With seven championships and 200 wins to his name, Richard Petty is arguably the most successful NASCAR driver of all time. His impressive achievements list also includes seven Daytona 500 wins, most wins in one season (27 and 1967), and most consecutive wins (10 in 1967).
Petty’s career stretched from 1958 to 1992, a whopping 34 years that saw “The King” drive for every major Detroit automaker. That’s Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet, Buick, and Pontiac. Although he won his seventh title in a Chevy, Richard was most successful driving Mopars.
He won his first two titles with Plymouth in 1964 and 1967. He left for Ford in 1969 but returned to Plymouth in 1970 to score two more championships. Petty switched to Dodge in 1972 and won two more titles before leaving Mopar for good during the 1978 season. He won both championships in the 1974 Charger you see here.
Following a slightly disappointing 1973 season, Petty drove the No. 43 blue-and-orange Charger to no fewer than ten wins and 12 additional Top 3 finishes in 1974. He won the Winston Cup Series by a comfortable margin.
The car was so dominant that Petty decided to run it again in 1975. He won 13 races and scored eight podiums in the Charger, taking home his second consecutive and sixth Cup Series. That’s 23 wins in 60 races, a record that makes this Charger one of the most successful vehicles in NASCAR history.
And even though it’s been almost 50 years since it left the Petty Enterprises shop as of 2023, this legendary Mopar is still alive and kicking. Moreover, it looks just as clean as it did before it hit the NASCAR oval for the very first time.
How is that possible? Well, Richard Petty loved his race cars and stored many of them for decades at his estate. This particular Charger left his collection following an auction in 2018, but now it’s part of the International Motorsports Hall of Fame museum in Talladega, Alabama. It was sold for $490,000. And it recently came out of long-term storage to be showcased at the Music City Mopars car show in Nashville, Tennessee.
Luckily, the NASCAR-spec Charger wasn’t displayed as a static vehicle. It rolled in and out of the event under its own power, so visitors also got the chance to hear the race-ready V8 make some noise. And while this Charger may have been based on a vehicle from the Malaise Era, the mill roars and burbles like in the good old days. You can hear it in the second video.
Styling-wise, the car is based on the third-generation Charger, which Dodge produced from 1971 through 1974. The final iteration of the muscle car arrived with minor changes in showrooms. Petty won 35 races with this body style between 1972 and 1977. Buddy Baker, Bobby Isaac, and Dave Marcis also campaigned third-gen Dodge Chargers.