What's it Worth - 1968 NASCAR Championship winning race car

http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/ford/torino/1758501.html - Current Price - Inquire??

So... plenty of talk about "valuable" cars in the ITR thread... and even a bit in the vintage cars and cringing thread...

So... what is THIS car worth?? 6 figures.... maybe 7??

It is worth Stupid Money. How often does a NASCAR champ trade hands, especially from this era?

Didn't his contemporaries, including big names like Earnhardt and Petty, say Pearson was the best?

Having David Pearson's name on it makes a big difference in the price (that is, assuming they have solid documentation to show this is the actual car.)

thats a lot of shock absorbers! The cigarette lighter is a nice touch

Kendall_Jones wrote: thats a lot of shock absorbers!

That's a lot of car.

I would trade any, all of my organs for that.

Wally wrote:

Kendall_Jones wrote: thats a lot of shock absorbers!

That's a lot of car. I would trade any, all of my organs for that.

I would trade your organs, kind sir, and also Enyar's wife AND a Target mountain bike!

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So it really looks like selling a kidney is the hot plan......

That has to be the worse description of a car I've ever seen especially for something that is being sold based on race history. I know that wasn't the only car David raced that year. What races did it win? I would have figured they would spell out the the race history better.

Kendall_Jones wrote: thats a lot of shock absorbers! The cigarette lighter is a nice touch

I recall that at least one NASCAR "name" from that era had a cigarette lighter installed. Those 500mi races take a while, you know.

Hell, it might have been Pearson.

I've also heard of strategic flask installations, too.

Knurled wrote:

Kendall_Jones wrote: thats a lot of shock absorbers! The cigarette lighter is a nice touch

I recall that at least one NASCAR "name" from that era had a cigarette lighter installed. Those 500mi races take a while, you know. Hell, it might have been Pearson. I've also heard of strategic flask installations, too.

the most well known case of smoking in the car during a caution period is from in car video of Dick Trickle in the late 80's some time...

In reply to bmw88rider:

When I see cars like this for sale I'm always a bit curious how the know which car it was. Once they are a couple years old they tended to get passed around to other series, cut up for parts ect. One of our Busch cars had belonged to Davey Allison and there were a couple things in it to tell it was his but there were no serial numbers and it was rebodied several times so if someone has it now I don't know how you'd find out what races it ran originally.

In reply to Wally:

Agreed. There is an article in the current Mopar Action about a collector who picked up an old Dodge Aspen race car from the mid 70's. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be an original '69 Daytona NASCAR that had been shortened and re-bodied. Of course, the Daytona was a back-marker car driven by a 2nd (or 3rd) tier team/driver, so there was nothing remotely special about it. Still, those old cars could go through a lot of changes over the years.

I'm a bit surprised at the lack of info in the ad text. You would think they would mention something about having documentation to authenticate the car. While Pearson is known in racing circles, he is not one of the "big" names, so I'd see the car selling for 6 figures, but not a lot more.

I know they get rebodied and everything but typically the bigger teams stamp the roll cage or something. That's the problem with a car like this.

With no history, it would be really a crap shoot on is it legit or not. Good clones are 50K vs a legit car which is probably 200-250K

Just a fun david pearson picture from the 79 daytona 500

bmw88rider wrote: That has to be the worse description of a car I've ever seen especially for something that is being sold based on race history. I know that wasn't the only car David raced that year. What races did it win? I would have figured they would spell out the the race history better.

Back in that era NASCAR was still a bunch of good ol boys who worked all week and raced on the weekends. Don't assume he had as many cars as today's NASCAR team does. He may have only had 1 or 2 chassis.

They ran 49 races that year and he ran for the factory ford team, holman-moody. He was running for along with no names like the allison boys, AJ Foyt, and some italian guy Mario Andretti.

I don't know but I would be surprised if they had less than 5-6 chassis floating around at any one time. That team was well financed under the table by Ford. (officially there was still the Motorsports ban in Detroit in '68)

bmw88rider wrote: Just a fun david pearson picture from the 79 daytona 500

That's Bobby Allison, Donnie Allison, and Cale Yarborough.

GTXVette wrote: In reply to Ian F: David Who..... How Old Are You. "While Pearson is Known in Racing Circles,He Is Not one of the BIG Names" Let's Make Sure I Spell this right. D U M B A S S.

That's a comment worth deleting.

I'm fairly certain that Petty and Pearson finished 1st and 2nd to each other more than any other drivers back in that era. Petty has said that Pearson was his most fierce competitor. He may not be known by the new NASCAR fans but back then in his prime, and for years after Pearson was a huge name. Not just in racing circles, Pearson was a very well known name in the south.

GTXVette wrote: In reply to Ian F: David Who..... How Old Are You. "While Pearson is Known in Racing Circles,He Is Not one of the BIG Names" Let's Make Sure I Spell this right. D U M B A S S.

This comment is completely out of line.

I agree with Ian. I'm not a NASCAR fan, and the name Pearson doesn't mean much to me.. I've definitely heard of him, but his name isn't so big I'd immediately remember where from.

The car pushes all the right buttons: big block, big name driver, big name constructor, vintage racing legal. Six figures isn't out of the question. One of the vintage magazines has a advertisement this month for a Jeff Gordon short track car that was modified to be a road racer after it was retired. They're only asking $129,000 for that one. Once old NASCAR cars, or even the newer ones, say from this century, became vintage legal, the prices went up. My friend was at an auction about 10 years ago, and the T-Bird Bill Elliot used to set the Talladega qualifying record sold for $9000 as a roller.

Growing up there was a guy near my house that had a 60s Petty Plymouth he picked up for pretty much nothing.

Back in those days the ran dirt and asphalt. I remember them coming to a local half mile dirt track a couple of times. Those were the days when the cars were towed by a box truck and open trailer. The spear carriers would scrounge the locale junk yards for engines. I remember Pierson, after one race, he sounded like a cry baby over something that happened during the race.

It is possible that the subject car never raced but was a show car.

iceracer wrote: Back in those days the ran dirt and asphalt. I remember them coming to a local half mile dirt track a couple of times. Those were the days when the cars were towed by a box truck and open trailer. The spear carriers would scrounge the locale junk yards for engines. I remember Pierson, after one race, he sounded like a cry baby over something that happened during the race. It is possible that the subject car never raced but was a show car.

they didn't build show cars back then. they built a few race cars and ran them hard. even today, the show cars that you see at local shopping malls and what not were once actual race cars that were either rotated out of service after so long or bent up beyond repair or because of rule changes and made to look pretty enough for people to get their picture taken next to a "real NASCAR"..