When the Dayclona crew (dayclona.com) out of Massachusetts decided to build company owner Mike Goyette’s car, everyone figured he would want it black. Instead, Mike surprised Pam and Gary Beineke by stating one day he wanted to replicate the “Watermelon Car” instead, a somewhat humorous moniker the Dayclona team came up with during the building of the green 1970 Daytona seen here.
Mike used a handful of rare period photos to create his machine. Wing car
enthusiasts Greg Kwiatkowski and John Pappas graciously lent him these references. |
“Mike figured since he was the only one making truly NOS-quality repro parts for these cars, he should also have the most controversial Daytona,” recalls Gary now. “On the other hand, our first response was, ‘Mr. Black Car Only’ driving that eyesore!?’”
A friend named Pete Christensen came up with a Texas body shell, since the car Mike already owned featured the metal rot typical to New England cars and needed everything. Since Dayclona was already doing all of the pieces to create a Daytona from scratch, it would be an easy off-the-shelf swap, right? Not quite. Since the original custom that shows up in the images has a blended nose, it was decided that the project would first require a pair of custom fiberglass front fenders so the replacement nose cone could be put bonded effectively to the car. The nose is now effectively a single piece, held to the chassis using Dayclona’s steel Z-bracketry and permanently bonded to the front fenders.
Using computer scans made from copies of the 1970-era images, courtesy Greg Kwiatkowski and John Pappas, the data was translated into hard parts measurements and work began on building the car up to both 1970 R/T specs and the Daytona design. The nose received the tubular wraparound “bumper” shown in the images, a likely add-on due to the federal changes in bumper laws that became effective at the start of 1970. Interestingly enough, after measurement and comparison, Mike and Gary discovered that these were created using half-inch round stock and were the identical radius to the Dana 60 U-bolts! The bumper was made from those ends and round stock and then chromed. The headlights operate just like the originals did, using vacuum actuators.
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