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Not to dispute anything the King says but I find it odd he would declare the '74 Charger the best overall. I think there is a little showmanship and an attempt to connect 74 with today's Charger.

How can anyone, including the King, place the 1967 Plymouth Belvedere (A reskinned '66 model) behind any year Charger?

Of the 48 races in 1967, Richard Petty put that Plymouth into first place an unbelievable 27 times! 10 of those victories were in a row. Along the way, the Plymouth scored 11 top fives, and 10 top ten finishes.

Just to give you an idea how good this car was, in Nashville, Richard crashed during the race and hit the wall. The front end was knocked out of alignment, and a rear spring was broken. The crew said: "park it." Richard said: "fix it." With a sort of guess on the alignment with a string and a wire, along with replacing the rear spring, Richard went back on the track, 7 laps out of the lead.

In a few laps, Richard had run the field down, and one by one, he began to pick off the leaders. At the end of the race, not only had he made up the 7 laps to take the lead, he finished the race 5 laps ahead of second place! That car was that good.

And BTW, this is a good lesson for those that cry about NASCAR not being competitive in today's era of multi-car teams. Go back and look at results from the sixities and early seventies. You'll find the norm was 4-5 cars on the lead lap, in a good race. Many had the leader sitting alone on the checkered flag lap.

Today the norm is 20-20 on the lead lap. Including some of those "poor little" one and two car teams.

Is it orange and called the General Lee?

Bo Duke drives, Luke Duke is the spotter, Cooter is the crew chief and the team is owned by Uncle Jessie.

Boss Hogg play the role of, well you know.....

I haven't formed an opinion on the C.O.T. It sure is the hot topic lately, (I haven't been reading Ed each week. Thanks for the heads up).

At face value, the positive things Kyle Petty says are persuasive points. Racing a box may be more exciting than the aero cars of today. The cost? eehh...not my problem to worry about. The owners will manage, I'm sure.

Good point about the marketing angle, Marc-with-a-c. The piece I linked to was part of Dodge's PR blitz to introduce the Charger to NASCAR. Thanks for the story, btw.

I sat through a few of these races back in the early 70's at the old Trenton Fairgrounds. It was Petty, B. Allison, Baker, Pearson and Yarbough; and then 30 cars that had no business being on the track. At the time NASCAR called this the "Northern Tour" and would also stop at Albany Saratoga (2/5 mile) and Islip (1/5 mile and the track of the figure-8 racing on Wide World of Sports). The short tracks were down on weeknights, and they ended up at Trenton on Sunday.

I do like the idea of today's field in cars that are "flying bricks" to quote the old Space Cowboys movie. Of course if there were more Bristols, Richmonds, and Martinsvilles on the schedule, aero is less and less of an issue.