HICKORY, N.C. — He didn’t win in it, but every NASCAR fan remembers Dale Earnhardt’s day-glo red paint scheme that featured Taz from the Looney Tunes.
For the 2000 Daytona 500, Earnhardt’s team ditched his traditional black Goodwrench Plus scheme, painted the car red and slapped Taz on the hood of his Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The popular and erratic cartoon character was part of a GM Goodwrench ad campaign at the time. A trailblazer in NASCAR merchandising, there were soon Earnhardt hats and diecasts featuring Taz that his loyal fans flocked to.
The seven-time Winston Cup champion drove well in the Taz car at Daytona that day, running in fourth with about 30 laps to go and even traded some red paint with his son in the rookie’s Budweiser No. 8. But an incident with Jimmy Spencer with about 10 laps to go pushed the Intimidator to the middle of the pack and Earnhardt wound up finishing 21st. The Taz body was cut off Chassis No. 58 and the toy company Hasbro acquired it, chopped it up into little pieces, and included those parts in the Winner’s Circle diecasts that were sold.
Earnhardt died a year later, tragically at the 2001 Daytona 500 in a wreck that changed the sport, and the Taz car was never seen again.
Until this past weekend.
The zMAX CARS Tour — a late model stock car touring series that is co-owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. — held one of its biggest races of the season this past weekend at the historic Hickory Motor Speedway in western North Carolina. The Throwback Classic, billed as the “biggest night in pavement late model racing history,” boasted the richest purse ever for the CARS Tour: $50,000 for the winner of the l