1999
The year 1999 held tremendous significance for three reasons. First, it was a 365-day buildup to the turn of the century, a time when our thoroughly computerized society was supposed to have crashed into chaos, creating a scenario where ctrl-alt-delete was ineffective and rebooting was not an option. Second, it was the first time ever that a driver drove a nonexistent car down the road to the Winston Cup championship. We’ll get to the third reason in a moment.The last time a Ford driver claimed the Cup for his own was in 1992, when, at the end of the season, Alan Kulwicki found himself lapping the competition in his Thunderbird. However, the T-bird’s wings were clipped in 1997, leaving a void in the Ford garages behind pit lane. Hence, the two-door Taurus was born, a car raced under the lights on Sundays by the likes of Dale Jarrett, yet was conspicuously absent from your local blue oval dealer. The decision to reserve the two-door Taurus for the track makes sense – the rental car market was already saturated with four-door Tauruses, and two-door versions might not have been considered “hot ticket” items.
And that brings us to our third point regarding the importance of 1999 – it was the most obvious sign that the era of “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was over. Granted, the divide between race car and street car had expanded exponentially over the years, but never before, so far as we can remember, had a car existed on one side of the track wall but not on the other.