What Does A Race Belvedere Need Most? Bowling Ball-Actuated Active Aerodynamics!

The Faster Farms Chickens' 1966-7 Plymouth Belvedere looked pretty good as an exact replica of the Foster Imposters' car… but something was still lacking.

Since there's a trophy for Most Dangerous Banned F1 Technology, the Chickens decided they'd take a shot at it. While their first choice was a Chapparal-style Sucker Fan, budgetary constraints nixed that option pretty fast. Instead, they opted for the Hillbilly Wing, an ironing board that flips up to provide crucial downforce under acceleration, deceleration, turns, bumps, or steep grades. The video above tells the whole story.



They've also added some nice audio features. Yes, that's the Super Chicken "Charge" call!

Just to make things more interesting, the folks at Foster Farms Chicken got wind of the Faster Farms crew and contacted them. Rather than get all corporate and crush them for copyright infringement, etc., Foster Farms took the high road and issued an official press release:

CALLING ALL RACE FANS: ‘FASTER IMPOSTERS’ TO RACE AT THUNDERHILL IN WILLOWS IN 24 HOURS OF LeMONS
WILLOWS, Calif. –
The “Faster Imposters” – a take off on Foster Farms’ popular advertising characters – are gearing up for the race of their lives midnight to midnight December 27 - 28 at the Thunderhill Raceway Park, in Willows, Calif. It’s 24 Hours of LeMons, an all night race of 100 broken down, beat up cars just trying to cross the finish line.
Faster Imposter Race Captain Adrian Smith and his teammate are such fans of Foster Farms’ Foster Imposter television commercials that they’ve put together nearly an exact replica of the 1960s Plymouth Belvedere featured in the ads and plan to race dressed in Imposter knockoff chicken costumes. Of course, they’ll bring the stuffed Foster Imposters along for moral support. The Foster Imposters are the junk food eating chickens that can never quite make the grade to be fresh, natural Foster Farms chickens. The Faster Imposters are also trying make the grade.
“It's very important that the car lasts long enough for all of us to have a chance to drive some of the roughly 15 hours,” said Smith. “Getting this wonderful beat-up old Belvedere up to snuff has been a challenge. Just finishing would be honorable in an old 60's Plymouth,” comments Smith, who has a soft spot for the old Belvedere cars and has collected and rebuilt several.
Given that, their race strategy is:

- Save the car, don't drive it beyond its means
- Pit safely and effectively
- Have as much fun as humanly possible!

Be sure to check in this weekend for 24 Hours Of LeMons Arse Freeze-A-Palooza coverage; I'll be pretty busy with judging and racing, but I'm sure I'll manage to sneak in some live updates here and there. I got to lovely Willows last night and found Belvedere Adrian at his teammate Al's shop (that's Al as in Al's Rapid Transit, a name that should be familiar to West Coast Mopar guys), conveniently located just a couple miles from the track. He was busy gluing stale pizza and donuts to the race car's dashboard, in order to replicate the Foster Imposters' ride as accurately as possible:

Varnished Pizza And Donuts Make Cars Go Faster

Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.

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