1970 Plymouth Superbird. Geoff Stunkard

lasted.

       INTRODUCTION

      The era covered in the following pages is unique in automotive history. The power of “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” marketing actually came to its peak moment just as the Plymouth Superbird arrived on the scene. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler started the 1970 model year with very aggressive performance car marketing; this special vehicle was one of many that came out in the 1969–1970 model era to homologate, or legalize, components for racing. To the companies involved, victory was worth that much.

      By the end of that year, however, there had been wholesale changes as Detroit began focusing all energies on urgent and upcoming government regulations. The Superbird, built on a tight schedule in limited numbers, not only fell from grace in the OEM environment but also on the very racetracks it had been created for, as NASCAR made radical rules changes in 1971 to basically eliminate these special packages. Perhaps looked upon oddly as street cars when first released, ownership of one of these vehicles became a goal of the earliest efforts at collecting muscle cars a mere decade later.

      A parallel movement by fans of NASCAR started with gatherings and clubs specifically for these unique aerocars, and by the 21st Century, their values had become well established, justifying expensive restorations and purchase prices. In this book, I recount some facts that have been recognized in prior tomes, as well as provide additional background on how the Superbird came to be, how it performed in its over-too-soon moment in competition, and its modern-day popularity. Come fly with us.

       Collector Don Fezell’s unrestored low-mileage U-code Superbird was part of his amazing racing and muscle car collection. It sold at Mecum’s 2017 auction in Florida.

       CHAPTER 1

       THE EVOLUTION TO AERO

       The former Walter P. Chrysler Museum near Detroit displays the Airflow models of the 1930s that were the forerunners to the aerodynamic stylings that arrived in the late 1960s for racing. (Photo Courtesy Quartermilestones.com)

      Inasmuch as exercises in automotive styling were usually done by designers, it is fitting that something as outrageous as the Plymouth Superbird emerged from the engineering side of the Chrysler Corporation. After all, Walter P. Chrysler’s own personal interest in how and why things worked had been part of the company’s DNA since its 1924 founding. Moreover, the first scientific aero-restyling in the automotive realm was the Chrysler Airflow of the 1930s. The victim of being “too much too soon” in its overall innovations, the Airflow effort could conceivably be seen as the grandfather of what came to pass when the company threw away normalcy in the pursuit of scientific success years later, even though the latter occasion was based on a much narrower purpose: winning races.

THE POST-WAR BOOM AND THE TOWNSEND ERA

      Following World War II, peacetime brought about a huge interest in motorsports. Participation grew exponentially in amateur and professional auto racing. Regardless of the form of the contest, after sheer horsepower accomplished all that was possible, engineers and racers began to think about aerodynamics. They quickly realized that there was something to it and that aerodynamics could take a competitor back to the front of the pack. Without fully realizing it, “Big Bill” France and his National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) circuit likely played the biggest role in what turned Detroit’s attention to aerodynamics in production cars. France’s monstrous new paved race course in Daytona Beach was a showcase of factory pride from its 1959 opening.

       The Superbird was similarly created as a testament to pure function, as restorer John Balow demonstrates at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo Courtesy Quartermilestones.com)

      Soon after, Chrysler’s board of directors selected a former outside auditor and then-current comptroller named Lynn Townsend to take the reins of the firm in July 1961. Although the company was in the red financially, Townsend recognized what it meant to see a car from Chrysler’s stables show its prowess on the Daytona track. In October 1961, he authorized a new racing-focused group at Chrysler Engineering to develop competition packages for both NASCAR and drag racing.

      That done, Chrysler’s longtime racing liaison Ronney Householder went to Highland, Indiana, and hired his former Indy car associate Ray Nichels and driver Paul Goldsmith to help spearhead Chrysler’s NASCAR development. Formerly with Pontiac, Nichels was a skilled fabricator and seasoned race team owner. He became the primary developer of engineered components for Chrysler’s circle track program as well as its distributor to other teams.

      As a brand, Plymouth already had one of the most noted names in the Grand National series. This name, of course, was Petty. Lee Petty posted season championships during the previous decade and also won the first big race at the new Daytona 500 track in 1959. Racing in a full-size Plymouth, he was badly injured in a crash at the same Daytona event during qualifying in 1961. After his son Richard took over driving full-time, the team became Chrysler’s primary full-time campaigner.

       Owner Ray Nichels and driver Paul Goldsmith were hired by fellow Indy car luminary Ronney Householder, who had headed up Chrysler’s racing efforts since the 1950s. Goldsmith put this Plymouth on the pole for the 1964 Daytona 500. (Ray Mann Photo, Courtesy Cal Lane)

      With Nichels and the factory responsible for development and the Petty crew (along with other campaigners) taking care of the week-in/week-out real-world testing, the work to win races as a corporation began in earnest. Chrysler had already moved to its unitized construction chassis design, eliminating the need for a heavy full frame. Meanwhile, engineers led by Tom Hoover, a Penn State–trained physicist who loved hot rodding as a hobby, had taken the RB-series Chrysler engine to its most functionally practical limits for racing. They laid plans to reintroduce the legendary Chrysler Hemi-design cylinder head to the roaring 1960s.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

      Townsend wanted a winner for Daytona by 1964. Beginning in March 1963, Hoover and his crew set their sights on taking the first-generation Hemi cylinder head and adapting it to a revised extreme-duty RB engine block for that purpose. Working under a very tight schedule, these engines were hand-fitted and tested rigorously. Using the latest versions on February 23, 1964, Richard Petty led Jimmy Pardue and Paul Goldsmith to a 1-2-3 finish for Plymouth at the Daytona 500.

       Richard Petty laps the #7 Ford driven by Bobby Johns in the 1964 Firecracker 400, thanks to the Hemi and the smaller frontal area of the 1964 Plymouth B-Body design. (Ray Mann Photo, Courtesy Cal Lane)

      In stock car racing, Chrysler’s chief competitor was Ford Motor Company, as General Motors had formally dropped out in 1963. Ford had stuck with full-size cars, and partway through the