The Daytona or The Superbird?

Dodge built 503 winged Chargers. Plymouth was forced to build nearly four times as many Superbirds. Both cars came out of the same NASCAR rulebook and the same wind tunnel program, yet they ended up with different noses, different wings, different interiors, and very different reputations among collectors today. One of them was measurably faster on the high banks. Read on to find out which, and why the gap was smaller than either camp admits.

Two engineering teams inside the same corporation read the same NASCAR rulebook and came back with two different winged monsters, and choosing between them has been splitting Mopar people for more than half a century. One car was built to be first. The other was built to fix what the first one got wrong, and it arrived with a handicap its rival never had to carry. Only 503 examples of one ever left the factory, while nearly four times as many of the other rolled down the line, and that gap is not a story about popularity at all. It is a story about a rule that changed in between them, and about a half-degree of aerodynamic difference that decided who actually went faster when it counted.

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Born From the Same Rulebook, Built Under Different Rules

Neither of these cars existed because anyone at Chrysler thought the public wanted a two-foot nose cone and a wing tall enough to see over the roof. Both were homologation specials, built for the sole purpose of legalizing a radical shape for stock car competition. The Dodge Charger Daytona came first, for the 1969 season, at a point when NASCAR only required a manufacturer to build 500 street examples to qualify a body style. Dodge built 503, cleared the bar, and stopped. When Plymouth came back a year later with the Superbird, NASCAR had already tightened the rule and tied the homologation figure to the size of a manufacturer’s dealer network. That change forced Plymouth to build roughly 1,935 cars instead of 500, and it is the single biggest reason Superbirds are more common today.

Why Plymouth Had to Build Four Times as Many

That rule change deserves a closer look, because it is the single reason these two cars have such different survival rates. For 1970 NASCAR moved from a flat 500-car requirement to a formula tied to the size of a manufacturer’s dealer network, which for Plymouth worked out to roughly one street car for every two dealers. Dodge had cleared the old bar with 503 cars and never had to face the new one. Plymouth had no such luck, and the commonly cited Superbird figure of about 1,935 cars is close to four times what Dodge was obliged to build. That is why a Daytona is genuinely rare and a Superbird is merely uncommon, and it is the largest single input into the price gap between them today.

Eighteen Inches of Nose and a Wing You Could See Over

The hardware itself was genuinely radical. Both cars replaced the standard front clip with a pointed sheet metal nose cone roughly eighteen inches long, fitted with pop-up headlights and a small chin spoiler underneath. At the back, an aluminum wing sat on tall vertical struts, high enough to clear the trunk lid on its hinges rather than for any styling reason. The Daytona started from the already-slippery Charger 500, which had a flush rear window plug and a flush grille. The Superbird used the Road Runner as its base, which meant Plymouth had to graft on a different front clip, a plugged and reshaped rear window, and Dodge Coronet quarter panel skins to make the whole thing fit together.

The Half-Degree of Drag That Decided the High Banks

The Daytona came out of a longer wind tunnel program and it showed. Its nose profile and more upright wing produced a drag coefficient of about 0.29, against roughly 0.31 for the Superbird, whose team reportedly traded a small amount of efficiency for a shape they preferred visually. On paper that sounds trivial. On a 33-degree banking at Daytona or Talladega, it worked out to something in the neighborhood of one to three miles per hour, which over the course of a 500-mile race is the difference between leading and drafting. That is the whole argument in a sentence: the Daytona was the better aerodynamic tool, and the Superbird was the better looking interpretation of the same idea.

What Was Actually Under Those Enormous Hoods

Under the hood, both cars offered the same menu. The 440 Magnum four-barrel was the standard engine and accounted for the overwhelming majority of production on both nameplates, with the 426 Hemi available as a very expensive option that comparatively few buyers checked. A handful of Daytonas and Superbirds also left with the 440 Six Barrel setup. What matters for collectors now is that the Hemi cars are the ones that command the enormous auction results, and because the total build numbers were small to begin with, a Hemi-equipped wing car with documentation is one of the genuinely rare pieces of the entire muscle car era.

Thumbwheel Radios, Pistol Grips, and a Vinyl Roof With a Job

Inside, the differences were small but they are exactly the details owners argue about. The Daytona used a thumbwheel radio control and a round shifter ball on manual cars. The Superbird went with a conventional round radio knob and the pistol grip shifter that Plymouth people consider iconic. The Superbird also came standard with a vinyl roof, which was not a styling flourish so much as a practical way to hide the seams left behind when the rear window was plugged and reshaped. Plymouth also had a specific reason to build the car at all, and it had a name.

The Whole Superbird Program Existed to Get One Driver Back

That reason was Richard Petty. Petty had left Plymouth for Ford for the 1969 season after Chrysler declined to give him the aerodynamic car he wanted, and getting him back was a stated objective of the Superbird program. It worked. Petty returned to Plymouth for 1970 in the number 43 Superbird, and the wing cars collectively took 38 wins that season. Bobby Isaac won the championship driving a Daytona for the K&K Insurance team, and Buddy Baker used a Daytona at Talladega in March 1970 to become the first driver to run a closed course lap at over 200 mph, a benchmark that stood for thirteen years.

Winning Too Well Is What Got Them Banned

Their dominance is precisely what killed them. For the 1971 season NASCAR restricted the aerodynamic cars to engines of no more than 305 cubic inches, which made them uncompetitive overnight against conventional bodies running full-size V8s. The wing cars disappeared from the tracks almost as suddenly as they had arrived, having raced in something close to their intended form for barely two seasons. Meanwhile the street versions were sitting unsold on dealer lots, discounted heavily, and in a number of documented cases converted back to standard Charger and Road Runner front ends by dealers who could not move them any other way.

Which One Is the Better Car to Own Now

Today the ledger has completely inverted. Cars that dealers could not give away in 1971 are now among the most recognizable and most valuable American production cars ever built, with the Hemi examples reaching seven figures and even 440 cars commanding serious money when the documentation is clean. Daytonas generally carry a premium over Superbirds on rarity alone, roughly four to one on production numbers, though the Superbird’s association with Petty and its higher public profile keep the gap narrower than the build figures suggest. If you want the more effective race car, the answer is the Daytona. If you want the one that everyone in the parking lot will recognize on sight, it is the Superbird.

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