Daytonas and Superbirds were the cars that ultimately changed NASCAR forever. Yes, Ford had some swoopy cars that had very subtle aerodynamic changes that they put in place to try and not get too much attention, but Chrysler threw all that out the window. They went full send, with zero regard for anyone else in the field, and without putting one ounce of thought into what the long term repercussions would be. I bet you that building the Daytona and Superbird cost Chrysler tens of millions of dollars in the long term, and I’m not even talking about a single penny put into the development of the cars themselves.

When Harry Hogg says “There’s nothing stock about a stock car.” in Days of Thunder, he wasn’t lying. Sure in the era the movie was supposed to be replicating they did use “stock” body panel skins to start some parts of the body but they were moved and tweaked and modified to be what the teams wanted. There used to be cars that were so twisted body wise that in person they didn’t actually look like a real car, or looked like one that had been wrecked. So much so that the tv crews wouldn’t show them from certain angles in the pits, before the race, etc.

But watch this to understand just what the Daytona and Superbird did to NASCAR racing, and how a team of real creative thinkers made it all happen. Was it good in the long run? Probably not. But these guys were racers and used all their resources to put everyone else in their place.