Full Throttle

I hate to say I told ya so… but I told ya so, or at least speculated as much. According to Bob Margolis in an exclusive report both the “Dodge Charger and Monte Carlo’s days in NASCAR are numbered.”

Margolis’ sources have told him the NASCAR version of the Dodge Avenger has been approved for use by Dodge teams for both the current Nextel Cup car as well as the Car of Tomorrow version, starting in 2007.

My earlier speculation on the Avenger was based on the front valance panel of the street version. A look at the Avenger pics posted by Auto Blog shows a valance that resembles the “cow-catcher” front of the CoT. Of course my “speculation” was more along the lines of a wild assed guess, but correct none-the-less. (hold your applause til the end please)

As for General Motors they have decided to replace the vernerable old Monte Carlo with the Impala SS body style for the CoT only. This signals a return of the nameplate that was first used by GM in NASCAR from the mid-’50s until the late ’60s.

Why do I have visions of Junior Johnson’s 1963 Chevy Impala dancing in my head? Maybe because it was 8 miles per hour faster than anything else that year in Daytona. He didn’t win that year due to mechanical problems but the Impala scored 8 wins that season.

The other big news is a major change for the Busch Series (or whatever the series called after the sponsor change). It has been speculated for a number of months that Detroit’s retro pony cars would find their way into NASCAR’s second tier series.

The retro-designed Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger