Rusty Wallace's Legendary "Midnight" NASCAR Race Car is Track Ready Again! (Ford C3 Engine Sounds)

this was the most famous chassis ever in the history of Penske Racing sometimes we would stagger our truck arms a little bit the seat the arm on the right side right here I think he's got some power man kiss it so we're staying here with Rusty Wallace and this is the legendary midnight he just got it restored and he's going to tell us all about it this is the car that was a Pontiac we won Richmond Virginia with it in Victory Lane my buddy Tom Roberts said hey let's name it midnight I said let's do it and midnight went on to win the 13 races that chassis did but had tons of top fives led a ton of laps and it got to be a legendary car all the fans loved the name Midnight and so every time the cards show up at the racetrack they go man what kind of car you drive it's a midnight oh yeah we're gonna win tonight in fact they used to have drivers come up to me and say hey which car you got here today Wallace and I go midnight he went oh man because they knew that thing was gonna be tough to handle you know because it's really good car but I got inducted in the Hall of Fame 2013. my son Greg had the car uh restored the original body put back on it when I ended was a Ford so we raced Pontiacs and then a 94 we switched to Ford and put forward bodies on all our cars well midnight was still the the lead car in the stable we got it all done and then we went straight to Rockingham North Carolina in 94 as a Ford and won again and the car kept winning so it ran its course and then when I got inducted in the Hall of Fame in 13 everybody's like what car should we bring out to put on display and they said let's do midnight and let's let's put a fresh body on it make it just like it was so we did that but we never did have the real race engine in it never did have the real race gear in it called Doug Yates Doug Yates hooked us up with one of the original engine builders that was building the C3 engine and they took off wide open with this project and right now as we're doing this interview we just got it back it's 100 restored brand new race ready race engine so ready they told me if I wanted to to line it up and run to cook 600 to Motors race ready new rear end new transmission new everything and we're really really proud of it and so today when we get done doing this video we're going to load it up and it goes straight to the Hall of Fame the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Daytona Beach Florida and it's going to sit down there on this play for probably a year or longer if anybody watching this video can go see it yeah that's even cooler what happened to this car from when it stopped racing until 2013 because that's that's almost 20 years of where's midnight the car was in storage and it was just uh we we knew exactly where everything was at we've always kept an eye on her always had it undercover and then when it was time to do something like I said for the Hall of Fame that's when we got it one got it back and this this was the most famous chassis ever in the history of Penske Racing when it was a single car team so we got it and that's when we we had to have a reason to restore it and get it going and the reason was me being inducted into the Nascar Hall of Fame why did it stop uh getting used if it was so dominant it got it stopped getting used because it was a dominant car we led a lot of laps like I said but it got to a point where it just wasn't as fast as it used to be competition was catching up you know it was starting to show its age it was around for a long time and finally we start becoming where you know it was top fives and top tens instead of dominating leading laps like it did so it ran its course it took a long time for it to run its course because it was a really fast car but uh the neat thing about the car I think anybody is a fan of mine you mentioned a word midnight they knew exactly what I'm talking about they definitely do those those little shirts on eBay are still going for like 200 bucks I like the one you got on too that's a midnight there it is yeah yeah looks hard for that you know what's crazy you know back in the day I mean we used to name our cars and all the fans just they just didn't go hey that's chassis009 this is car number four every car had a name they don't do that any longer and why they don't do it man I don't know I think it's a dumb thing that they don't name their cars because the fans loved I mean look at you you're wearing a midnight shirt I mean that was a hot deal that's cool so let's bring that back somewhere yeah then you bring it back everybody knew midnight didn't they it was going to be the first person behind the name Midnight okay I won the race at Richmond and what happened was it rained and when it rained at Richmond they went under a red flag for a while and uh so then when we restarted we took back off we took back in the lead and when I crossed the start Finish Line after all this rain delay um it was midnight I didn't know that and so I pulled into Victory Lane and my buddy Tom Roberts my PR guy came up so rusty rusty I got a name I said what he said man I looked down on my digital watch and when you crossed that start Finish Line my watch went to midnight he said let's name it midnight and I said man that's a great idea and I love the the name you know so we we won and we named it midnight because we won at the stroke of midnight at Richmond so that's how I got its name that is cool was there anything technically different about this chassis that made it more preferable to you than other ones you know I think you'll have all kinds of drivers and crew chiefs to tell you man they've always had this one car that just everything about it just did everything right it behaved right it was always predictable it always handled good and that's what the deal was with midnight I mean if I look at the suspension points I look at the rear suspension points I mean we've tried to copy this car four or five times back at Team Penske and we did and we got real close with how our cars would run compared to it but man Even though everything looked identical it just had a little something that was just a little bit better all the time something was just a little better on this car and it was just that way with a Pontiac in it was that way with the Ford so was the chassis it really wasn't the body and it really wasn't the engine it was the way this car was welded together maybe maybe the pivot Points were a little different but I don't think so because we jigged the car all up trying to copy it but uh it just it was just a special one man it's just you sat in it it almost felt different when you sat in it your vision out the the windshield was different just a little bit everything was just tiny tiny tiny but enough that it was just every time I got in this car man I had so much confidence and it just handled so good all the time hmm let's check out uh some of the technical parts of this car like under the hood and all that I'm over here Greg let's let's uh let's show them what we did here I went to restore this car I want to make sure that everything was was really it was really kind of proper and it correct there so I went to um let me think about Ford engines like I think right now is this is Doug Yates he's the man so I called Doug and Jeff Clark and asked them yeah who would be the best guy to build an authentic race engine for this period and they said there's only one person out there and it's Nick Ramey you know Nick was Nick was Robert's right hand guy during that period knows everything about about these engines so I called Nick and he came out we looked we looked uh we talked about the project how much power it should make you know what the engine is made back then and then he really went to work sourcing all the parts for it um when we pulled pulled this engine out we found it was a lot of a lot of show car parts a lot of the lovers uh really blowing up race car stuff that they put more or less making a show car so it wasn't a whole lot that was salvageable a few parts but Nick worked really hard trying to find authentic parts actually went and found an authentic Penske block from that period and that's where they actually built the engine up on so this is you know this is an awesome authentic Ford C3 engine from that period makes about 750 horsepower [Applause] [Music] foreign blocks of Ford block okay but the way we even Mount the accessories to the block you know whether the way the front motor mount would go on or whatever was a little bit different from Team to team so they had to hunt around and find a forward block that one of our Penske Ford blocks and they found almost a brand new one and got it and did some machine work and like Greg said built it there but I mean what's so cool about it is that this isn't just an old show car motor I mean this baby is race ready I'm talking go out and start the biggest race of the Year and have confidence it's going to finish 500 miles you can tell just by the sound of it that this is not a screw around engine like just when it's when it's kicking you in the chest at idle you know it's ready to go so one of the big things that we've been talking about is making the southern 500 throwback week really really big uh Jim Francis kind of challenged a bunch of us to sit down in a room and talk about how to make it bigger and one of them was to get real authentic cars and help Pace the field for the southern 500. so this car is going to be one of the cars pacing the field for the southern 500 next year in Darlington along with other cars we'll probably also take it out to Las Vegas and Pace the race in Las Vegas because they just made me to Grand Marshall for the second race out in Las Vegas so now I got a A little competition from Mark here yeah it sounds so good yeah but just like I'm glad you said it because gosh we started this thing up and just hearing how loud it is and how much it it's just pounding horsepower out the pipes it sounds so cool spin it I'm gonna let you put it back on no I'll let you put it right you're gonna be filming for a while and then we'll spin this for a minute this that temperature gauge here if he reads reads though there's a problem inside of it oh thank you and that tell us what the oil temperature is it'll drop down like 130 or so and then we'll heat it back up to 180 before we yeah therefore what we're doing is come close enough how long ago do you have to have that plugged in to get it up there from room temperature probably an hour to take some time now if that was a real deal I mean we had probes that are more efficient and have hard to have the car plugged in we had that oil about 220 or something before we go out on track for practice and stuff but what we're doing right here it's fine I'm gonna say the paint on this after looking at all the modern cars with all the wrap you just can't beat paint that's that's what's so cool about this particular black and yellow car I mean it's all paint it's all exactly like Mr Penske and myself and Don Miller and all the guys and Walt zarnicky back then we laid this paint Scheme up and uh that's so beautiful man I love it I'm with you I don't I'm not real big on just the decals when you look at real paint compared to a wrap it's way different but you know nowadays they wrap everything because it's lighter but back then it wasn't this is The Real McCoy right here I mean you're talking about all the aluminum panels in the front all handmade everything and it's just absolutely perfect is that uh was that yellow metallic back then too yeah I never knew that yeah that's uh that yellow is hard to find it's almost a mustard color it's almost a yellow mustard yeah and um in the shape of the number two Don Miller designed that Don made the bottom thicker than a little thicker than thinner and that too was just I thought he did a perfect job designing that thing so it did it turned out really good you want to talk about pain details one of the cool one of the cool things I noticed on this car because now all you know all your vinyl is all printed now well back then obviously they didn't have printers everything everything was cut cast vital so you'll see this is actually layered this red is layered on top of the yellow and that's actually how they used to do it instead of now everything's flat and printed and but this is actually several layers so it's kind of authentic to what until it was on the car background and that looks more vibrant too because you can't get the same color out of a printer as you can with dyed vinyl you guys know pretty well by now that I'm relating to the details and I'm always questioning things even the littlest things like paint being metallic versus not metallic a lot of you know we use Pennzoil and one of my favorite paint schemes is this Dei Steve Park one here and all the die casts I have of this have this really cool metallic yellow on there it's just got this different look to it but the Kevin Harvick pencil car doesn't and I know the real car does not have metallic in it either because these things are usually pretty accurate we saw the car in person and that color yellow that metallic yellow over the whole car is just so good looking I wanted to figure out what it was called did some research on the internet couldn't figure out anything I called Michael Thomas who's been working at Pennzoil since the 80s I figured if anybody knows he's gonna know and he had all kinds of interesting stuff to tell me about it I know you guys are familiar with this car but do you remember the Nismo GTR from Gran Turismo same color yellow Indy car same color yellow top fuel car same color yellow they were super picky about their yellow across the board only thing he knows about it is that it was Pennzoil yellow and it was a proprietary pigment that they had any of the Pennzoil sponsored cars in the late 90s early 2000s were probably painted in pencil yellow just like these die casts are because to care about the details not only do we love it but the people who work there are some of the most passionate about their own history within Motorsports that we have found basically anywhere so next time you're at the parts store looking for stuff to do an oil change give Pen's a little shot were you uh disappointed whenever Miller wanted to do the light and change the colors around see white and blue instead of not as much as when I look at when I look back at it right now I mean this thing was so iconic the color it was so cool and and then when they said hey let's do the Middle Light car I'm like okay man we'll do the Miller Lite car that's that's a cool deal because everybody knows Miller Lite let's say you erase it you do that and then now I look back at it I go man this car was so much cooler than you know but everybody knew the blue Deuce they knew all those colors I get it but man this thing was just so hot I just love the colors did you like it better as a Pontiac or a Ford oh that's a good question with a Pontiac I won I'll remember 93 we won 10 races with a Pontiac I mean that was the most people were winning a long time so 10 races and then Mr Penske puts a new deal together with Ford and so we build the Ford in that year we won eight races so well I won 10 one year with Pontiac in 94 we won eight so I liked them both I really did both the car companies are really good to us they've treated us really really good and we won a lot of races for both of them because he ran Pontiac a lot earlier in your career too with Asa and all that and I will tell you I miss Pontiac I missed Pontiac you know not being around right now because I said they treat they all treat us good well Pontiac treat is really good and and I was able to win my championship in a Pontiac so that was pretty special it was real sad when I heard that they were going to close up shop and there wasn't me a Pontiac car any longer I couldn't live it still this day I can't believe it I think that's just such a cool brand but whatever but uh I miss it I do you ever deal with John Cally's back then John Callis Don actually Don Miller dealt with John cowley's more than I did but I did deal with John yeah I sure did he he was a pretty damn smart guy you know no doubt about that we just made a video with them a couple months ago at his uh his home shop he's got all kinds of stuff on the walls it was really cool maybe Miss Pontiac too I'm fired up driving outside greater I pop it up a couple times and Fire thank you [Applause] wow oh man I missed that sound boy I mean you think about that's 750 horsepower now and at the very peak man we had these things up like 900 horsepower at the in fact our qualifying motor is like 950 at the end of 2005. and to think NASCAR's running less horsepower than that nowadays but that thing sounds like it's making a thousand horsepower it's unreal it's even got a Penske Miller Light shocks on there like everything were those the original ones those are the original shocks okay because I noticed it even hit on the back of the shocks yeah I think it's I don't know yeah it does RW mid night it was an original shocks the last time the car was drove and I have to get great you have to do some research research let's see what our last race was with the car do you know what it was by chance it was 19. it's gonna ran a little bit into 1997. I did it really yeah it it actually did it uh run primarily in 93 and 93 94 95 some uh then into I could pull all the whole history off of it but it actually ran a little bit in 96 and then it was crashed in I believe the coke 600. it actually I actually ran second into Winston and instead of bringing back the next week it wrecked in the cook 600 really bad wreck pretty much killed the car they ended up rebuilding it then in 97 they brought the car back uh you know they're having some struggles their current cars weren't that fast and they brought it back to kind of evaluate compared to the current cars from my understanding um and I ran a couple races best finish was like 12 that I believe um and then when uh then when the car was uh and Ford switched to Tauruses in 98 this car was actually reskin as a Taurus thinking they might run out again but it never actually ran as a tour so in his life hence you know all the Miller Light logos and whatnot that actually ended his life as a as a Ford Taurus but in their race like that so then after them in the Hall of Fame happened when I got put in 2013 that's when they grabbed it pulled the Taurus body off of him put the original midnight body back on it which was this particular body shape and this was the body that I drove in Rockingham for our very first Victory with Ford Motor Company it was this paint Scheme it was this style Ford it was this whole thing basically the way it's sitting right now and we had a group of guys uh from Penske chucker far who's one of the key Fabricators back then Dave veneres body guy and they uh they they helped us with the body work back in 13 so I was trying to keep it as authentic as I could you know some of the same guys to work on it to hang the body and um so yeah so it's turned out pretty well and even right down to the tires we talked about the tires earlier when we got the car all done uh Greg put it on social media and Goodyear saw the tires and said hey wait a minute those aren't the period correct tires and so good your tire and rubber company called us up and said how about we make you four brand new tires we're gonna have to go back in our archives and get the right number right molding and all that so they just just hand built these tires for us for this particular car Goodyear did and we just got them a week ago so they're brand new period correct tires yeah because you can see the current tires don't have number one on there anymore I don't know but they stopped doing that in the early 2000s having the number one on there what do you think it was I…