Richard Petty on his favorite race car

[YY1]

The "fastback" 70/71 torino has a raised "lip" forming an upside down U shape around the back window and deck lid.
I bet that was a pretty good suction device at track speed.
71-74 B body does not have that.

 

[YY1]

I wonder if the 68/69 torino had the same "too slippery" issue that 66/67 Charger did.

 

[JR_Charger]

The 70 Torino was not as aerodynamic as the 68-69 body due to the concave shape of the rear window/ trunk lid area. The 71 Charger’s rear window is similarly shaped and my guess is that it suffered similarly. However, the windshield was angled more and that may have made up for it.

In my guesstimation, the 3rd gen's rear window and deck look like the front of a clark-y airfoil flipped upside down -

I think it provided a ton of downforce anyway - but it would be nice to know instead of guessing.

 

[DeltaV]

Holy smokes on his successes campaigning this car!

Lots of info in this article published last year:

Richard Petty's 1974 Dodge Charger Comes out of Hiding, Roars Like Thunder

 

[JR_Charger]

Speaking of Thunder, I would have dearly loved to do the Thunder Road drive with him, but I bet that ship has sailed.

 

[JR_Charger]

Marty Robbins car. I'm surprised at how stock it is. He was racing with the hidden headlight grill. I'm assuming the mechanicals were gutted, then again maybe they weren't! Another thing I'm noticing is that #42 doesn't have the fenders cut so the car can be dropped another 4." Richard's 74 isn't cut and slammed either. It looks like a ton of air is going under the car, but it must have worked.

 

[TorRed]

The lake that I grew up on in Georgia fed into the Yellow River not too far from the Yellow River Dragway where Petty had his unfortunate accident. I was pretty young but I remember hearing something about it as it was big news at he time.

 

[JR_Charger]

#12 here has the most extreme nose drop and fender cut out I've seen. It's also got the chin spoiler that goes all the way across the front. I doubt much air was getting under this car, and yet it appears this way of setting up the car was gone by 74.

 

[padam]

#12 here has the most extreme nose drop and fender cut out I've seen. It's also got the chin spoiler that goes all the way across the front. I doubt much air was getting under this car, and yet it appears this way of setting up the car was gone by 74.

View attachment 1670629

You have a good eye for detail.

 

[Detective D]

Richard ran a 74 Charger, hated the 75, so he kept the 74 going for a few years.
He then tried a Magnum when it came out, and absolutely hated it. I think they went backwards on the aero, he had comments about it being dangerously "slippery" at speed. Still, I think he managed a win in one if I recall right. Not surprising as it had the same bones as the 75 Charger did anyway.
I have always liked 74's. But I grew up in the era of people putting modern tech aftermarket stuff onto engines, so all the "old guy" complaints about power were moot to me.
The mid 70's cars are just modern enough to have stuff like good brakes and such, but old enough yet to not have any computers and still be "raw", still be "old power."
They will go up in price, mostly because prices on "the cool cars" that old guys like are outlandish now.

 

[YY1]

What I've read is that the Magnum was at least partially an attempt to rectify the "boxy" issues with the 75-77 B body, and in doing that, Petty actually liked the Magnum much better than those 75-77 cars.

 

[Photon440]

Petty didn't even race the 75-77 cars. His last win with the 1974 body was the Firecracker 400 in July 4, 1977. The next time he won a race (1979) he was driving an Oldsmobile. After he gave his son Kyle the Magnum, Kyle won his first race in it.

 

[Detective D]

Petty didn't even race the 75-77 cars. His last win with the 1974 body was the Firecracker 400 in July 4, 1977. The next time he won a race (1979) he was driving an Oldsmobile. After he gave his son Kyle the Magnum, Kyle won his first race in it.

Thank you. I knew one of those Petty's won a race in a Magnum.

 

[DeltaV]

Stock Car ... doesn't that mean they took a Petty '70 Plymouth Superbird and rebodied it to look like a a '74 Dodge Charger?

 

[#41]

Stock Car ... doesn't that mean they took a Petty '70 Plymouth Superbird and rebodied it to look like a a '74 Dodge Charger?

Probably not since the Charger wheelbase and track width are different, but of course that wouldn't be a hurdle for scrappy roundy-round guys... so who knows.

 

[Photon440]

Stock Car ... doesn't that mean they took a Petty '70 Plymouth Superbird and rebodied it to look like a a '74 Dodge Charger?

I think the builds were different. After 1971 they stopped using factory body-in-white cars and started from the ground up with a tube frame and chassis, then hung on the body panels.