NASCAR has seen some truly iconic cars throughout its history. However, one particular car always comes up as one of the most cherished vehicles ever built. This was the time when stock cars were truly stock cars and not purpose-built shells like the cars of today. Of course, we are talking about the legendary Dodge Daytona.

They especially built the 1969 Daytona with a focus on aerodynamics. And the company built only 503 of these engineering marvels. The main reason to have these cars built and sold to the public was so that Dodge could go on to win races in NASCAR. Logically, that meant more of these one-off cars sold would add to the ledger for their racing side of things.

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The key aspect of this car was the massive rear deck wings that measured 23 inches. Also, the front half of the car saw an aerodynamically shaped nose cone instead of the regular grills. They derived the name of the car as an ode to the iconic Daytona International Speedway. Recently, one of these iconic 1969 Daytona models ended up at an auction fetching nearly half a million dollars.

These swooping new design implementations for the Daytona made sure that the car won several races. At first, it was able to win at Talladega 500 race. Later on, it went on to win two in the 1969 season and four more in the 1970 season. However, sometime later in the 1970 season, the 1970 Plymouth Superbird replaced the iconic car. The Plymouth later on become famed for being driven by NASCAR legend, Richard Petty.

NASCAR later banned aero-spec cars

They banned the Daytona and the Plymouth cars from NASCAR. Soon the other manufacturers, with an aero focus, also faced the axe from the competition. Why? Mostly because they were too good for the competition.

These aero-focused cars were actually ahead of their time and with them on the track, it was nearly impossible for the others to compete fairly against them. The cars were so good that NASCAR had to rewrite its rule book to prevent these cars from racing competitively in any NASCAR-sanctioned event.

There is much hype surrounding the Daytonas or the Plymouths until the present day. However, these cars were not specifically great sellers in the American consumer market. Mostly because of the expensive price point. Another reason for customers to be dissuaded to get one of these was the impracticality to have them as regular everyday cars.

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However, as time went on, the demand for these legacy cars kept growing. In today’s era, it’s really become difficult to be lucky enough to get your hands on one of them.