Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Bobby Allison/Rossi 1969 Dodge Charger 500

This is a picture of the Bobby Allison 1969 Dodge Charger 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.  This car was owned and built by Rossi Automotive Engineering.  You can see Bobby putting the bumble bee stripe himself on the back of the car–imagine a current NASCAR driver putting his own decals on the car!

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Cotton Owens Garage Circa 1967

Want to see what a Championship NASCAR garage looked like in 1967? Well here you go. This is from early 1967 just after the COG had won the 1966 Grand National Championship. Owens was one of the main factory sponsored Chrysler teams at the time and he had a lot of cars to work with compared to other teams in 1967. You can see two 1966 Dodge Charger’s here and you can see what a NASCAR cage looked like in 1967.  The cage was still pretty primitive at this point in Grand National history. Full door bars were not mandatory until 1968.

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Cotton Owens at the 67 Daytona Firecracker 400

This photo of the #6 Cotton Owens Dodge Charger at speed was taken at the 1967 Daytona Firecracker 400. The #21 Ford in front is the Wood Brothers car driven by Cale Yarborough who went on to win the race.

Did you know that this was the car used in the Elvis movie Speedway? It is a terrible movie but very 60s. They did all the racing shots on the East Coast and all the close ups were in Hollywood using West Coast racer Jack McCoy’s Charger painted up like the Owens car.

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: James Hylton’s 1965 Dodge Coronet at the 67 Daytona Firecracker 400

This shot of James Hylton’s 1965 Dodge Coronet is from the 1967 Daytona Firecracker 400. James was an independent back in the day and was amazingly successful considering his resources.  He finished second in points that year, losing only to Richard Petty who won 27 races that year.  James didn’t win a single race and still finished second in the points standings. James Hylton is now 79 years old and is still racing!

Also, isn’t it amazing how stock these cars were?  Compare it to what you see now.

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Richard Petty’s 67 Plymouth Belvedere at Bristol Speedway

We have another great vintage Richard Petty photo this week. The picture is from the 1967 Bristol race, most likely the spring one. The car is up on jack stands and even in the B&W picture you can tell it has chrome rims. The car is also pretty naked of stickers so you can tell this is from practice a day or two before the actual race.

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Richard Petty’s Unbeatable 67 Plymouth Belvedere

This is at the 1967 Daytona 500, probably during practice. I have had several arguments over the years with people saying that in 1969 Ford was the first to use rear exit exhaust, and that they used successfully until NASCAR banned it. Well, a picture never lies. As you can plainly see the #43 Richard Petty Plymouth has rear exit exhaust. Talking to the gentleman who took this picture, I learned that Petty’s team tried it in practice and they didn’t notice a difference in power, so they went back to the side exit exhaust. The biggest benefit to rear exit exhaust is that if a car tried to draft them it would overheat, but some say it gave a slight horsepower increase as well.

Also a quick note from the writer: we apologize for the watermarks on these photos but often times these pictures get stolen and are sold on eBay. We feel we need to watermark them to protect them.

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Vintage Mopar NASCAR Photo of the Week: Cotton Owens 1969 Dodge Charger 500

My name is Tom Hergert and I’m the new guest blogger on Mopar Blog. I run a restoration shop in Olympia, Washington called Rocket Restorations. I am going to be doing a NASCAR shot of the week with some tech articles mixed in. We will be doing some articles based on decoding fender tags, build number, and broadcast sheets for our great cars as well. Very excited to join this awesome community.

For our first vintage photo we have a good one–this is the Cotton Owens’ 1969 Dodge Charger 500 with Buddy Baker behind the wheel. They are fitting the template to the car to make sure it is legal (also see other template on the ground next to the car). Notice the 71 K&K Insurance Charger in the background as well.

Keep in mind the date printed on the photo is when it was developed, not when it was taken. This is from the Yankee 600 on August 17, 1969 at Michigan International Speedway.

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Vintage Mopar NASCARs To Be Featured at the Concours d’Elegance of America

This year’s Concours d’Elegance of America at St. John’s will feature vintage NASCARs, including several very cool Mopars. Pictured below is the 1970 Plymouth Superbird formerly raced by Ramo Stott, which apparently was the first Superbird to score a victory in a NASCAR-sanctioned event at the 1970 ARCA 300 at Daytona. After the jump I have a pic of a very cool 1972 Dodge Challenger “Kit Car” developed by Petty Enterprises to help aspiring circle track racers. You can read a lot more about these cars and the other non-Mopar NASCARs to be displayed over at Hemmings.

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