Full Throttle

If ever there was a car shaped to go fast it was Ford’s 1987 Thunderbird. From the point of its slick beak to the slightly elevated trunk lid, the ‘87 T-Bird was shaped like a perfect projectile — three - quarters bullet and one-quarter B-1B wing.

Even more than two decades later, Bill Elliott’s T-Bird is still the fastest NASCAR stock car ever to lap Daytona, and the fastest ever to lap any track.

Bill Elliott and his family’s Coors-sponsored Fords were already established as one of the great superteams of the ’80s by the time the ‘87 Bird showed up.

During the 1985 season, driving the slightly less aerodynamic ‘83 to ‘86 Thunderbird, Elliott won an incredible 11 races and took home a million-dollar bonus for winning three of the “Big Four” (the Daytona 500, Winston 500, World 600 and Southern 500) races.

The ‘87 Thunderbird was a refinement of the ‘83 design and clearly modeled with low drag and high-speed stability in mind. Ford Thunderbird drivers won 11 of 29 events in ‘87 and 9 of 29 the following year when Elliott won his only Cup championship.

Elliott took the pole for the ‘87 Daytona 500 at an incredible 210.364 mph and then went on to win the race, averaging a record 176.263 mph—both records still stand today.

Then, as he was qualifying for the Winston 500 at Talladega, Elliott topped even his Daytona performance by qualifying at 212.809 mph. With the coming of restrictor-plate racing after Bobby Allison’s crash that year, this record too is unlikely ever to be broken.

And so, for the foreseeable future, the ‘87 Thunderbird will be the fastest stock car of all time.

NOTE: For those that lament the start and park phenomena of today check the results on the two links above. Geoffrey Bodine and Chet Fillip stared and parked in less than 12 laps at Talladega and