Look to the 1970s to find the real Car of Tomorrow

It's only a piece of carbon fiber bolted to the rear deck lid, but from the reaction you'd think it was designed and installed by some rogue open-wheel operation bent on the destruction of NASCAR. There are plenty of racers and race fans who feel a swirl of negative emotion when confronted with the Car of Tomorrow, from apprehension and anxiety to sheer disdain. But no part of the vehicle attracts more ire or antipathy than that little rear wing.

It's hardly a wing at all, really, just a strip of composite material elevated a few inches into the air. You'll find a bigger one on a street-legal Mustang Cobra. But it evokes howls of indignation from purists, who claim there's no place in NASCAR for such an appendage. No matter that we've been here before. No matter that a Cup car with a rear wing broke one of the most coveted records in motorsports, and still holds a special place in the sport's history.

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Calling it a wing doesn't do it justice. It was more of a rudder, a towering attachment that looked like it belonged on the back of a cabin cruiser. In 1969 Dodge introduced the Daytona, a radically redesigned stock car with a sporty, aerodynamic nose and a wing that towered four feet high in the back. One year later, Plymouth followed with the Superbird. They were sleek, futuristic vehicles that looked more like rockets, and remain the most elegant and beautiful stock cars ever made.

In both appearance and performance, these were the true cars of tomorrow. In a 1970 test at Talladega Superspeedway, Buddy Baker drove a Daytona to a lap of 200.447 mph, becoming the first man to break the magical 200 mph barrier on a closed racetrack. Drivers loved these fast, exotic machines so far ahead of their time.

"They were great," said Richard Petty, who estimates that about five of his 200 career wins came in a Superbird. "They were very stable, stable cars. The wing on those ran way, way high. But what really helped those cars more than anything were the stabilizers that held the wing up. They were real broad at the bottom, and came back to six, eight inches at the top. That was like having a rudder on an airplane. When you turned the car, the car didn't try to get sideways or anything. That was probably more important than the wing itself."

There wasn't much initial resistance from NASCAR, which at the time was much more beholden to the manufacturers than it is now. But in the garage and in the grandstand, James Hylton remembers the reaction to the winged cars being much like it is today. That is, until somebody mashed the accelerator and the things started to move. (Continued)