Whatever Happened To The Car Dale Earnhardt Was Driving When He Was Killed In The 2001 Daytona 500?

It’s one of the most famous – or infamous – cars in NASCAR history.

By now everybody’s seen the video of the last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500. The legendary Dale Earnhardt, in his famous black #3 car, running in 3rd and seemingly blocking for the two cars that he owns as they were leading the race. And then in turn four, Earnhardt gets a tap from behind from Sterling Marlin and shoots up the track, collecting Ken Schrader along the way before crashing into the outside wall.

A common refrain from NASCAR fans is that the crash didn’t look that bad. Just twenty laps earlier we’d watched Tony Stewart flip over and land on top of another car before spinning through the air and finally coming to rest in the infield. But it was the angle of the crash, as well as the force with which his car hit the wall, that made Earnhardt’s crash so violent.

The NASCAR legend ultimately passed away from a basilar skull fracture as a result of the wreck, and the following week his Richard Childress Racing team scrambled to rebrand his #3 ride to the #29 for rookie driver Kevin Harvick.

But what happened to the car that Earnhardt was driving when he was killed?

An investigation was done on Earnhardt’s death, and NASCAR announced that the seatbelts had broken in the crash and seemingly caused his head to hit the steering wheel, resulting in the skull fracture that caused his death. This led to a lot of backlash for seatbelt manufacturer Simpson Performance Products and owner Bill Simpson, who had manufactured the seatbelts in the car.

Simpson fought to clear his name, claiming that the seatbelts had been installed improperly for driver comfort and that paramedics who responded to the crash reported that the seatbelts had not, in fact, been broken. There were photos of the seatbelts and the inside of the car taken during the investigation that were released in the accident report – but that’s the last time the public ever saw the now-infamous car.

It’s no surprise that Richard Childress Racing has keep the car’s location a close secret. Despite (or maybe because of) the car’s history, that’s not really the kind of thing you want to put in a museum for tourists to gawk over. And revealing where the car is stored would only lead to people trying to get in to see it for themselves. But where even is the car today?

Well, nobody really knows for sure, although there have been plenty of rumors that have gone around for a while.

The most popular theory is that car owner Richard Childress had the car destroyed and buried the pieces after the investigation into Earnhardt’s death was done. If this “source” from a comment on Reddit is to be believed, the car will never be seen again:

“I was told by a former RCR employee whose name I will withhold for legal reasons that after the investigation was complete the car was released to Richard, it was taken to a secret location and scrapped, then the pieces were buried. There was pretty much nothing left of it.”

There’s also speculation that the car’s still intact, but that Childress keeps it locked up and out of sight of the public, for obvious reasons:

Current speculation is that it is in a secure area that only a few people have access to.

My feeling is, that if the car still exists it will eventually be destroyed as those who are directly connected to it pass on.

It will never been seen by the public & I’m ok with that. https://t.co/52rkmT8nE9

— The Dale Earnhardt Archive (@ArchivesDe) August 16, 2024

And another popular theory is that it was destroyed and dumped into Lake Lloyd, the lake in the middle of Daytona International Speedway, though this one seems the least likely. If Earnhardt fans heard that the car was in there, you’d no doubt have people diving into the lake to try to recover part of the car to keep for themselves. There are also a lot of fishermen who use that lake, so chances are it would have turned up at some point if it were sitting there for the last 20 years.

One person who claimed to have talked to somebody “in the know” says that the car was actually turned over to Earnhardt’s widow, Teresa Earnhardt, who kept it locked up on the property of his race team, Dale Earnhardt Inc.

“Coincidentally enough, I was also told by a former employee that it was locked up in a building behind the DEI shop. He had no idea why it would be at DEI either.”

And another unlikely, though symbolic, rumor, is that Childress had the car melted down and used for the base of the Dale Earnhardt statue in the Intimidator’s hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina.

Whatever the true story is, we’ll likely never know what happened to the actual car that Earnhardt was driving when he was killed. There are probably only a handful of people who know its true location, including Richard Childress, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Teresa Earnhardt. And I don’t see any of them ever revealing the secret of the car’s final resting place.

And honestly, that’s probably for the best.