If your home arcade is also your garage, have I got a Facebook Marketplace listing for you. It’s a NASCAR stock car converted into a racing simulator, running Sega’s Daytona USA and done up in Alan Kulwicki No. 7 Hooters livery for maximum ’90s nostalgia.
The dust-covered sim rig is being offered by a seller in Calverton, New York, in the mass of suburbia known as Long Island. They’re asking $6,000, and that comes with the common “no lowballs, I know what I’ve got” provision. What it doesn’t come with are any specifics beyond the claim that this rig is based on an old NASCAR stock car.
The frame tubing that can be seen under the hood and in the trunk looks correct for some kind of stock car, but that’s not enough to confirm it as one of Kulwicki’s rides. And even it did start life in the late Cup Series champion’s shop, it could’ve been used as a show car or backup instead of getting raced. That would probably be for the best because, as cool as this setup is, cutting up a race-driven Kulwicki chassis would be a shame.
Kulwicki is remembered today as the last truly independent NASCAR champion. He won the 1992 Cup Series championship driving for his own single-car team. That championship came down to the final race of the season, with Kulwicki changing the lettering on his Ford from “Thunderbird” to “Underbird” to signify his underdog status. Kulwicki went from rookie to champion in just six years, winning five races along the way.
That storybook tale didn’t get a final chapter. Kulwicki was killed April 1, 1993, in a plane crash before getting the chance to defend his championship. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2019. If you want to know more about NASCAR’s most famous underdog, Dinner with Racers did an excellent tribute episode that’s worth a listen.
Between the orange-and-white number 7 livery and the era-appropriate game, this simulator will be hard for any child of the ’90s to resist. And it would look great parked in a garage/arcade next to the 1999 Ford Mondeo touring car the automaker converted into a sim rig.
Got a tip? Reach out to tips@thedrive.com