where the sanctioning body’s founder and chairman “Big Bill” France sought to keep a competitive balance between Ford Motor Co.