Richard Petty recalls the introduction of the 'Car of Tomorrow' and how that changed the landscape of NASCAR Cup Series racing.
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00:00The car of tomorrow, a departure from anything they had done before.
00:12As time progresses, you have to move forward.
00:18Every two or three years they have a different kind of change, different rule.
00:26They tried to make a big leap.
00:28The only thing is the car of tomorrow, all the cars look the same.
00:35This was their first step in saying, OK, we've got to make our cars a little bit better,
00:41make the show a little bit better, make the cars all equal as much as we can.
00:52Up until that time, one year Fords would be better aerodynamically,
00:57next year CrossFit would be better, next year Chevrolet might be better.
01:04There was a lot of cars running up and down the road with little wings on the back of them.
01:09So they said, OK, we've got to look more like what the general public looks like,
01:13what they see every day.
01:15So that was one of the reasons for the wing.
01:18Plus, they'd done a bunch of wind tunnel tests with the thing.
01:22They'd done some safety features in the car at that time, spreading the roll bars out.
01:27The suspension, how the car was built, all that was basically the same thing.
01:36They kept modifying where you could get bigger and better equipment
01:40or bigger and better spindles and rear ends or engines or whatever it was.
01:47When you built a car, you just built it a little bit different.
01:50You built it to the next spec.
01:55Collectively, every driver complains about the car.
02:00Over a period of time, I think everybody got pretty disgusted with the way it was working,
02:06so they finally went away from that.
02:09Had you ever lived through a time where everybody complained about the same thing?
02:16Yeah, yes, OK.
02:18Everybody always complained.
02:21He's got more horsepower than I have.
02:23He's got a better aero package.
02:26The car's better than ours.
02:28We need more spoiler, and this goes back to the mid-'60s.
02:35It's never been settled.
02:37Ha, ha, ha.
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