NASCAR Models by Daniel Ziemann!!

Mark Donahue's 1973 AMC Matador
Penske's "First Win" car

Note From Daniel: "Penske’s First NASCAR Win was with American Motors Corporation’s Matador (Remember the 'What’s a Matador?' ad campaign?) Roger Penske and the late Mark Donohue had a relationship with AMC from the 1970 SCCA Trans-Am season. After winning the ’71 T-A championship, the ’72 TA effort was handed to the Roy Woods Racing team. Winston Cup racing was order of the day.

According to Amazing AMC Muscle by Edrie J. Marquez, a Holman-Moody chassis was covered with Matador sheet metal. Traco built the 366 cu in AMC engines.

Penske and Donohue were always looking for the "unfair advantage" in racing and brought in different ideas from their other racing (Can-Am, Trans-Am, Indy, F1). Combined with a NASCAR savvy crew, the result was a hybrid of road course and speedway engineering ideas. This is the car that brought four-wheel disk brakes to NASCAR. Penske convinced AMC to put their part numbers on Porsche 917 disc brakes. This reduced breaking distances and pit times during pit stops before pit road speed limits. You drove like hell, slammed on the brakes and hoped you didn’t kill someone. The Matador also brought power steering to NASCAR, from the Trans-Am Javelin.

The very boxy and slightly underpowered car could still be a top 10 contender. With Mark Donohue’s road racing experience, it should be no surprise that the team’s first win came at the January 21, 1973 season opener at the Riverside road course in California. Gary Bettenhausen also drove as the back-up driver. Other drivers for Penske included Donnie Allison, Dave Marcus and Bobby Allison.

I don’t know if it was Penske or Donahue that liked #6 (Trans-Am and Can-Am, #66 for Indy racing), so the available #16 was used on the Matador. Numbering variants, I assume for back-up cars, included #61 and #91. Bobby Allison brought his number #12 when he teamed with Penske. I also remember seeing #11 on Allison’s Matador at a USAC race in Milwaukee.

Mark Donohue was different kind of driver for NASCAR of the time in that he came in as a Yankee with an engineering degree (Brown University). The next serious driver with an engineering degree that I know of was Al Kulwicki (University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee).

A semi-derelict Jo-Han Rebel Machine body was pressed into service on top of an AMT Bobby Allison Matador reissue chassis. A little stretching was required to get the wheelbase correct. Some thin sheet styrene was glued to the hood to make it look more like a Matador. Different thicknesses of sheet styrene were persuaded to look something like the racing Matador front end. Finely ribbed styrene was used for the grill. The reissued Matador Coupe decal sheet, along with Slixx Contingency and parts box decals were also applied. The Sunoco decals on the roof pillars came from the original Machine kit! A nice resin Matador body is available, but the price is out of my budget."

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