 Even though he hasn’t won a championship yet, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is treated like royalty by his many fans. |
So when the 2006 Monte Carlo kicked serious booty at Daytona last February, it was one of those ‘Oh Yeah’ moments. But did you know that the new Monte has a bit of old Monte we haven’t seen in a while? The new NASCAR Monte Carlo is officially the 2006 Monte Carlo SS. Yep, we said SS, a name that hasn’t been seen on the Monte Carlo for quite some time. (See SS sidebar) The Monte SS (It’s just so cool to be able to say that again!) racecar was developed over 14-months using the full complement of engineering and design tools available to the people at GM Racing and Chevrolet. The company's engineers worked with key NASCAR team partners on the track who would be the real ‘customers’ for the new Monte Carlo SS racecar.
WHAT’S AN SSIn case you don’t know, the SS name came about in 1957 when it was used on a Corvette prototype race car by Zora Arkus-Duntov. The first production use was in 1961 with the Impala SS with the famous 409 engine, which became a performance legend any good Chevy fan will proudly proclaim. NASCAR didn’t see the SS name until the Monte Carlos came out in September of 1969 as a ‘70 model in the form of a big block, 454 cu. in., 360hp SS and made its NASCAR debut the same year. The not too well known story is that it came into NASCAR as a track promotion to sell tickets more than a serious race car. The races those years were mostly a Dodge and Ford show as Chevy and GM had officially bailed years before. Yes, there were a few one-off Chevys that made a big splash such as Junior Johnson’s #3 mystery engine Chevy in 1963 and Smokey Yunick’s gold and black #13 Chevelle grabbing the Daytona 500 pole in 1967. But Chevy fans had little to cheer about in those dark days. The Monte Carlo was brought out as an attraction but the surprise was a good race car. The next year it saw its first win and went on to become the winningest model. There was a brief absence of the name from 1988-1994 when the Lumina model took over. Monte Carlo returned in 1995 and picked up its winning ways. From 1971 thru the 2005 season, Monte Carlo scored 380 NASCAR Cup wins and led Chevrolet to 20 Manufacturers' Cup Championships out of a possible 24. That’s more than any other manufacturer. Almost all of those wins came with the legendary power of GM's Small Block V-8 engine, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary last year. |
"We worked with all our Chevy teams to get their input on how to make a better racecar, and I believe that shows in our new Monte Carlo SS," said Pat Suhy, GM Racing Group Manager for NASCAR racing. "We spent a lot of hours in our wind tunnel, coast-down test facility and on race tracks to make the Monte Carlo even better. Having the SS name on our new racecar is important as it directly relates to the high-performance SS that the thousands of Chevy race fans can buy for the street."
The new racecar retains the overall dimensions of the 2005 model, based on NASCAR requirements. And that brings up a good point. Whenever a manufacturer uses a body in NASCAR racing, it’s more a story of that body fitting NASCAR’s platform than the other way around. But NASCAR continues to move toward retaining stock dimensions and identity, a factor all the companies want to help sell cars. Yet, a good body design is essential if not downright critical for success in racing. Unlike other manufacturers who race four-door sedan bodies, Chevrolet remains the only brand in NASCAR racing that sells fans the same two-door sports coupe that’s on the track.
"I believe that in key areas we're able to work with our production counterparts to ensure that the race car is as good as it can be within the boundaries defined by NASCAR," said Suhy. "This shows in the front end design which retains some key characteristics that made Monte Carlo a winner and allows us to improve the race version even further. This should allow our teams to enjoy continued success across at tracks where we've historically been successful."
Following NASCAR’s approval of the ’06 SS bodies, teams built development cars for testing that lead up to its debut at this year’s Daytona 500 Speedweeks. But changing a body for NASCAR these days can be a very limiting experience. NASCAR has what they call Aero Matching built into all of the bodies that works like this. All bodies regardless of brand are now under specs that all but match. Laser-cut templates are used to insure all the cars meet those specs. Of the over 40 templates that are used in a pre-race inspection, only 13 are specific to the brand. Those areas are the nose, tail, opera windows and the hood minus the centerline, which stays the same for all cars. So when Chevy or any other car builds a new NASCAR model, they are limited to working within those 13 templates that identify the brand. For the 2006 SS, Chevy engineers changed every one of them, looking to obtain advantageous traits in downforce, balance, drag and adjustability.
