Dodge Mirada - NASCAR

NASCAR

It was hoped that the Mirada would reopen the door to Dodge success in NASCAR racing, as the nameplate had not won a race since November 1977. Lee Iaccoca personally called Richard Petty in late November 1980, asking the King to campaign one, with the promise of parts needed to build the cars and engines. Petty took Iaccoa up on his offer and had his team build a Mirada race car from the Chrysler supplied parts. Other teams in addition to the Petty's (most notably Junior Johnson), built race ready test cars and to took them to race tracks for testing. The Petty built test Mirada looked every bit as fast (Petty himself remarked "The Mirada just looked good!") as the other race cars eligible to run in competition. On 17 January 1981 at Daytona (Petty fans were so enthusiastic he was running a Dodge again that 15,000 or so showed up to watch), the testing showed the car was around 8 mph (13 km/h) slower than the GM and Ford cars of the day. The testing of the Junior Johnson built car (with Darrell Waltrip driving), also showed the bodystyle incapable of race spec speeds, and Petty and the most of other teams moved to other makes, mostly GM. This testing of the car revealed that while it looked fairly aerodynamic, the bodystyle actually had a very high coeficient of drag that made it incapable of speeds over 185 mph. Petty's and Darrel Waltrip's (driving the Junior Johnson built Mirada race car) test results turned out to be a huge disappointment to Dodge, and took the wind out Chrysler's efforts to re-establish itself in racing. Two small and independent racing teams (Arrington Racing/Buddy Arrington), and Negre Racing however, decided to make a go of the car and campaigned it during the 1981 to 1984 racing seasons. Buddy Arrington managed 17 top-ten finishes during those years, though all were on short (1 mile or less) length tracks. A few other drivers (Dave Marcis in four races, and Dick May in three) ran Mirada's occasionally in 1981, but the cars were either plagued with mechanical issues, or finished several laps off the leaders. Up until the end of 1984, Miradas raced from time to time, but without much success, and ultimately lead to Dodge disappearing from NASCAR until 2001.