The new toy - 1989 turbo Dodge Daytona Shelby

I turned 45 years old in June and I was good to myself.  I bought another toy, another high tech muscle car from the 1980's, this time it was a turbo Dodge, a 1989 Daytona Shelby to be exact.

I've had a fondness for turbo Dodges since they were introduced in 1984 as the Daytona and the top of the line Daytona Turbo-Z.  

I had a 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo Z way back in 1989 and 1990 but I sold it so I could buy a 1980 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am Pace Car.  Both the Dodge Daytona Turbo-Z and the 1980 Pontiac Turbo Pace Car are long gone but I find it was the Dodge that I missed more.  The Dodge was just a fun car to drive, sporty, sharp looking, the 2.2 liter turbocharged, fuel injected engine was a real stormer when the long skinny pedal went flat to the floor and she handled great ... a little strange since she was a front wheel drive car, but you got used to that.


That's a picture of my old 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo-Z, circa 1989, sitting in my parents' driveway.  My only regret with the car was that it didn't have T-tops.  I'm just not a solid roof sports car kind of guy.  If part of the roof doesn't come off from the factory then I'm not going to be happy with the car.  Still, this little turbo Dodge got me through junior college with its 30 plus miles per gallon fuel economy when my '79 Trans Am with its deep 3.73 geared rear end and big 6.6 liter 403 cubic inch V8 was struggling to get the mid-teens in gas mileage while commuting.

I miss my old Dodge Daytona Turbo-Z.  I went looking for another Turbo-Z but they are few and far between today and the ones that were in the condition I wanted were just more than I wanted to pay for them.  The cheaper ones had issue after issue, sometimes stuff like holes rusted in the floor boards or old greasy / oily parts wrapped up in shop towels and sitting in the passenger seat.

I looked long and hard and finally found a one owner, 1989 Dodge Daytona Shelby in Corpus Christi, Texas.  It had 142,000 miles and some change on her, one owner, garage kept and maintained.  I paid $1800 for it, drove to Corpus Christi, Texas one Saturday, met the owner, test drove the Daytona, said I'd take it, paid him, signed the paperwork, spent the night in a motel and drove the Daytona home the next day.

I drove almost 700 miles on the return journey.  

The Daytona has a 14 gallon fuel tank.

I used a tank and a half of gas on the way back and averaged about 33 miles per gallon.  This from a 25 year old 2.2 liter SOHC turbo charged, intercooled, port fuel injected inline four cylinder with a heavy duty five speed manual transmission, limited slip differential and a race ready Getrag gear set.  Oh, and the Daytona that I bought had T-tops!

This new Daytona is nothing short of awesome.  Currently she's in the shop getting her AC converted over from Freon to 134A (my mechanic couldn't believe that I was bringing in a Freon chilled car and he doubted that he could even get a can of Freon anymore so I told him not to waste his time and just convert her to the new stuff).

Dodge produced 4741 Daytona Shelbys in 1989.

Here's how mine breaks down.

She's painted Flash Red ... 1612 out of 4741 were painted that color

She's got T-tops ... 1952 out of 4741 had the T-top package

She's got a factory CD player ... 862 out of 4741 had that option.

Also, my interior is this kind of blue gray and according to the options, Daytona Shelbys came with three choices for interior colors ... taupe, bordeaux or charcoal so basically tan, red or black yet mine has a blue gray / silver type interior.  Since the previous owner says that he special ordered the Daytona brand new there might have been a color override making my Daytona Shelby unique and maybe 1 of 1 ever produced.

Sitting pretty on a beach in Corpus Christi (TX)

Well, okay, I've got a new toy.  Since I didn't want to hack up the '86 Trans Am in my garage I needed a new toy that I was willing to modify.

I wanted a toy that I could work on, modify, and make go faster.  The turbo Dodges caught my fancy so I decided that I wanted to learn about how to go faster in a turbo Dodge.  The goal will be to go as fast as possible while keeping everything looking stock or near stock ... no cone filters, no PVC and dryer hose homemade air intakes, no removing the air conditioning or taking the seats out ... it's got to go fast and look bone stock.  The neat thing is that if you go to YouTube you can find several Daytona Shelby's running tens in the quarter in street trim.  

That's almost as fast as my stock '04 Honda CBR600RR (10.7 sec at 133mph) meaning that there are some built-up Dodge Daytonas out there running almost as fast as my super sport bike.

Unreal.

Well, enough gabbing about my new toy.  If you want to learn more, here's the link to my new blog on it; the 1989 Dodge Daytona Shelby Diary.

On a closing note ... I'm eccentric.  I like to drive cars and motorcycles that no one else has.  Life is too short to drive mediocre cars and with all the boring cars and trucks out there today it's nice to drive something that turns heads like whiplash.  My '86 TA never fails to draw attention or even a small crowd when I drive it simply because you never see one of these cars in this good of a shape anymore.

The Dodge Daytona Shelby has the same effect on people.

Just the other day I took my wife to lunch in the '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby and after we circled the restaurant looking for a parking spot we finally parked in front and the owner of the restaurant hurried out, saying that he had watched us looking for a parking spot and he HAD to know what kind of car we were driving.  He thought it was some kind of new exotic import.  When I told him it was a 1989 Dodge Daytona Shelby he was floored.  Yeah, he recognized the Daytona and remembered them from a long, long time ago but he hadn't seen one in decades and certainly not one in as good of a condition as the one that we were driving.

I told him that if he liked the Daytona he should get a look at my '86 Trans Am.

Being eccentric has its advantages.  

The '86 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and the '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby, two examples of street warriors from The Second Muscle Car Era and survivors of that decade that we called the '80's ... a decade when I was a teenager and got to live in a time when cars like the two I own were brand new, prowling the streets and some of the fastest things money could buy on four wheels.

The Milton Bradley Star Bird

Everything about toys changed in 1977 when “Star Wars” hit the big screen … just as “Star Wars” changed the way we thought about science fiction and movies in general, George Lucas’ epic space fantasy also changed the way that we thought about and bought toys.  Everyone wanted to cash in on a piece of the tasty marketing pie that Lucas had served up steaming hot and fresh in May of ‘77, even an old family game maker Milton Bradley.

Suddenly science fiction was cool … and extremely profitable … but what could a board game maker like Milton Bradley bring to a table that was already getting crowded by everyone and their mother trying to cash in on the sci-fi craze?

Plenty and it all revolved around that oh so ‘70’s buzzword … electronic.

Nothing sounds like electronic Star Bird.  

Nothing.

Ever.

Period.

Enter Milton Bradley’s bid for their slice of the science fiction super nova … Star Bird: The Space Transport with electronic circuitry – one of the first of many such toys in the late 1970’s and one which I was lucky enough to own (and still own).

Milton Bradley’s Star Bird was a really cool toy and simple to operate (if not just a bit annoying to your parents or other adults in the play area).  A single 9volt battery went into a compartment just behind the front laser guns and in front of the massive speaker while a simple on/off switch turned Star Bird to active or inactive duty.  As soon as you flipped that little black toggle switch, the whole toy emitted a deep throbbing hum and depending on whether you tilted the nose of the Star Bird up or down, that throbbing hum would either increase in pitch to an ear crying whine or decrease in pitch to an even deeper throbbing hum.  Once you had the pitch that you desired, you could level the Star Bird off and it would maintain that sound for as long as you held it steady.  If, during your cruising of the galaxy, a hostile element appear in your path then a big gray button on the neck of the hull, right behind the cockpit, triggered the front mounted twin LED laser cannons which would pulse / flash red and emit high pitched laser-like sounds.

If those electronic strengths weren’t enough, Star Bird was full of other play features.  

The front cockpit and the rear main engine could both be pulled off and fitted together to form a type of smaller, arrowhead shaped fighter with all the sound FX.  Slide the front cockpit cover off to expose the main laser / battery compartment / speaker assembly and you had yet another sub-fighter array / play configuration … this one with a cockpit canopy which was little more than a flat sticker.  

The wing tips of the main body were actually small space fighters labeled “Interceptor-1” and “Interceptor-2” that could be removed for either escort duty or to add their attack capacity to whatever cosmic foe Star Bird was valiantly facing at the time.  

World War 2 made gun turrets sexy and during the 1940’s and 1950’s the gun turret was a staple of most large military aircraft … waxing to nostalgia during the 1960’s and 1970’s but “Star Wars” made the gun turret sexy again.  Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon with its dual pom-pom laser turrets made it a requirement for any self-respecting sci-fi space ship to have at least one gun turret (or two) and so the last play feature in the design was a double barreled laser gun mounted on top of a ball turret on top of the main body.  Looking at the arc of fire of the turret, it would probably be a very good idea to launch the wing mounted Interceptors before ever opening fire with the double barreled laser guns on the turret otherwise you were going to have some collateral damage / friendly fire to explain to the head brass back at the Command Base.  Also, it should be noted that the design of the ball turret was more than a little similar in appearance to the Imperial Death Star.  The ball turret could also be removed and used as an escape pod … another piece of hardware made famous by “Star Wars.”

Star Bird was billed as a “transport”, albeit a pretty well armed one with its dual wing mounted Interceptors, twin laser gun turret and those big flashing laser pulse cannons up front.  You had to begin to wonder just what it was that Star Bird transported and what would need so much firepower to protect.  In fact, looking at the overall design, I guess it didn’t have very much room to carry stuff so as a child I always thought of the Star Bird more as a Pony Express than say, an 18 wheeler.  Remembering a line from “Star Wars” in 1977, I thought of the Star Bird as a “councilor’s ship”, a diplomatic transport, high speed and heavily armed … designed to get VIPs into and out of bad situations.  In that regard, at least in my mind, Star Bird was very much like Princess Leia’s own Tantive IV Corellian Corvette (i.e. the hammerheaded “blockade runner”).  I even spent a couple of days one summer tracing the outline of the Star Bird and its parts and drawing out the interior … deck by deck, and created a kind of “Star Bird Owners Manual” complete with facts and statistics on the imaginary capabilities of the toy.  It was a whimsical exercise in imagination for a 9 year old and garnered the admiration and praise from my close group of friends but sadly that spiral bound notebook and those drawings are long since lost to the passage of time.

Pity.

Maybe I’ll do them again one day, improving upon the design as the Star Bird is one ship that would definitely make a good project for blueprints.

Like any good spaceship, Star Bird needed to operate from a staging area and Milton Bradley was kind enough to provide just such an accessory with the Star Bird Command Base … a somewhat weakly built cardboard construct which didn’t fare well to heavy play or the passage of the years but while you had it, the Star Bird Command Base was king.  As stated, it was the action control center for electronic Star Bird … however the Command Base itself had no electronics of its own.

The Command Base was another vast canvas for your imagination to roam and play on, sized to the Star Bird itself and loaded with Star Bird support features; the Command Base resembled something right out of a Chris Foss or Peter Elson painting.  Sit it on the sand of a beach with the waves crashing in the background or in a shady patch of lichen covered ground in your backyard and the Command Base could have been built on just about any alien planet your imagination could come up with.

Features of the Command Base included a transport vehicle designed to act as a dolly to carry the removable engine core of the Star Bird, an Interceptor landing deck with two marked slots to slide the removable wing-tip mounted Interceptors into, a working winch which could be used to lift the engine (and engine cradle) from the transport vehicle up into the open service bay, dual high mounted anti-invasion laser guns (which were simply much larger versions of the turret mounted double barrel laser guns on the Star Bird) and last of all four “scaled” space figures (all in the same “howdy” pose) though it was obvious that these “scaled” space figures would never be able to fit inside either the ball turret of the Star Bird or the cockpits of the wing-mounted Interceptors so what Milton Bradley meant when they used the term “scaled” I’m not sure of.

Later offerings from Uncle Milton included a revamped version of the Star Bird packaged and sold as the Star Bird Avenger.  The Avenger had different decals, darker windows on the front and upgraded electronics which could send and receive infra-red signals (like those found in a television remote).  Kids could now fire their Avenger’s pulse laser cannons at a special (included) target and register a “hit” against the target. 

Shortly thereafter, Star Bird got its first real adversary in the addition of the Star Bird Intruder to the toy lineup.  Shamelessly, the Intruder was a lackluster (but rare) toy thrown together with little or no imagination from existing parts and molds of the Star Bird line.  The Intruder was simply the front part of the Star Bird / Avenger toy with a much shorter rear section and it was painted black with alien type decals.  Possessing the same electronic upgrades as the Avenger, the Intruder and the Avenger could dogfight in a fashion that was a precursor to laser-tag in that if a “hit” was scored on the other toy it would signal that hit through its electronic suite and by making a different sound.  After the Intruder was introduced, the Star Bird line faded into the pages of toy history, its chapter having run from 1979 to 1981 and it had been a good run.

A damn good run.

Today, my Star Bird (original) and Command Base sit on a shelf, in their original (tattered) boxes, like somewhat tarnished trophies from my youth.  Every few years I get the Star Bird down, unbox it, connect a 9volt battery and flip the on/off switch to bring the old spaceship back to life.  For a few wonderful minutes I relive a cherished memory from my childhood.  Invariably, the electronic sound of the Star Bird’s warbling engine along with its pulsating LED laser cannons brings my curious daughters running to daddy’s study to see what I have resurrected and soon I’m watching the ancient Star Bird disappearing down the hall in the hands of my two girls, riding the waves of their imaginations.  

Seeing my two daughters run around my house with my Star Bird whining it’s engines at full load, pulse lasers flashing and screaming, girls giggling and taking turns with the toy spaceship makes me realize that some toys really are timeless … some toys have the power to cross generations and make the children of tomorrow, the children of yesterday’s children, smile … and Milton Bradley’s Star Bird was just such a toy.

**UPDATE** 

During the Summer of 2013, I took my vintage Starbird and Command Base from my study at home and put them on display in my office at work.  I even put a 9 volt battery in the Starbird and let her howl and blast her lasers for a bit.  Here's a picture of my classic toys ... the boxes are stored in the cabinets below.  I also seem to be missing one of the 'arms' for the crane and a spaceman.  Time to mount a safari on Ebay for replacement parts.  One of my modeling projects is to redo the Command Base entirely in foam board, update it a little and have a modern take on the old toy.  One of the main parts of the redesign is to make it where the angles get right ... i.e. you can see all of the base from one angle.

 

And if you never saw the original television commercials for Starbird ... here's some retro toy goodness.  Vintage 1980 Milton Bradley Starbird toy commercial