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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Author
We’re closing in on the ultimate handful of weeks of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Sequence season, the inventory automotive collection’ seventy fifth anniversary marketing campaign. To rejoice, every week via the top of the season, Ryan McGee is presenting his prime 5 favourite issues in regards to the sport.
High 5 best-looking vehicles? Test. High 5 hardest drivers? We have it. High 5 mustaches? There could be just one, so possibly not.
With out additional ado, our 75 favourite issues about NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of inventory automotive racing.
Earlier installments: Hardest drivers | Best races | Finest title fights | Finest-looking vehicles
Editor’s Picks
2 Associated
5 worst-looking vehicles
In our final installment of our ESPN NASCAR 75 biggest lists, we unveiled our top-five best-looking race vehicles. However this can be a yin-vs.-yang universe that we dwell and race in, which implies that for each second and merchandise of magnificence, there should even be a counterbalance of ugly.
For each Rolling Stones there’s a Milli Vanilli. For each Brad Pitt there’s a Mr. Bean. And for each Aston Martin DB5 pushed by James Bond there’s a Pontiac Aztek pushed by Walter White.
So, seize ahold of that mindset of unseemliness, and proceed in studying via fingers that partially cowl your eyes as we current our top- (or is it bottom-?) 5 worst-looking NASCAR race vehicles.
Honorable Point out: Junior Johnson’s 1966 ‘Yellow Banana’
In August 1966, the Final American Hero was within the second half of his first post-driving season as a crew proprietor when he acquired a name from good friend and fellow Ford legend John Holman of Holman-Moody with a request and a problem.
“He needed me to see if I may construct a automotive that was throughout the guidelines, but in addition bent the principles slightly, simply to see what would occur,” Johnson recalled in 2010.
The consequence was a Ford Galaxie that did not appear to be another inventory automotive on the grid, with a sloped nostril, lowered roof and a rear finish that was bent upwards after which downwards. Fred Lorenzen’s trip was Holly Farms Hen yellow, so it was nicknamed “the Banana.” Indignant rivals referred to as it “Junior’s Joke.”
Inaugural inductee Junior Johnson with 2015 inductee Fred Lorenzen in entrance of the “yellow banana.” #legends pic.twitter.com/glW9JrtWls
— NASCAR Corridor of Fame (@NASCARHall) January 29, 2015
It ran one race, the Dixie 400 at Atlanta, main 24 laps and nonetheless up entrance earlier than crashing out.
Legendarily sneaky mechanic Smokey Yunick did one thing comparable in the identical race, constructing a 7/Eighth-scale Chevy Chevelle for Curtis Turner. Each vehicles had been instantly banned by NASCAR after the race.
“My favourite half was how after they wrote that the rear finish was bizarre trying,” Johnson recalled. “I would say, effectively, so is mine!”
5. 1951 Studebaker
Sure, Studebaker. As soon as a staple of the American street, it went out of enterprise in 1967, however did compete in NASCAR’s prime collection for a short window within the early Nineteen Fifties, successful three races.
Studebaker’s signature victory got here in Columbia, South Carolina on June 16, 1951, when Frank “Insurgent” Mundy lapped a subject of 34 vehicles that included 9 (!) completely different auto producers, from Oldsmobile and Cadillac to Hudson and even 5 Henry J’s. Mundy’s No. 23 featured hen wire stretched throughout the entrance bumper to forestall chunks of purple clay from getting into the grill and a spherical open nostril piece that regarded like both the tip of a WWII torpedo or Hans Zarkov’s spaceship from an outdated Flash Gordon film.
4. 1978 Dodge Magnum
As said in our final prime 5, it could have been very straightforward to fill the best-looking vehicles checklist with nothing however Richard Petty entries. If a driver begins 1,184 races over 35 years, although, they’re certain to wheel some lemons, too.
After over-extending the lifetime of the famend however outdated Charger, Chrysler and Petty Enterprises rolled out the Dodge Magnum, a squared-off battleship with an oblong grill that regarded like a nasty mustache and peculiar headlight covers that could not even be saved by “43” and “STP” decals. All of the Magnum wanted to grow to be the household truckster was to increase the again window and ratchet strap Aunt Edna to the roof.
The automotive was so dangerous that Petty went winless for the primary time since 1959 and deserted it midseason for an unsupported Chevy that he paid for out of his personal pocket. Not even Zoolander may have saved this Magnum.
3. 1997 Ford Taurus (prototype)
In our top-five best-looking checklist, we taught you in regards to the debut of the 1995 Chevy Monte Carlo that launched NASCAR’s aero age, a decade-long endless competition of complaining when each crew and driver whined in regards to the benefits that the opposite guys had when it got here to their automotive slipping via the air and grabbing downforce to grip the monitor. And that is how we ended up with the ’98 Ford Taurus, the primary four-door machine ever authorized for the Cup Sequence.
The issue was, nobody may determine precisely the place these passenger doorways truly went on the custom-built rounded-off machine that was conjured up by Penske Racing president Don Miller, who has since admitted to fudging large time on his presentation to NASCAR as to what the brand new road Taurus was going to be. What we all know now could be that the Taurus gained a ton of races and ended up being massaged right into a nice-looking trip, however that first mannequin was an egg with tires.
Additionally…we will all agree that the Ford Taurus ended up turning into an important inventory automotive. However bear in mind after they unveiled the present automotive for NASCAR’s first ever four-door racecar…however um…was it actually? #NASCAR75 pic.twitter.com/9UCALq3gAM
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) August 15, 2023
The most effective/worst second was when Ford parked its newly revealed race automotive in Gasoline Alley in the course of the ’97 Brickyard 400 and used a tape line to mark off the place these rear doorways would theoretically be. Dale Earnhardt, trying over that present automotive at Indy, ran his finger over that tape, checked out me and groused, “My daughter is 9 years outdated and tiny and we could not get her in that door if we had a crowbar and a barrel of bear grease.”
2. 2006-07 ‘Twisted Sister’ period
I hadn’t supposed for this checklist to grow to be a cause-and-effect flowchart, however right here we’re. And earlier than we go any additional, you could perceive that that is the Jekyll and Hyde of racing machines. Or extra precisely, Two-Face from Batman.
If you happen to had been simply trying on the driver’s aspect of those vehicles, they regarded like an precise automotive. If you happen to had been standing on the opposite aspect they regarded like an precise damaged automotive. After they had been on the racetrack, they regarded superb as a result of they produced some nice racing, however after they had been parked within the storage, once more, they regarded damaged.
One other random #NASCAR75 thought, reverse of my final one. How gawd terrible had been the “Twisted Sister” vehicles of the 2000s? This is Harvick’s ’07 Chevy, by way of Reddit consumer SkittleCar1. As Lynda Petty mentioned to me standing within the Petty store “It appears to be like wrecked and it hasn’t even raced but.” pic.twitter.com/J84AcaMGVN
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) August 15, 2023
Within the seek for excellent aerodynamics, engineers actually reshaped one half of the automotive, bending the metallic to greatest seize the air move. They twisted the celebrity. See: the “Twisted Sister” nickname.
It went on for years, however the taffy machine pinnacle was ’06-’07. Throughout that point, I paid a go to to Petty Enterprises and bumped into Richard’s spouse, Lynda. She regarded on the crew pushing a twisted Dodge via the store and mentioned, “It appears to be like wrecked and it hasn’t even raced but.”
1. The Automobile of Tomorrow
Maybe my animosity towards that so-called Gen 4 automotive (which, in keeping with lots of people on social media is an opinion that’s mistaken and downright blasphemous) is definitely rooted within the place the place it ended up taking us subsequent: to a racing machine that has grow to be the Lord Voldemort of NASCAR, the Automobile-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named. For the document, the Automobile or Tomorrow, or CoT was a crucial evil, even when Kyle Busch (the primary driver to win within the CoT) mentioned “they suck.”
All of that whining about aero wanted a reset button and the Twisted Sister’s cockpit had grow to be so cramped that it was turning into unsafe. The issue was that the roomier, one-car-fits-all design shared by Ford, Chevy and Toyota made them look extra just like the transport containers that precise Fords, Chevys and Toyotas had been delivered in.
After which NASCAR bolted an enormous carbon fiber-wing on the again that regarded like one thing my cousin purchased at a Quick & Livid fan occasion to attempt to make his Saturn Ion look cool when he cruised the Pizza Hut parking zone. Nonetheless, when the CoT was despatched out to pasture in 2012, it did not cease me from writing a semi-emotional farewell column.