Going back to the Intrepid..

[Brock Samson]

from this weeks autoextreamist...

NASCAR needs the auto manufacturers again because - why?

"Detroit. If you were still searching for a sign that NASCAR had at least a shred of a foundation in reality (we gave up on that notion long ago, by the way), this next bit of information should remove any doubt. After testing the '05 "Dodge Charger" against the teams' '04 "Dodge Intrepid" at Las Vegas Motor Speedway recently, Penske Racing South will field Intrepids for Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch for the upcoming NASCAR races at California Speedway and Las Vegas, after Daytona. This was brought on by the fact that the '05 "Charger" was a huge disappointment for the Chrysler contingent, with all the blame going to the configuration of its nose shape, which hangs on the front of the NASCAR-approved body (and which the Chrysler Group submitted to NASCAR for approval going on two years ago). The Charger is such a disappointment to Chrysler's NASCAR teams that there's a plan afoot to present a new, '06 configuration nose to NASCAR for emergency approval."
from Autoextremist.com



I told them nimrods over at Allpar the charger was a brick  upon it's spyshots up on the truck and they dissagreed having drunk the Corp.  Koolaid,..  well i bet they got nothing to say now...


http://www.autoextremist.com/page3.shtml



Actually there is a precident for this:
As you (old farts) may recall, FORD went back to the earlier '69-69 Talladega and Cyclone spoiliers after the newer '71 versions turned out to be areodynamicly inferior, however it only took the Ford teams a few races to figgure it out.. not the entire season the current dodge teams took. 

[Charger_Fan]

I guess those geeks should have listened to us.

That reminds me, whose car was it way back when that was called "the flying brick"?

[MGBRingo]

They just need to make a Charger Daytona out of it and put on a nose cone.     

[moparguy01]

actually a few of the dodge teams were saying the c harger was a bad racecar after the first few races. but chrysler did want to fix it. so it stayed broke. now they know they screwed up

[6670charger]

I gave up caring about what anybody was racing about 20 years ago when NASCAR no longer had anything to do with Stock Car Racing.  There hasn't been a stock based NASCAR racer in at least that long.

[chrisII]

prety much i think it was that DCX wanted the teams to use the charger being it was the new big thing, and sales werent all that great. now i think penske is basicly saying that they dont care, they want to win races.

[Big Lebowski]

  Way to go Trevor Creed, that makes both Charger versions a huge disappointment...Nascars and the one's gathering dust at the dealerships.

[Telvis]

 

[greenpigs]

Suprised someone hasn't said to offer a true Daytona version of the new Charger..a REAL daytona not some BS sticker on the back.

[chargerboy69]

Penske and Evernham Motorsports used the Intrepid in a couple races last year too. This off season Dodge submitted a few new designs to NASCAR and they were turned down. It is not so much the nose, as it is the rear spoiler. When they designed the Charger for the 2005 season it worked great with the taller spoiler. Then NASCAR shortened the spoiler for the Cup series which affected the way they Charger performs on the track. Note, that the Busch Series runs the taller spoiler. Ryan Newman won 5 or 6 races in a row with his Dodge Charger in the Busch Series. It is just that the shorter spoiler does not work well with the nose. Since Dodge cannot change the spoiler height, they need to change to a nose that works well with the spoiler. That is how it was explained to me, by someone at Penske.

[Mike DC]

Amusing.  A slap in the face to DCX's new car.

But at the end of the day it's irrelevant. 
No way the designers would let NASCAR aerodynamics affect a street car's styling at all. (I don't care what the P.R. department says to the contrary about "racecar-influenced styling" or some shit like that.) 

If DCX really wants the 2006 Charger to win races, they'll just bribe NASCAR to make some miniscule ruling about the templates on the race cars in DCX's favor and that will be that.  Which is why I don't give a crap about NASCAR.

.

[Lowprofile]

Maybe they should just race the 300!    

[69_500]

Chargerboy nailed it. It isn't the nose that is bad, its the spoiler change that killed the aero package on the Charger.
They designed the entire car around one spoiler height. If Nascar had left the spoiler height alone, Dodge would have been running in Nextel what they were in Busch. And you see how the Busch cars were last year.