Lee Petty

["Wayne Graefen" <wgraefen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good reading.

http://www.allpar.com/racing/petty-plymouth-racing.html

W


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Lee established kinship with Plymouth in 1949.He bought a brand new '49 Plymouth coupe with a 97 horsepower 6 cylinder engine. In 1950, he had a new '50 Plymouth Coupe. He finished third in points in 1950. In 1951 he raced another Plymouth Coupe. He finished fourth in points for 1951. 1952 saw more of the same, where he finished third in points.

In 1953, Dodge introduced it's first Hemi V-8. Lee saw the advantage of having that engine in a light car such as the new 1953 Dodge 2 door coupe. The major differences, other than the Dodge having a Hemi V-8 over the Plymouth were in wheelbase and weight. The 1953 Plymouth coupe, with virtually the same drive train that it had in 1949, had a slightly longer wheelbase for 1953. It was increased from 111 inches to 114 inches. The Plymouth weighed in at around 2900 pounds. The new '53 Dodge coupe also had a slight increase in wheelbase, from 115 inches to 119. It weighed about 3100 pounds, so that when equipped with the new V-8, it was very fast.

However, for the Daytona Beach race he drove a 1953 Chrysler. How or why he acquired the car has never been established. In that, we don't know if he bought it, or it was furnished to him by Chrysler Corporation. It appeared that he alternated between the large Chrysler and the Dodge for certain races. The Dodge was best suited for the majority of NASCAR's events which were held on dirt tracks. He garnered Dodge's first NASCAR win, as he had already done for Plymouth, and went on to finish second in Grand National points. 

In 1954, Lee switched to the Chrysler 2 door Club Coupe Windsor model. The Hemi now packed a 235 horsepower punch. With his tuning, it put out much more. The Hemi engine was backed by a Dodge truck transmission. It made Lee unstoppable at the Daytona Beach race course in that car that year. Yet, it appears that he did not abandon his Dodge cars for 1954. It is not clear whether they were 1954 models or just reskinned 1953 cars, since there had been little design changes in the Dodge between those years. Dodge did make horsepower increases in its Hemi V-8 for 1954. With 37 races slated for 1954, Lee Petty participated in every one of them. He won his first Grand National Championship in 1954 in the Chrysler. That included the beach race at Daytona, which even then stood out as "the big one."


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