Long-term MyStar readers already know the MyStar guys are huge fans of King Richard Petty.
The King has the most wins in NASCAR history at 200—a number that will never be reached again.
I was a fan of Petty long before he reached that milestone, so I always wanted a model of a specific car he drove in 1966 and ’67.
Jerry Sutherland

This is 2025 and I finally tracked one down. It was the Franklin Mint edition of his 1966-7 Plymouth Belvedere #43 race car. This model has always been out of my reach because they didn’t build many of them and that meant the market went bullish overnight.

Combine that with the peso we call a Canadian dollar, and I was faced with a massive number every time I tracked one down because most of the sellers were based in the States. I can justify many expenditures, but model cars aren’t on that list.
Fortunately, I spotted one on an eastern Canadian marketplace a few days after Christmas with a very fair Canadian dollar price. It wasn’t fair enough though, so I ground the guy down enough to cover the shipping costs.

The seller was a detail guy, so he sealed the model at Fort Knox level in a thick cardboard box with heavy foam insulation. My inner kid kicked in, so I slashed that box open like I was Freddy Krueger in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ –- but my inner adult told me to stop before I wrecked the paperwork and original box from Franklin Mint.

Oddly enough, this car locked me in as a lifetime Petty fan. I was onboard when The King dominated in 1964 with the legendary elephant hemi under the hood, but this version of the Petty Plymouth made me all-in on #43.

He won the 1966 Daytona in the same car on February 27, 1966. Kids in Alberta, Canada could only follow the race with hourly updates on the radio so when King Richard won that day, I became a lifer in the Richard Petty fan club.

Richard Petty had a solid year in ’66 and he admitted he had some bad luck enroute to an 8-win season. Bear in mind, very few drivers get 8 wins in a lifetime.

I could connect with that ’66 Belvey because my dad drove a ’66 Plymouth Belvedere—a humble 4-door sedan with a 318 under the hood. That didn’t matter because in my childish world, they were the same car.

Richard had a rough start in ’67 with his new car, so he told his crew to shove the new car in the corner and run the old car from 1966. They changed the sheet metal, but the heart was from the warrior he drove in ’66.

That made all the difference because Petty went on to win 26 races that year and finished first an astounding 10 times in a row. Bear in mind Dale Earnhardt only won 25 races in his whole career.

Getting that model in the mail will be the highlight of 2025 because it takes me back to a simpler time when a kid could have a real-life hero with real-life hero values.
That hero title still applies to The King.
Jerry Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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