BOBBY ALISON'S DAYTONA

[69_500]

There is however quite a Drag Racing following at those auctions. Seems that Trans AM racing is also pupular with the people at BJ too.

[Ghoste]

I was initially going to dispute the TA following but as the reply page loaded I started to think you could be right.  TA is popular in nostalgia racing on the west coast so there is likely some crossover with the same folks who attend the Monterey sports car nostalgia racing and Goodwood Festival of Speed Types.  Although they can easily afford it, most of those Bugatti, Ferrari types tend to be a little smarter with their money than what I personally feel I just witnessed at B-J.

[Mike DC]

I dunno about how inflated these prices really are.

--  Muscle cars from around 1970 are gonna be the most sought-after collector cars for the forseeable future.  By a wide margin.  1971 Hemi'Cudas are a lot more sought after than, say, a weird-ass Bugatti open wheel racer from 1956.

--  NASCAR is more popular than it's ever been before, and most of the new blood is wealthier & newer (to the old-car world) on average than ever before.  NASCAR basically has a future fan-base, whereas F1 and many other snootier forms of auto racing do not.

--  So winged Hemi Mopars are arguably the pinnacle of NASCARs & musclecar race cars, and they ain't makin' any more old NASCAR Charger Daytonas.  And realistically, we probably won't see many clones being built either. 


We might have seen more #43 & #71 type clones if there were lots of lesser-driver 1969 NASCAR Daytonas left around.  But there aren't many.  And although it's certainly possible to create a whole new clone of a 1969 NASCAR racer from a street car, it's probably too much of a leap for the collectors to ever want to pay big money for NASCAR clones that are newly-built out of old street car unibodies.

All this leads me to to wonder how much the values of NASCAR Wing cars will be climbing to.

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[Ghoste]

Not inflated?  If the price of more common consumer goods rose by a fraction of the percentage that these cars rose in the last couple of months, the federal reserve would be going nuts to control the runaway inflation.
I can understand the pricing on a Hemi Cuda convertible with a handful made and legendary status beginning to surround it.  It's become an icon.  But a 67 GTX CLONE??  Wtf?  How does that car reach into the 6 digit pricing?  If the market pops even just a little bit, how much do you that clone is going to be worth?  It's a parts car with a cool engine and that's all it is if the market sags.  And say what you want about never building them again and no end to the market but history and logic say there has to be an end.  Someday at some point I say that clone will be worth incredibly less than it sold for a few days ago.

[Mike DC]

In that last post, I'm only speaking in regards to vintage surviving famous NASCARs. 

I think many of the bidders on regular street-car musclecars at Barrett-Jackson are smoking crack.

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[Ghoste]

Ah yes, I can see your point now,  I should have read it a little slower and  I agree with that.  Do you think though that NASCAR's popularity is with the common folk and much less the guys who were buying cars at B-J?
Just based on where I live, I doubt that even many of the "Johnny-come lately" NASCAR fans here would know much NASCAR history beyond what year was Jeff Gordon's big win.  That's just what I notice here though.  I'll insult my homeboys further and say that I doubt many or even MOST of them even know about the wing cars.  Remember, I'm talking locally.

[69_500]

I only threw in the TA cars because it seems that the Dan Gureny car went for pretty decent amount of money a few years ago. I believe that is because most Chevy guys know stuff aobut the T/A and AAR because most Chevy guys like the Camaro and cars it competed against in racing. NOt too many old Chevy fans who followed NASCAR. Could it be because Chevy was getting spanked every weekend in Nascar? I think so.

[Mike DC]

Just based on where I live, I doubt that even many of the "Johnny-come lately" NASCAR fans here would know much NASCAR history beyond what year was Jeff Gordon's big win.  That's just what I notice here though.  I'll insult my homeboys further and say that I doubt many or even MOST of them even know about the wing cars.  Remember, I'm talking locally.

That's a good point too.  A lot of modern NASCAR fans consider "Days of Thunder" as back in the Dark Ages.

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But they still vaguely know Dale Earnhardt Sr.  (Darrel Waltrip keeps talking about him from the broadcasters' booth during the races.)
And people may not know who Buddy Baker or Cale Yarborough is, but they know that if there's lots of NASCAR-licensed merchandise of some old driver then he was probably important.  Heck, according to recent mitochondrial DNA studies, all these drivers named "Petty" probably had a single common ancestor who roamed the Amercian South during the 20th century.  

And the fans know that NASCAR race cars must have existed before the 1990s.  It's simple deductive reasoning:  NASCAR is always bragging about "technological advances" but the cars haven't changed in last couple decades at all.

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[Ghoste]

Earnhardt   rest his soul.  A big Earnhardt fan at work used to razz me all the time about Mopars and I quipped back one day about his hero getting his start in a Charger and if it was good enough for Earnhardt etc.  He scoffed and so I brought in a picture of one of big Dale's first rides.  He still didn't like them, but he never said much about Dodge after that.

[Highbanked Hauler]

I would guess the advances they refer to are safety and you don't see many engines go up in smoke like years ago.

[Mike DC]

The cars are basically the same thing they were using 20 years ago.  They switched to the smaller chassis (110 inch wheelbase, down from 115 inches) in 1981.  Ever since then they've basically just been tweaking minor things.

Every inch of the car has gotten more precise in construction, and cheating the rules is said to be DRASTICALLY reduced because they've spent 20 years adding regulations & catching offenders.  That's about the only difference.

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[89MOPAR]

I

  1971 Hemi'Cudas are a lot more sought after than, say, a weird-ass Bugatti open wheel racer from 1956.

Sure are !   Since there were NO Bugattis made in 1956.   Sorry, couldn't resist.

[69_500]

Oh there are still people trying to cheat, remember someone trying to cheat on how much fuel was in the tank a little while back? I still don't get how they have rules for ride heights before and after a race, but if a car fails the one after the race it doesn't really seem to matter. They don't strip their standings from a race or anything. That is what I"d do if I was in charge of Nascar. Everyone gets the same size rear spoiler, same set of rules. Now if one car goes out and domintes then I look at the other manufactuers and tell them to either step up their programs or fall behind. Instead of taking stuff away from a car that is doing well. IE the Intrepids a few years back had to give up 1 1/2" off their spoilers because they were doing well.

[Mike DC]

Oh yeah, I agree that the teams are still trying to cheat as much as ever.  Only they used to cheat for 35 horsepower all the time but now they're lucky to get 5 extra horses by the inspectors.  Anyone who has been in NASCAR for a while agrees that there's less cheating going on now than ever before.  Every year the teams cheat somewhere else, and then NASCAR finds another little loophole in the rulebook to close. 

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We like to think otherwise, but NASCAR isn't really in the business of demonstrating who has better engineering.  Not their concern now, never has been.

They just want the competition as tight as possible and they want popular drivers/teams to get wins.  Just like any other sport.  They'll manipulate anything & everything to keep it that way.  Any time a certain brand of car or a certain team has ever gotten a consistent advantage in NASCAR, the crowd's attendance/viewership has accordingly bombed until the competition was evened out again.

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