How NASCAR's pursuit of speed saw the sport's first-ever crackdown on aero specifications

Evolution is the name of the game in motorsports and NASCAR is no different. The sport we all know and love started out with a race around a certain beach in Florida. Sparking a never-ending pursuit of competition and bringing like-minded people together, casual racing on Daytona Beach has led to the Daytona 500 being termed 'The Great American Race'.

With NASCAR hell-bent on breaking barriers about its perception around the world, there have been flash points in the sport's history, much like every other motorsport genre. Just like when drivers and teams along with fans of racing were concerned about the safety of the Next Gen car in 2022, a technical anomaly was also seen during the olden days.

Back when stock cars looked like actual cars from a manufacturer's showroom floor, a certain Richard Petty and a blue contraption blew the competition away. The 1970 Plymouth Superbird along with its winged twin, the Dodge Charger Daytona, started a class of cars that were referred to as the 'Aero Cars'.

The cars sported a triangular nose cone to slice through the air along with a towering rear wing. Engines on the machines ranged from 426 to 440 cubic inches, in the famed HEMI V8 configuration. This made the Superbird and Charger Daytona the first cars to break the 200 mph barrier in NASCAR. The competition was blown away by the performance offered by these machines, with both the Superbird and the Daytona winning a total of 14 races over two seasons.

The governing body and the competition did not take kindly to this level of performance, with engine sizes reduced to 350 cubic inches. This was reportedly done in the spirit of motorsports safety, let alone the fact that brakes and tires were not designed to go over 200mph in 1970.

The smaller engines meant the Aero Cars could not hit anywhere near their prior top speeds, with the additional weight of the nose cones and wings now hampering them even more. And as such, this brought about the demise of the 'Aero Cars'.

Ford also jumped onto the NASCAR Aero Car bandwagon back in the day

While the Dodge Charger Daytona and Plymouth Superbird stole all the headlines, a little-known project by Ford was also in the pipeline to compete with the Blue Oval's rivals.

The 1970 Ford Torino King Cobra was designed from the ground up to rival the Superbirds and Charger Daytonas.

However, the regulation change by NASCAR meant the car never saw the light of competition, and now sits as a relic of the sport at a time when speed reigned supreme over everything.