Riding In Richard Petty’s Superbird

Steve Lehto scored a ride most NASCAR fans only dream about — riding along in the actual #43 Plymouth Superbird, restored and driven hard by owner Todd Werner at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Built to lure Richard Petty back to Plymouth and to dominate NASCAR’s superspeedways, the Superbird was fast enough that the sport changed its own rulebook to stop it. Lehto filmed the entire ride from the floor of the car, exactly where a race-spec Superbird’s passenger seat would be. Watch what it looks and sounds like from the inside.

Most people who love NASCAR history only get to see the King’s cars behind a velvet rope. Steve Lehto got to sit on the floor of one, holding a GoPro, while it did laps around a real superspeedway. The car in question is the famous #43 — the exact winged shape that helped define an entire era of stock car racing before NASCAR effectively legislated it out of existence. It isn’t a replica or a tribute build; it’s a fully restored example, and the man behind the wheel isn’t Richard Petty himself but someone trusted enough to actually drive it hard. What happens when you put a car built for 200 mph banking back on a real track after all these years?

The Car That Ended an Era

The Plymouth Superbird exists because Richard Petty briefly walked away from Plymouth in 1969 after the company couldn’t match the aerodynamic performance Dodge had built into the Daytona, and NASCAR’s biggest team wasn’t willing to race at a disadvantage. Plymouth’s answer was the Superbird, built specifically to lure Petty back and to compete on NASCAR’s fastest superspeedways, complete with the pointed nose cone and towering rear wing that made the car nearly unbeatable in a straight line. It worked almost too well — the winged cars dominated long enough that NASCAR rewrote its rulebook within two seasons, restricting engine size and wing height until the entire aero-car era quietly disappeared by 1971. The #43 in this video carries that history directly, restored to the specification that made it famous rather than dressed up as a tribute.

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What It’s Like From the Floor

Getting an actual ride in a car like this is rare enough on its own, but Steve Lehto’s vantage point makes it even more unusual — he’s not in a passenger seat, because a genuine race Superbird doesn’t have one. Instead he’s sitting on the floor where a street car’s passenger seat would normally go, holding a GoPro steady while owner Todd Werner puts the car through its paces at Atlanta Motor Speedway. From that angle, the wing’s effect and the engine’s note come through in a way that no static museum display could ever capture. Cars this historically significant rarely get driven hard, let alone with someone along for the ride.

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