Here’s Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s final No. 88 car and the No. 8 Chevy that inspired it

Longtime Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans will get a sense of deja vu when they see the paint scheme for the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in the final race of his NASCAR Cup Series career.

The paint scheme for the No. 88 Chevrolet SS he’ll run in the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead Miami Speedway on Nov. 19 looks much like the No. 8 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet Monte Carlo that Earnhardt Jr. drove in 1999, his inaugural Cup Series season.

Earnhardt revealed the new car’s look Wednesday night during a one-hour “For Race Fans Only” #Appreci88ion Tour television special on QVC Network. The color scheme features a red body, black roof and posts and black stripes down both sides, much like the original Chevys from 1999.

For those with a nostalgic bent, here are several Observer and Associated Press photos from the archives of the No. 8 Earnhardt Budweiser-sponsored Chevrolets with similar paint schemes.

Earnhardt ran five Cup Series races in 1999 and went full-time in the series the following season.

Earnhardt, 42, announced earlier this year that he will retire from full-time Cup Series competition at season’s end. He plans to compete in at least two NASCAR XFINITY Series races in 2018.

Earnhardt has won 26 times in 616 Cup Series starts at NASCAR’s highest level. He has 149 top-five and 256 top-10 finishes as well as 14 Coors Light Pole Awards.

The son of seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, the younger Earnhardt also won two championships in the XFINITY Series (1998-99), where he has 24 career victories.

Earnhardt, Hendrick Motorsports and others posted several views of the 2017 Chevy on social media.

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 5:56 PM.