Dusty Returns Home

Hendrick Motorsports' first chassis—a 1989 Chevy Lumina—was fully restored and placed in the Hendrick showroom.

The chassis named "Dusty" (originally known as H89-001-Test), was mostly used as a test chassis at HMS. Dusty did however finish second to Dale Earnhardt Sr. at Talladega and then grabbed the pole at Daytona with driver Greg Sacks.

Dusty is best known as a test chassis at HMS for his experiments into NASCAR's large grey areas around chassis at the time the most used chassis was McGaulin.

Dusty help build other chassis that would win HMS four championships with Jeff Gordon, one with Terry Labonte and most recently, three with Jimmie Johnson.

Dusty was sold to an ARCA Team in 1992. That ARCA team would end up selling Dusty to ARCA owner-driver Bobby Gerhart. Gerhard used Dusty to take home the checkered flat in his first win at Daytona in 1999.

Dusty had been wrecked a lot by the likes of Sacks, Richmond, Rudd, Bodine, and even Rick Hendrick himself wrecked it once.

Dusty was restored back to NASCAR's version of a Chevy Lumina by Hendrick crew and will sit on the showroom floor at HMS.

Hendrick was one of the first in NASCAR to build their own stuff.

Hendrick now has Dusty to thank for a small part of his tremendous success.

The totally restored Dusty now bears a new silver paint scheme with a Hendrick H where the number would be.

Photo Source: ARCAracing.com.