In this episode of 'Shift: NASCAR’s evolution through the eyes of The King,' Richard Petty dives into the engine war in the 1960s and the battle between Ford and Chrysler over the 426 Hemi. 'Shift' is a series of conversations between Richard and Kyle Petty highlighting the evolution of NASCAR's 75-year history through the dark lenses of Richard Petty's famous glasses.
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00:00 Richard Petty in car number 43 grabs the lead.
00:04 Here comes Petty.
00:05 Richard Petty begins to close in from second place.
00:09 For racing fans, this is such sweet thunder.
00:12 If you look back in time in the 50s and 60s, you'd think that was the end of the world.
00:41 If you're dead on the Ford, you bought a Ford.
00:46 If you're on the Chevrolet, you bought a Chevrolet.
00:49 So it was kind of family tradition.
00:53 In the early 60s, then you had Chrysler and Ford competing with each other, so they decided
01:00 to all go racing.
01:03 In '64, it was all out war, Ford against Chrysler.
01:12 Chrysler came with a Hemi engine.
01:14 They just blowed everything away.
01:17 We went to Daytona.
01:19 Richard Petty is pouring it on.
01:23 First three cars were Hemi engine cars.
01:26 So then Ford, they work on the deal and they try to get them a Hemi engine.
01:32 NASCAR said, "This is too far."
01:37 In 1965, NASCAR outlawed the Hemi engine.
01:41 Said, "Okay, you're going to have to go back to the engine like what Ford's running."
01:47 Chrysler had spent all that money to do that and they said, "Forget that.
01:51 We're not even going to race."
01:53 For the first six months, we went drag racing.
01:58 We had a little Barracuda and put a big motor in it, raced up and down the East Coast, went
02:04 to the West Coast and ran a little bit.
02:08 The fans kept coming because there wasn't nothing but Ford's running.
02:12 '67, Ford and Chrysler and NASCAR got together and said, "Okay, we're going to change the
02:19 Cuban engines on the Hemi engine."
02:21 So we had to go back to 405 Cuban engines instead of 426.
02:27 That made the competition a lot closer.
02:31 NASCAR wanted the cars on Ford and Chrysler to be competitive.
02:43 One year, the Chrysler's dominated.
02:46 The next year, the Ford's dominated.
02:48 By '67, they'd all sort of got their self back together and everybody felt like they
02:53 was on a level playing field.
02:57 You didn't have all the competition from all the other car manufacturers and they didn't
03:01 advertise like that.
03:03 The people that walked up and down the street were either GM people, Ford people, or Chrysler
03:09 people.
03:10 If nothing else, they wanted to keep you in their family.
03:17 The thing we kept telling the factories, all the racing teams, "You got to put your mind
03:23 and money in the car and win on Sunday so that you can sell on Monday."
03:27 [00:01:00] [music]
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