Just A Question About Wing Cars In General

[ksquared]

 Of course, you could get a Six Barrel on a Superbird, but not on a Daytona.   You can kind of spin the tale in either direction depending on which side of the fence you are on.   

But you also had to have a vinyl roof on the Superbird, which helped to contribute to an increased cd over the Daytona.  I calculated it one time, and at high speed the increased horsepower of the Six Barrel Superbird would not compensate for the lower cd of the Daytona with a four-barrel carb.

[WINGIN IT]

Of course, you could get a Six Barrel on a Superbird, but not on a Daytona.   You can kind of spin the tale in either direction depending on which side of the fence you are on.  

But you also had to have a vinyl roof on the Superbird, which helped to contribute to an increased cd over the Daytona.  I calculated it one time, and at high speed the increased horsepower of the Six Barrel Superbird would not compensate for the lower cd of the Daytona with a four-barrel carb.

Get out really?  So you're saying that the Superbird loses at least 15 hp with a boar grain vinyl top at high speed??
Assuming both a Daytona and Superbird were identically equipped , do they weigh the same??

[Rarepearl]

I wonder at what stage the cars were pulled off the line to get outfitted as Superbirds and Daytonas.  Were they pulled off the line before they passed by the stations that installed all of the options?  Were the options installed later?  My guess is that if you ordered early enough and you knew the right person you could get some nice options.  The question is where and when were these installed.

[hemigeno]

I'm not as well-versed on Superbird construction as I am Daytonas - but for the latter, there was no such thing as "pulling them off the line" for conversion.  They were sent through Hamtramck and purpose-built as complete cars (minus a couple of specific items) prior to transferring to Creative Industries for conversion.  A few options normally available on "regular" Chargers were not available on Daytonas, such as A/C and luggage rack being two examples, but pretty much the entire arsenal of options were available apart from those exceptions - which all had practical reasons for their exclusion.

The O/P's question about whether the Daytonas were ordered or spec'd by customers, the dealerships, or a Chrysler department somewhere has yet to be answered completely.  I personally think it was a combination of the three... a few customers were able to custom-order their car, but those were only the ones who were lucky enough to hear about the car's introduction early enough to have been able to place such an order.  The procedures for such an ordering process were spelled out in factory documentation.  Some dealerships probably did put in requests or orders for cars, and I have heard unconfirmed stories that Chrysler received more requests (orders?) for Daytonas than the +/-500 they actually built in the end.  Whether those dealerships got a car they ordered/wanted - or even received a Daytona at all - might have been a function of the Regional Sales Manager's decision... i.e. you can't escape politics even in the automotive world.  Just look at all the mentions made of reassignment on the Dealer Invoice list published through the WW/NBOA a few years back.  That should give at least some idea of this topic's dynamic nature.

In the end, nobody knows the "whole" story on how the cars were ordered or procured - it's just us armchair quarterbacks looking at a mere highlight reel from a football game played 43 years ago and trying to figure out the conversations held between a head coach and his offensive coordinator.  Not really possible to do, but we enjoy the guesswork nonetheless.

[pettybird]

OK so is there an identifier for a dealer-ordered car for STOCK?  I've seen sales bank cars and "sold" cars which I'm assuming are cars built for specific customers.  Were dealer ordered, stock cars coded either way?

[maxwellwedge]

I know Mr. Norm put "Sold Car" on most of his orders just to get the cars quicker....even though they weren't really sold.....but he was probably the exception.