Mark Martin

Mark Martin drives the 55 car:

• SPONSOR : Aaron's Dream Machine
• MANUFACTURER : Toyota
• CAR OWNER : Bill Jenkins
• TEAM : Michael Waltrip Racing
• CREW CHIEF : Rodney Childers

Mark Martin won 35 Nascar Cup Series races when he drove for Roush Racing.

Also, while driving for Jack Roush, Martin won 40 Nascar Nationwide Series races and 7 Truck Series races.

The carriage roof (faux convertible top) was an option on all Mark V's "except . . . those with power moonroof" ("1979 Continental Mark V," pg. 17), implying that no standard Bill Blass's could have the moonroof option.

That being said, a variation was made available substituting a white vinyl half roof instead of the carriage roof, exposing the opera windows with Bill Blass signature and--yes-- available with the sunroof option. This was a more traditional Mark V repackaging of the Bill Blass edition that was unofficially offered (not ever promoted in sales materials or advertisements) in order to capture that customer who wanted the Bill Blass "look" but also wanted a moonroof.

My awareness of both version's of the 1979 Bill Blass Mark V leads me to estimate roughly 5-to-1 is the ratio of carriage roof models to vinyl roof models. Statistically, something like 40% of Mark V's had moonroofs, with more of them being in the designer and Luxury Group models.

Unfortunately, numbers that have been posted on the internet are no longer available (rougly 80,000+ total Mark V's for year 1979), but from memory, the Bill Blass far exceeded all other Luxury Group and designer editions for 1979 (again, from memory, I think about 6-7000 units). If something like 1 in 5 was the vinyl half roof Bill Blass, multiplied by 70% (probably most who ordered the Bill Blass with a vinyl half roof did so because they wanted the moonroof ), I would assume about 900-1200 Bill Blass's with moonroofs were ever made, and statistically speaking, that means only about 200 are still driveable; maybe a handful are in show condition.