Richard Petty’s Daytona-winning 1964 Plymouth Belvedere replica was featured in the April issue of Hot Rod Magazine, which also has a good article on the 426 Hemi. Those of you without a subscription (or who are unwilling to head down to the newsstand), check out this site, which has a ton of photos and information about the car.
It’s been 50 years since the awesome 426 Hemi was introduced (with a win by Richard Petty at the Daytona 500), and Ma Mopar is celebrating with this cool graphic! You can read the full story at Allpar
Check out this Belvedere that was converted into a tribute to The King. It may be a clone but at least this way you can drive the wheels off the thing! See the story at Auto Enthusiast. (The story starts on page 7). More pics after the jump!
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.
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.
