Driver: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Car: No. 8 JR Motorsports/Action Performance/Dirty Mo Posse Chevrolet Monte Carlo

Track: Daytona International Speedway (July 4, 2003)

Bio: If you’re looking to find the familiar orange and black No. 8 JR Motorsports/Dirty Mo Posse Chevrolet Monte Carlo that led all 100 laps of the Winn-Dixie 250 at Daytona International Speedway in the summer of 2003...you’ll have to keep looking, because this one isn’t it.

It is, however, the backup to that car and was in the hauler while its sister car was whooping everyone else that weekend, and it’s one of the first residents of the Racecar Graveyard.

“This is just the shell of the backup car,” Earnhardt Jr. explained. “When it came home from the track, they (Dale Earnhardt Inc.) decided they were going to cut the body off it because they thought they could improve it. I had them build a wooden rack for it, which doesn’t seem to be working all that well.”

Indeed, the wooden rack the car body sits on has since deteriorated, given the aggressive nature of North Carolina fauna on objects that do not move. The woods around Earnhardt Jr.’s property have begun to reclaim the car at a rapid clip.

The stylized flame paint job is still visible and still cool, but the sheer number of bullet holes—yes, you read that right—sort of makes it look “lived in.” Earnhardt Jr. and his buddies used the body as a convenient target for whatever was the flavor of the day for plinking. Closer examination will also reveal the original JR Motorsports flame logo on the hood and Chance 2 branding on the car’s decklid.

There it sits to this day, likely still reveling in its brush with greatness and sinking farther and farther into the loam.