Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Racer Allen Johnson retired his trusty Mopar Dodge Avenger with an NHRA Pro Stock victory at Phoenix. With that momentum and the excitement about the replacement vehicle, the Chrysler Group has a “positive problem” on its hands.

In a perfect public-relations world, Mopar would be able to surprise the drag-racing community, unveiling an eye-popping retro body brand that Johnson, Jeg Coughlin, and V Gaines will race the rest of this year and beyond. So Dale Aldo, director of motorsports marketing for Mopar/Chrysler, is mum about the model.

Likewise, Coughlin is keeping the secret, saying, “We’re going to pull the tarp off a brand-new car that all the folks at Mopar, Dodge, and Chrysler are excited to show the world.”  He even teased, “We’ll have to see what comes out from underneath the covers.”

But Johnson was eager to chat this past week with broadcast media members and confirmed what no one at Chrysler will do publicly or privately: the new car will be a Dodge Dart.

Johnson didn’t correct Motor Racing Network host Marty Hough when Hough called the mystery machine a Dart. Later in that interview, Johnson said, “We sent that Express Lane Dodge Avenger out on a great note. Maybe we’ll bring in the new Dart on the same thing.”

The race car was in Chrysler’s wind tunnel at Auburn Hills, Mich., midweek, then bound for the Mopar J&J team’s shop at Greeneville, Tenn. That’s where Coughlin’s car, which also will debut in competition at the March 14-16 Gatornationals, also awaits three days of testing that is set to begin Monday, March 3 at Bradenton, Fla.

While Aldo declined to name the new body’s brand. Instead he called it “the new-gen Pro Stock car” and said it “was based on the current production models” (which include the Dart). However, he did share the evolution of the design.

He said, “Initially it’s done by a designer. Really, the nice part of the way the Chrysler Group develops the race car bodies is that they use the productions people, they use the production processes, and they use the production technology. What I mean by that is the software that that vehicle was designed on – and the car’s a virtual car – it was developed virtually. Prototypes weren’t made. Clays weren’t made. It went virtually from a design to a real car.

“But it starts off [with] designing on a computer, and it’s tested in a virtual wind tunnel with CFD technology. It’s looked at from a standpoint of being visually identifiable as a production model. It’s extremely important that the cues are all there,” Aldo said. “From the virtual wind tunnel, it is refined.”

He said the involves working with the sanctioning body to be sure that it meets all the strict and precisely worded rules. After adding, in Aldo’s words, “the visual identity,” the fabrication team makes a “male mold,” then a “female mold.” The car then is hung on a chassis. The next step is validating it in an actual wind tunnel and then on to the racetrack.

In the case of the new NHRA-use body, Aldo said, “All of this was done without the use of extraordinary non-production software or non-production tooling. It was all done using standard tooling that is used every day by Chrysler designers, technicians, and engineers when they bring a production car to introduction.

We’re going to pull the tarp off a brand-new car that all the folks at Mopar, Dodge, and Chrysler are excited to show the world. – Jeg Coughlin Jr.

“That’s the part we’re most proud of,” he said, adding that the Avenger was born and developed the same way: “using all the production tools we have in our portfolio.”

He and Johnson heightened expectations.

Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

“I think everyone within the Chrysler Group, and I think everyone who’s a Mopar fan – and some people who don’t like Mopar – will all agree it was an extremely successful car,” Aldo said of the Avenger, which hit the winners circle 27 times. “And we have high hopes”  . . . for “this next-gen Pro Stock car.”            

Johnson told Hough and The Straight Line show co-host Doug Herbert, “All the fans are going to be stoked with what they see.”

Coughlin simply said the fresh car is “going to be our new breath.”

Johnson said he isn’t at all apprehensive about losing some performance momentum with a brand-new, little-tested car. He pointed to last year, when he won the Gatornationals in the 2012 championship car, then traded it in for a car that, with just 12 practice passes at Rockingham on it, rolled out at Las Vegas and carried him to two victories that weekend: the K&N Horsepower Challenge bonus race and the event victory there at The Strip.

“I don’t have any reservations at all,” Johnson said. “My guys got it down pat.”

Gaines will introduce his new car later in the spring. Johnson said he and Coughlin had talked about staggering the new car’s debut for the team’s sake. But he said, “We’re teammates in every sense. We didn’t feel right about doing one without the other. We elected to do it at the same time.”

Apparently they just didn’t vote on total secrecy about the car’s name.