Go For The Hat – Mopar Action Article Extra

Gary pulls the ‘chute whenever he has a chance because “it feels so good when it hits.”

Gary “Garu” and Pam Beineke, better known as the “Beine Team” have been churning out ’71 (G-Series) wing cars seemingly at an assembly line pace. Many of their creations (they call them “what if” cars, as in what if the factory actually continued the Daytonas and Super Birds into the 1971 model year. They base their handcrafted models on factory documents showing preliminary renderings and details of ’71 wing cars before the program was scrapped.

Working out of their home garage, the Beine Team fabricates parts, lays on a professional-quality finish and handles all mechanical work. Gary is a lawyer by day and a fabricator by night. He’s a fabricator by day when he calls in sick. Pam is a Registered Nurse and takes care of Gary when he calls in sick so they both can work on their current project.

Getting high at the April Maxton event. This shot shows the car in the ‘street’ configuration; using a stock-style ‘69/’70 Daytona/Super Bird front spoiler. Subsequent windt unnel tests at A2/Aerodyn helped resolve the lift issue with a larger front spoiler moved forward 3″ from the stock location.

The B-Team’s current project (Exhibit A shown here) is a clone of Bobby Isaac’s K&K Insurance record-setting ’69 Daytona. But the B’s wanted more than just a “nice car that sat on the grass,” or collected fingerprints inside Building T at the Carlisles at Chrysler event, or the All-Chrysler Nationals, or whtever they call their event this week. So, what to do? A rolling breast cancer awareness display? No, the K&K car wasn’t pink. An attraction for Nurse Pam to give out flu shots? Naw, they might catch the flu. The B’s rolled up their sleeves and scratched their respective heads (each has one).

“Hey, let’s go land speed record racing. We haven’t done that since last Friday.” So quicker than you could say “Mopar Action,” the B-Team whipped up their vision of a ’71 Daytona designed to break the 200 MPH mark in the standing mile. ‘Course you’ll need to read the print version to get the complete story as we don’t give away the store online like they did in “Mopar Enthusiast” magazine. And you know what happened to them.

But we’ll tell you this: Garu did break 200 MPH and set a class speed record. And what about the hat? Gary takes a size 9.

A moment captured in time…A STORY 40 YEARS IN THE MAKING…
MAKING HISTORY WITH THE ORIGINAL AERODYNAMICIST THAT WORKED ON THE 3/8TH SCALE G-SERIES MODELS IN 1970, GARY ROMBERG TESTS THE FULL SCALE MODEL BUILT BY GARY & PAM BEINEKE AT AERODYN WINDTUNNEL IN MOORESVILLE, NC. 40 YEARS LATER, IN 2010.

Only time will tell what the significance of this gathering will be, but it’s undeniable that a car that was considered, but never built, was finally tested in full scale by the original aerodynamicist 40 years later. It’s 208.4mph run (so far) proved out the findings of the windtunnel tests and give a glimpse back in time to what the future of NASCAR could have been.