Specifications:
Est. 750 hp 358 cu. in. pushrod overhead valve V8 engine with four-barrel carburetor, four-speed manual transmission, independent front suspension and live rear axle with coil springs, four-wheel disc brakes. Wheelbase: 110"

The relationship between Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress was certainly a very successful one. The two tough, elemental racers brought singular focus, drive, determination and talent to a rough world that rewarded persistence and results. They complemented and supported each other during a particularly important time of NASCAR's transition from a regional series into national prominence as the most successful commercial racing venture in the world.

An important part of Dale Earnhardt's lasting reputation is the part he, Richard Childress (his longtime team owner), Chevrolet (his car) and GM Goodwrench Service (his sponsor), played in NASCAR's maturation. The consistency of their mutual success, the continuity of their relationship both on and off the track, and the visual identity that they created for the number 3 team, the black and grey GM Goodwrench livery and the determined ' and somewhat menacing ' presence of 'The Man in Black' through the last fifteen years of the 20th century as NASCAR perfected its competition formula and its commercial presence, inextricably link driver, team, owner, sponsor, manufacturer and the NASCAR Winston (Nextel/Sprint) Cup series.

This is not to say that NASCAR would have been unsuccessful without Earnhardt and Childress. There were plenty of heroes standing in line with the drive, talent, determination, skill, experience and equipment to meet the requirements of the role played by Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress. It was, however, Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress who forced their way onto NASCAR's stage, took control of it and held it for a remarkable span of years. When Dale Earnhardt left the stage he did it suddenly and tragically but left behind him the successful Childress team, his own successful NASCAR Cup team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., and two talented drivers, Michael Waltrip and the third generation of the Earnhardt family, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., to perpetuate the winning tradition.

Richard Childress Racing

Richard Childress started racing in NASCAR when drivers were still building and preparing their own cars and towing them from track to track on open trailers. He showed his bravery and determination when he took advantage of the driver's strike at Talladega in 1969 and stepped into one of the cars vacated by the short-lived Professional Drivers Association. By 1971 he was fielding his own car, racing it to a fifth place finish in the driver's championship in 1975. He continued to build, prepare and drive his own car through the 1981 NASCAR season, eventually compiling a record of six top five and 76 top ten finishes and five season points totals in the top ten.

The opportunity to put Dale Earnhardt in the driver's seat of his number 3 car was sufficient for Childress to step into fulltime team ownership and management at the end of the 1981 season, having added a second car mid-year for Earnhardt. Recognizing Earnhardt's talent and acknowledging his own inexperience as a team owner/manager at the end of the season, he encouraged Dale to accept an open seat with legendary team owner Bud Moore. That realistic and even altruistic act demonstrated Richard Childress's good sense and the long range view that has made his team successful, as he passed on a Winston Cup champion to another team in favor of building his own organization and experience with Ricky Rudd. Rudd stayed with Childress for two seasons, in which the team realized its success with ninth place finishes in the season Cup points both years and by winning two races in 1983.

For the 1984 season Childress and Moore swapped drivers, with Rudd driving Moore's Wrangler Ford and Earnhardt returning to Childress Racing. It was the beginning of a dynasty that defined much of what NASCAR's top series is today. Success did not come immediately, with Earnhardt driving the Childress team's soon to be immortal number 3 car to fourth place in the 1984 season standings following two wins and twelve top five finishes. 1985 was better in terms of wins, with four, but Earnhardt dropped to eighth in the season driver rankings. Success came in 1986 with five wins and sixteen top fives which vaulted Earnhardt and Childress Racing to the Winston Cup Championship, a feat that the team repeated in 1987.

The team brought Mr. Goodwrench on board for the 1988 season, completing the identity that has become synonymous with domination on NASCAR's top stock car circuit. From 1984 through 2000, a span of seventeen seasons, Richard Childress Racing and Dale Earnhardt finished in the top five of the Cup Championship every year but four and in only one season, 1992, were they out of the top ten. Childress Racing continued to expand during this period, becoming one of the first vertically integrated, multi-car, multi-series teams. It was the first team to achieve success in all of NASCAR's premier series, Winston Cup, Busch Grand National and Craftsman Truck.

Dale Earnhardt

The son of Ralph Earnhardt, one of NASCAR's pioneer drivers, Dale Earnhardt followed in his father's footsteps from an early age, building and racing cars on the bullrings of the south until he got his break in 1979 with Rod Osterlund. He won his first Winston Cup race in just his sixteenth start and conclusively proved his talent and potential by securing his first pole on the road course at Riverside, California, a venue far outside his oval track background, just two months later. He won NASCAR's Rookie of the Year title that season, beating talents like Harry Gant and Terry Labonte in the process.

Only a year later, in 1980, Earnhardt beat the legendary Cale Yarborough for the Winston Cup title, becoming the only NASCAR driver to follow a Rookie of the Year title with the championship in NASCAR's premier series in his first season without a rookie stripe. When Osterlund sold his team to Jim Stacy in mid-1981 Earnhardt moved to a second car in Richard Childress's team but moved on to the established Bud Moore team for 1982 and 1983, giving Childress time to build experience as a fulltime team owner and manager. He returned to Childress Racing in 1984 and over the next seventeen seasons the team of Earnhardt and Childress ' and they were in the truest sense a team ' compiled an unmatched record of success including three pairs of consecutive Winston Cup Championships in 1986-87, 1990-91 and 1993-94.

In his career, Dale Earnhardt started 676 Winston Cup races. 76 of those resulted in victories, an 11.2% win percentage. Nearly two-thirds (63.3%) resulted in top ten finishes and more than two-fifths (41.6%) were top fives. That is, by any measure, a crushing record in a series that includes a dozen or more drivers who are capable of winning a race on any given weekend and covers some 15,000 racing miles in a season.

He won virtually every title and event in NASCAR including, in one of the most heralded victories in the history of any racing series, the 1998 Daytona 500, a race win that had eluded him despite many laps in the lead at NASCAR's premier event. A four-time champion in the inter-series International Race of Champions series, he was versatile as well as determined. He and his son Dale, Jr. were on a team that finished fourth overall in the 2001 Daytona 24 Hours sports car race.

Dale Earnhardt was a looming personality both on the track and off it. He earned his nicknames, 'The Intimidator' and 'The Man in Black', honestly. There was little subtlety in Dale Earnhardt's determination to get to the checkered flag before anyone else, a characteristic that endeared him to millions of fans and earned him the approbation of at least an equal number. His fellow drivers universally respected him. After his 1998 Daytona 500 win every team lined up in the pit lane to salute Earnhardt on his way to Victory Lane, a measure of the respect in which he was held.

The 1994 Chevrolet Lumina NASCAR Winston Cup Car

Through this period of dramatic development and national expansion of NASCAR's racing series, venues, drivers, sponsors, teams and exposure the series' visibility grew apace with that of Richard Childress Racing's Chevrolets driven by Dale Earnhardt and sponsored by Goodwrench.

They were the right team in the right place at the right time, contributing their success and image to the growing success and image of NASCAR. The halo created by Childress Racing's Dale Earnhardt driven Goodwrench Lumina spread over not only the other Childress teams in Winston Cup, Busch Grand National and Craftsman Truck but also beyond to the team Dale Earnhardt established in 1980, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., to GM Goodwrench service and to the Chevrolet brand and its Winston Cup entrant platforms.

There is, even after Dale Earnhardt's untimely death on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 and the withdrawal of GM Goodwrench as a NASCAR sponsor at the end of the 2006 season, no identity more esteemed and emblematic of NASCAR's vibrant, competitive senior circuit now known as Sprint Cup than the combination of Goodwrench and Chevrolet on a Lumina bearing the number 3, built by Richard Childress racing and driven by Dale Earnhardt.

The Childress/Earnhardt Lumina of the MacPherson Collection is one of the most important of the many cars built by Childress Racing for Dale Earnhardt over their seventeen seasons together. A veteran of three seasons of racing with fifteen starts, it had six notable finishes: two wins, two second places and two thirds.

Most importantly, however, it is with this car and its second place finish in the 1994 Hooters 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on November 13, 1994 that Dale Earnhardt clinched his seventh Winston Cup Championship, matching the record of 'The King', Richard Petty. Among many, many ex-Dale Earnhardt Goodwrench Chevrolets only the Daytona 500-winning car may be more significant than this example.

It was restored to race-ready condition following its active racing career of over 5,000 miles and has been preserved in Joe's Garage as one of the most honored and appreciated of its many important milestone racing vehicles. Instantly recognizable by any racing fan, and by many others with little familiarity with racing, its dramatic, aggressive appearance is matched only by the reputation of its driver, 'The Intimidator', Dale Earnhardt.

Whether as the centerpiece of a racing car collection, an important contributor to a Chevrolet collection or even on the increasingly popular and accessible racing circuits that cater to older NASCAR racing cars, it is guaranteed to draw attention and start conversations. Very few cars have that kind of charisma ' an attribute it shares with its driver and team owner.