It No Wonder We Hate The French
I have an old college buddy who works for Chrysler in Highland park. He called to tell me of an interesting mound of paperwork he came across while purging thirty year old files.
Seems that NASCAR was doing some wind tunnel work with the "new" GM cars as they were very unstable at high speeds (re 200+) while the Thunderbirds were not quite so loose at speed. It turns out that the notch rear window would cause a low pressure vacuum that would, literally, pick up the back end of the car. As a result came the Monte Carlo SS and the Grand Prix 2+2.
On a lark somebody suggested seeing what a Mirada would do. Turned out that, even in stock trim, it was slicker and more stable than the GM's and generated better down force than the T-Bird. The Mirada's angles generated downforce, while the rounded edges of the T-Bird actually generated lift (kinda like NASA's lifting body flying machine).
NASCAR sent the info to what was left of Mopar's race division, after Iacocca had gutted it and put in charge one Francous' Chastang, a leftover from Chrysler's buyout of Renault. He said NO! He wanted to go F1 racing. At a cost of 35 million dollars a year...for ....get this...ONE ENGINE. They could have easily had a dozen NASCAR teams for that kind of money, plus some leftover to drag race with. We wasted the entire 80's with this idiot, until Bob Lutz fired his ass in 1992. About the same time we saw a return to the drag strip, the NASCAR trucks, and Lutz's baby: the Viper. The Intrepid even had a two door design to go with the four door that made it into production. There were two each test mules: two Dodges and, how cool would this have been, two Eagles.
We're still playing catch-up.
Can you imagine if Chrysler had seen fit to go up against the 5.0 Mustangs and Camaro/Firebird platforms with, say, 80's and 90's RWD/V-8 versions of the Dart and Duster or Volare'/Aspen?