If you’re an old-school gearhead or have ever taken the time to look on the walls of your grandpa’s garage, you might well know who the King of NASCAR Cool - Richard Petty - was back in the day. And he’s still very much alive today.
Richard Lee Petty raced from 1958 to 1992 and was the first driver to win the Cup Series championship seven times. He won 200 races during his career, and that record is unlikely to ever be broken. Petty won the Daytona 500 a record seven times. He won 27 races - 10 straight - in a single astonishing 1967 season. Petty is still active in the sport as a NASCAR team owner and principal of Richard Petty Motorsports.
During a driving career that spanned 35 years, Petty boasts 700 top 10 finishes in a record 1,184 starts and he was the first driver to win in his 500th race start. His acumen and ability seemed built into his DNA, and it essentially was just that as his father, Lee Petty, took the checkered flag at the end of the very first Daytona 500 back in 1959. Lee Petty was also a three-time NASCAR champion.
And if you’d like to grab a piece of all that NASCAR history, you can actually own the 1960 Plymouth Fury Petty drove during his first season in the sport. It ’s said to be his oldest surviving race car. During that rookie season, both of Petty’s cars featured a 383 cubic-inch V8 engine before the team swapped them out for the vastly more powerful 413 V8s in 1961.
Photo: Petty Motorsports
In his inaugural 1960 season, Richard Petty laid down a marker as he finished second in the championship, driving one of two identical Plymouth Fury race cars. Richard drove one of the team cars, and father Lee drove the other. At the time, Richard was just 22 years old.
Fittingly enough, on July 4, 1984, Petty won his final victory at the Firecracker 400 at Daytona International Speedway, and it was a memorable scrap indeed. A caution flag on lap 158 led to Petty and Cale Yarborough battling down to the wire before Petty managed to cross the finish line just a fender-length in front.
Known as ‘Thumper I,’ Richard won three out of his first four NASCAR wins behind the wheel of the Fury. This 1960 Plymouth Fury has been on display for the last decade at the Historic Auto Attractions museum located in Roscoe, Ill. Wayne Lensing, the museum’s owner, purchased the fully restored car at the Kruse auction in Indiana back in 2008. Lensing says he hopes to put the sale proceeds to expand his Historic Auto Attraction Museum. He says fifty-thousand square feet of new display space are set to open on Memorial Day, 2022.
One look tells you all you need to know about this Holy Grail NASCAR machine. The #43 and the Petty Blue color makes the car instantly recognizable. The car features just a hint of a rudimentary roll cage and a minimalistic standard driver’s seat modified with a custom chunk of padding at the right shoulder to keep the driver tucked in position. The 383 cubic-inch V8 pushed out 325 horsepower rating and was indeed mostly ‘stock’ as were nearly all the NASCAR race cars of the day.
Photo: eBay
This car is a living piece of American motor racing history, and it's fully documented by Petty himself. This 1960 Plymouth Fury stands alone both in lineage and pedigree as one of the most important race machines ever built in the United States. When it comes to American racing history, this Petty Blue marvel is without peer. The Buy-It-Now price is a considerable sum at $750,000.
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