Of all of the things I’ve ever heard of about a car “back in the day”, this one is by far the most amusing one. At the beginning of the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency was hell-bent on figuring out on reducing emissions from vehicles of all kinds…including aircraft. One question, though: just how do you measure the emissions of an aircraft on power? What are you gonna do, find a way to put a sniffer cart on wheels and go hauling ass after a 707 that’s in the middle of it’s takeoff roll to parts unknown? Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what you do.

In order to study the emissions of aircraft, the EPA decided to take a car that was more than capable of staying behind an aircraft at speed and to turn it into a rolling test facility. On-board equipment would measure what came blasting out of the back of jet engines, and data would be recorded. This was not only a more accurate way of determining what was happening in the real world, but it would be cheaper, too. Or, at least, that’s what a North Carolina-based EPA section chief named John Moran thought. He proposed using a worked-up Plymouth Road Runner Superbird as a chase car and somehow managed to get the government to sign off on the deal. NASCAR builder Ray Nichels got the contract to build the Superbird and from there, the car spent a few years chasing planes like a dog chasing cars.

The work that the EPA Superbird put in was valuable. It’s the reason why lead is no longer in gasoline, for starters. That’s due to Moran’s work behind the wheel…he alone would drive the missions. Whether that was because he didn’t want anyone to risk being hurt during his work or because he wanted yet another crack at the warmed-up 440 and the swapped-in four-speed, we can’t say for certain.