The Super Birds and Daytonas never where a good sell period. They where not intended to be either. The sole purpose was to win a war against Ford! Nasacar required 500 cars be sold to satisfiy Nascar homongulation rules. Nobody at Chrysler cared one bit about selling the bodies. It was all about Ego, building Hemis and a crazy love for racing. Every bird car lost money, not one made a dollar. Dealers could not give the cars away, but to see one when i was a kid racing at Daytona was unbelievable how fast they where. These cars ate fords ****!
No offense, but this is one of the worst posts ever! First, there was no 500 rule. The rule was you had to build enough cars so that every dealership in the country would have one. This is why 1,920 Superbirds were built. There were also 503 Daytonas sold in the US and another 40 went to Dodge dealers in Canada.
As for making money, while there were a few cars that remained on dealership lots for extended periods, most of them sold immediately or close to it. Most of these cars were sold to people who wanted to use them for racing, which is why so many of them still exist today. By percentage, they have some of the best survival rates of any cars outside Duesenbergs. Most of these cars weren't daily drivers that were driven to death and then junked. Also, the success of these cars generated tremendous enthusiasm for Chrysler products, so saying these cars made no money is just incorrect. And in the most extreme case I know of, the owner of St. Augustine Chrysler Plymouth here in Florida still had his Tor Red Superbird in the front of his showroom as late as the early 1990s. He refused to sell if because he had placed it in the window in 1970 and had been drawing buyers ever since.
As for egos, it wasn't about egos. It was about winning races to build support and demand for the brand. The better your cars were designed, the faster they went. The faster they went, the more NASCAR drivers wanted them. The more NASCAR racers drove them and won, the more race enthusiasts bought cars at dealerships. That's been the motivation for manufacturer support for all racing since racing started and continues to be the motivation today.
And really... "These cars ate Ford's ****"? If anything Ford ate their ****.
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I didn't read the article but several NASCAR drivers that drove the winged things back in the day commented that they even helped the car straighten up when the rear end got loose at speed.....
I was one of those guys who never thought most spoilers did anything to affect a vehicle's performance. The winged car spoilers did because their height enabled them to get enough airflow to be effective, but things like Go Wings were just for show.
Then I mounted a Go Wing and a '69 Camaro front spoiler on my Roadrunner that had previously not had one, and I was doing nuts for weeks because of all things my rearview mirror. I would get in my car in the morning, and the mirror would be off. It had been fine when I drove the car last, but it was always off when I got in in the mornings. Then I would get out on to I-295 and start going 65-75, and my mirror would be off again and I would have to adjust it. Then when I went to lunch, same thing, the mirror was off again. The mirror was tight as could be and I couldn't figure out why I had to keep adjusting it.
Then one day I was late for work and didn't screw with the mirror when I got in the car, and I was looking in it as I merged onto I-295 and I saw as I sped up the mirror went from being out of adjustment into right where I wanted it. What was happening was the front spoiler and wing were actually changing the angle of the car as I increased speed, which is why the mirror angle to my eyes was different when the car was sitting still and going down the highway. I had no idea those things were actually having an impact on the car, but they sure as hell were.
