Charger Daytona 440 Magnum The 1960s saw some space-age car designs aimed at enticing buyers with swooping lines and innovative features. One of the truly unique vehicles of the era was the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona; a car that was built to woo NASCAR champion Richard Petty back from Ford. At the time, stock car racing was restricted to production models with a run of more than 500 units, so Dodge built 503 Charger Daytonas. It had a pointed nose cone in place of a vertical grille and a 23-inch rear wing, and these aerodynamic touches helped make the Charger Daytona the first car to crack the 200 mph barrier in a NASCAR race. These aerodynamic touches could hardly get all the credit for that milestone: Two mighty engine options were the primary providers of its legendary speed. The 426 hemi was under the hood of 70 of the 503 '69 Daytona models, and the rest got the Magnum 440 cubic inch V8. The 440 Magnum made 375 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque and hurled the Daytona from 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds. The Charger Daytona's design and engines were carried over into the Plymouth Superbird in 1970; that car brought Petty back into the Mopar fold, and he won 18 races that year in the Superbird. Viper V10 It might be a stretch to call the Dodge Viper's V10 engine "underrated," but it has certainly been overshadowed by many of its competitors since the Viper was unveiled as a concept car at the 1989 Detroit Motor Show, and returned to Motor City as a production model three years later. The sleek, wedge-shaped supercar was the brainchild of Chrysler president Bob Lutz, who wanted to build a car that could compete with the Shelby Cobra, Ferrari F40, and Acura NSX. Chrysler had purchased Lamborghini in 1987, and the Viper's V10 was a collaborative effort between engineers from both companies. The first-gen Viper's engine displaced 8.0 liters, producing 400 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque. Power increased with updates in 1996 and 2003, but the fourth generation that appeared in 2008 had a new 8.4 liter V10 with variable valve timing, a redesigned cylinder head, and two throttle bodies. These changes and the increased displacement gave the fourth-gen Viper astonishing power output numbers of 600 horsepower and 560 pound-feet of torque. Dodge announced it would drop the Viper in 2010, but reconsidered and updated it again in 2013. The 8.4 liter V-10 now made 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet, and could go from 0-60 mph in 3.5 seconds, with a top speed of 200 mph. Many special editions of the Viper were released during its quarter-century run, including five small-batch versions that ushered the model to the eternal scrapyard in 2017.
Liked by Oliver Labelle, Amelia Pelletier
Liked by Oliver Labelle, Amelia Pelletier
Liked by Oliver Labelle, Amelia Pelletier
