Here's a good little recent story that we didn't get to around Daytona time. Did you know that the Pontiac which Richard Petty used to win his 200th and final race is a part of the Smithsonian Museum? Cool, huh?
Scene Daily has a rundown of the more interesting elements of the Petty story; the Smithsonian had asked for the car immediately after the win, but Petty couldn't give it up because he still had races to run that season. "They said, ‘Don't touch it. We want it,'" Petty said. "I said, ‘Wait a minute. I've got to run Talladega, and that's the only car I've got for that.' We had maybe three cars, and it was our superspeedway car. We talked them into that."
So Petty ran Talladega, the car survived just fine, and the Smithsonian took delivery of the Pontiac. From 1985 to 2001, the Smithsonian displayed the Pontiac alongside Mario Andretti's 1969 Indy 500-winning ride and the Winton which won the first sanctioned race in Daytona. Aside from a touch of vandalism -- somebody swiped the gearshift knob -- the Pontiac was a popular attraction.
Recently, Petty took back the Pontiac for temporary display, and was surprised to discover just how prized his old car was. "They made us put on white gloves to push it, and we had to haul it in a closed trailer," Petty says. "I said, ‘Man, it ain't nothing but a race car.'"
Oddly, even after renovation, there are no plans to display the prized autos in the Smithsonian's collection, so when Petty returns it, it'll go into one of those Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouses. Which would be a real shame, but at least it's salvaged.
And now, your turn -- which cars (or other elements of NASCAR, like Robby Gordon's thrown helmet) belong in a museum? Fire away!
Petty's winning car now belongs to the Smithsonian [Scene Daily]
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