A few minutes later, Scott trundles back to the start-finish line and climbs out of his big blue ’Bird wearing a sheepish grin. “There’s something about these cars that makes you act like a kid again,” he says. Troy Hawkes and Marty Burke smile knowingly.

Hawkes is here at Texas Motor Speedway exercising his Hemi Orange 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona—Chrysler’s wingman, so to speak, to the Superbird. Burke, meanwhile, is squiring the cars that served as Mopar’s loyal opposition in NASCAR and USAC stock car races: a long-nose 1969 Ford Torino Talladega, maroon with a black hood, and a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II with an even longer front end and the blue-and-white graphics of the Dan Gurney Special. (There was also a candy-apple-red Cale Yarborough version.) Collectively, these four wind-cheating musclecars were known as the aero warriors, and they look every bit as badass today as they did four decades ago.

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Mind you, these street machines weren’t merely race car poseurs. On the contrary, they were the basis of the race cars that dominated NASCAR’s premier Grand National division. Fans raised on the generic blandness of today’s Car of Tomorrow may find this impossible to believe. But there was once a time when the cars raced by NASCAR were stock in more than name only. In fact, manufacturers actually designed street cars specifically for success on the racetrack. This practice reached its apex in 1969 and 1970, when the aero warriors were so dominant that NASCAR effectively outlawed them.

Stock-car racing went through monumental changes in the late-’60s, as money flowed into the sport and NASCAR moved away from its humble dirt-track roots. Alabama International Motor Speedway, now known as Talladega Superspeedway, was due to open in 1969, and cars were expected to flirt with the 200-mph barrier on the high banks. At that speed, Chrysler engineers calculated that going 1 mph faster would require an additional 17.4 horsepower. It would be a lot easier, they realized, to increase speed by reducing drag.

Dodge already had a slick intermediate-size coupe in its ’68 Charger. Unfortunately, the flying buttresses of the rear pillars produced lots of speed-killing drag. So engineers from the racing program persuaded the designers to replace them with a flush-mounted backlight and grille that improved airflow over the car. Then, they convinced the bean counters to offer the so-called Charger 500 for sale—a necessary step since NASCAR demanded that at least 500 cars be produced before a body style could be homologated, or permitted to race.

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Ford, meanwhile, had an even better idea. Its engineers modified two midsize fastbacks instead of one—the Ford Torino and the Mercury Cyclone. And the mods were more radical than Chrysler’s. To begin with, they rolled the rocker panels, which allowed the race cars to sit lower to the ground, and fashioned sleeker front bumpers. Then they extended and drooped the noses to reduce drag while creating downforce. Ford’s factory stock car, the Torino Talladega, got 15.5 inches of new sheetmetal ahead of the front wheels courtesy of Holman & Moody. The Spoiler II was even wilder—more than an inch longer than the Talladega. Plus, its nose sloped down at an even steeper angle.

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It didn’t take Dodge long to realize that its Charger 500 was outclassed by FoMoCo’s ringers. So its engineers embarked on a crash program to crush the competition, and the car they came up with was unlike anything ever seen. Craftsmen from Creative Industries grafted an 18-inch-long wedge-shaped nose cone with a chin spoiler to the front end. At the rear—and even more startling—was the addition of a 5-foot-wide wing with massive mounts that looked like an upside-down hydrofoil, so configured to clear the opening trunklid and route its considerable downforce directly to the body, not through the trunklid seals (as the Cyclone’s modest wing does). Although the car was dubbed the Daytona, it made its debut at the inaugural Talladega 500 in fall 1969. Charlie Glotzbach qualified at 199.466 mph, and Daytonas finished first and fourth, while non-wing Chargers came in second and third.

The car was so successful that the Plymouth Road Runner got a similar, but more artful, makeover the next year, and the upgraded Superbird was the winningest speedway car of the 1970 Grand National season.

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The aero warriors were flying high. Then, with the stroke of NASCAR chief Bill France’s pen, they were grounded. A rule requiring that they race with 305-cubic-inch engines—non-aero cars were using big blocks—rendered then instantly obsolete in 1971. Adding insult to injury, new-car buyers shunned the unconventional-looking cars, and they languished on dealer lots. Some Chryslers even endured the indignity of having their wings clipped and their noses trimmed in an effort to make them more sellable.

The aero warriors suffered from neglect—and worse—after production ceased, and roughly half of them disappeared over the years. Inevitably, though, scarcity has driven up the value of the survivors. Fords and Mercurys don’t get the respect accorded the Dodges and Plymouths, and the presence of a Hemi sends the price of any Mopar product into the stratosphere. But all four cars have developed a cult following among a subset of musclecar fanatics. And they’re now icons thanks to their racing pedigree.

Seeing all four cars together at Texas Motor Speedway, it’s clear the aero warriors fit the same template—hot-rodded versions of plain-Jane midsize coupes that rolled of the assembly line by the hundred thousands. By contemporary standards, build quality was shoddy, with cutlines that don’t match up, sloppy welds, splotchy paint, and a host of other flaws that wouldn’t be tolerated today. The interiors were generally taxicab quality, with lots of shiny vinyl and hard plastic. In the Dodge and Plymouth, screw heads are plainly visible in the middle of the dashboard.

Dynamically, the cars are old school, and that’s no compliment. The slop in the gargantuan steering wheels has to be experienced to be believed. The brakes—discs in the front and drums at the rear—are prone to fade. The tires seem comically tiny to modern eyes. Most aero warriors left the showroom floor on 6.0x14-inch wheels, way smaller than the standard equipment on a current Toyota Corolla. Making things even worse, the tires are bias-ply rather than radials, which translates into marginal grip and lots of tramlining. Oh, and all four cars have solid live axles suspended by truck-style leaf springs.

But the engines—ooh-la-la! No fuel-sipping, environment-preserving four-bangers here, just carbureted iron-block V-8s that make tons of power and all the right noises. Mat the throttle in these babies, and you’ve got an instant tire-roasting party. You’re also styling pretty good, since all the aero warriors, especially the two Mopar wing cars, look unlike anything else on the road. “You can’t go anywhere without somebody taking pictures or filming you,” says Hawkes, who sometimes uses his Daytona as a grocery-getter. “But there’s nothing like looking in your rearview mirror and seeing that big wing.”

Hawkes, a Houston geophysicist, is a crazed Charger fanatic; he’s owned 12 so far. But he has a special appreciation for the Daytona because his father owned one, and he remembers standing up in the back seat for a better vantage point when they took it to drive-in movies. He first came across his current car on eBay in 2007 while serving in Iraq. Two years later, he traded his Charger 500 and Hemi Charger R/T project for it. The Daytona’s original engine had been blown up and replaced by the first owner, but the bodywork was intact, even the long nose, which was something of a miracle. (It seems to extend out a mile past the windshield, and you can’t see the end of it from the driver’s seat.)

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Daytonas came in two basic flavors. Topline Hemis accounted for only 46 of the 503 Daytonas produced, and as you might imagine, these are the most highly prized. The rest of the model run featured the 440 Magnum, which was the last and largest of Chrysler’s RB (raised-block) series of iron-block-and-head motors. Fitted with a single four-barrel Carter AVS carburetor, it’s rated at 375 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque. Hawkes’ car also benefits from the high-performance rear axle package consisting of a Dana rearend with an ultra-short 4.10 final-drive ratio.

Although Hawkes prizes originality, he’s made a few small but telling upgrades to improve driveability. A Gear Vendors overdrive unit makes it possible for him to cruise happily on the highway, and he replaced the old distributor with a PerTronix electronic ignition. But the biggest change is bigger wheels and tires. He runs 8.0 x 15s instead of 6.0 x 14s, and he’s replaced the standard-issue bias-ply rubber with modern radials so he doesn’t have to worry about squirrelly handling when he pushes the car. “I was doing 125 on the back straight,” he says, “and at that speed, Turn 3 came up pretty fast.”

When it comes to hooliganism, Superbird owner Greg Scott is more interested in jackrabbit starts. At TMS, he repeatedly lit up the tires for photos, for impromptu match races and, on numerous occasions, just for fun. Scott owns more than two dozen collector cars, including a Spoiler II. But the Superbird occupies pride of place in his collection because he’s invested so much in it. Not in terms of money—it was a wreck when he bought it 10 years ago for $23,000—but in terms of sweat equity: Scott, a Dallas attorney, took community college classes to learn how to weld and fabricate, and he restored the car himself.

Plymouth was a latecomer to the aero wars. In 1970, NASCAR made its homologation rules tougher. Faced with the prospect of having to sell nearly 2000 cars, Plymouth rounded off some of the sharp edges that made the Daytona look, well, agricultural even to some top Chrysler designers. The Superbird benefits from a reprofiled nose, black graphics over the headlight covers, a black vinyl roof, and a taller rear wing supported by more steeply raked uprights bearing a super-cool decal of a Road Runner holding a racing helmet. It’s also got surprisingly comfortable bucket seats.

Like the Daytona, the Superbird could be bought with either a Hemi or a 440-cubic-inch V-8—a Super Commando, rather than a Magnum, in Plymouth parlance—with a single four-barrel carb. But Scott’s car came with the third option, a 440 mated to a trio of two-barrel Holleys. Rated at 390 horsepower, it’s down 35 ponies to the Hemi, but both engines produce 490 pound-feet of torque. Off the line, the six-barrel is as quick if not quicker than the Hemi, especially in the hands of an aggressive driver. And as Scott says with a laugh, “I don’t mind beating on the car.”

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On the racetrack, there was no clear winner in the aero wars. (The results can be sliced different ways according to the specific time period, the length of the racetracks, and other variables.) In the court of public opinion, on the other hand, Mopar won hands down. Even though Fords are more rare, they’re worth only a fraction as much as the wing cars. “People don’t know about them,” Marty Burke says. “And they just don’t look as distinctive when you see one in a parking lot.”

Although you’d have to be blind to miss a Superbird, only a hard-core car guy would recognize a Talladega. Yes, the long, drooping nose and the flat-black factory hood look a bit unusual. But the Spartan interior features a bench seat, a column shift, and the same downmarket accoutrements of an ordinary Fairlane. The only option on Burke’s car is an AM—not AM-FM, mind you—radio. It isn’t until you crank the ignition that you realize you’re looking at a serious sleeper.

All Talladegas were built with 428 Cobra Jet motors. This may disappoint NASCAR fans who know that Talladegas raced with a Boss 429. But the Cobra Jet had taken the stock-class drag-racing world by storm after being introduced the previous year, and, as Burke puts it, “It’s a killer street motor.” He ought to know. Besides running a business specializing in Ford high-performance parts in Leonard, Texas, Burke is also an accomplished drag racer who used to hold the national record in C Stock Eliminator (set in a Cobra Jet-powered Mustang, naturally).

Curiously, the Talladega is equipped with staggered rear shocks, a drag-racing trick that helps cars launch hard without losing traction. But the Talladega was designed for top speed, and that’s where it really shows its mettle. “Especially with the bias-ply tires, you’ve got to stay on top of the car,” Burke says. “But when you get above 100 miles per hour, you can really feel the front end squatting down as the air goes over it.”

Burke also owns a Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II. With only 135 or so survivors of the roughly 500 cars built, this is the rarest of the aero cars. It’s also the least valuable. Even though Burke’s Dan Gurney Special is in remarkably original and pristine condition, Burke figures he’d be lucky to get $25,000 in a market where a Hemi Daytona might command $500,000. Then again, he doesn’t have too much invested in it. “It had been owned by a doctor’s wife who traded it in on a ’79 Mazda for $250,” he recalls. “I bought it for $1700 in 1979 and drove it home from South Carolina to Pennsylvania.”

The knock on the Spoiler II is that, unlike the three other aero warriors, it doesn’t come with a big-block motor. All the Mercs were sold with 351 Windsors, an immensely popular small-block derivative of the Boss 302 that remained in production until 1996. (A promised ram-air derivative of the 428 Cobra Jet never materialized.) With “only” 290 horsepower and 385 pound-feet of torque, the Spoiler II can’t measure up to its rivals in terms of grunt, but the lighter engine translates into more nimble handling. “The car doesn’t plow as much as the others because it’s not as nose-heavy,” Burke says. Plus, the Spoiler II comes with racing stripes, a nifty rear spoiler and an upmarket wood-trimmed interior.

So, Spoiler II, Talladega, Daytona or Superbird—who’s the king of the hill? Thirty-one years after the aero warriors last flew, this race is still too close to call.