Features VINTAGE SPRINT CAR PIC THREAD, 1965 and older only please.

Mike Miller ,who We ran with in ARDC in 2004 and '05,Came up with this idea of making something new look old. we made a couple of attempts at it but we didn't like how our attempt at it looked with the front of the cage dash area.I think he ran it for a year or two........................Rich

 

Strictly my opinion again, but modern race cars are what they are for better or worse. Hangining old time bodywork on them just NEVER works. Kinda like putting a 32 Ford grill on a Corvette and pretending it's a 32 Ford. I doubt very much if Wally M. ever had the notion of hanging a 1920s Miller nose on one of his machines. Now 1920s Miller nose's look just fine on 1920s Millers but would look pretty much like doo doo on a 60s sprint car. Just saying.

 

I love sprint car racing but, in my humble opionion the way they look now is butt ugly. They remind me of roadside billboards with wheels.

 

I respect your effort and I do like the hood and nose. I think it looks a lot better than a wedge.

 

OK my two cents....Modern day Silver Crown, Sprint Cars and Midgets are ugly but if you talk about "butt ugly" look at dirt modifides. Folks in the grandstands use to be able to see the drivers wrestling the wheel and maybe manhandling the car today there could be a monkey or a robot driving and the fans would never know......manhandling ?..how should I say that now ? womenhandling or driverhandling...there are some girls driving nowadays and some are really good shoes.
Denny Z.

 

Denny, in case you haven't noticed, it's pretty difficult watching the drivers "at work" in today's Midgets, Sprints and SC cars, too.

Oh, and not only girls racing but KIDS - 14 & 15 years old, and they're getting it done,too. Kinda scary.

Hope to see ya at Lobitz on 11/11. You going?

 

We were trying to make our midget look like a late 70's early 80's Edmunds but with down tubes.We gave up on our attempt and stayed with the at the time conventional wedge hood, but Mike worked on the Idea and this was his outcome. He didn't like my comments on the wrap around dash piece,I suggested that he should have made a old Edmunds hood and nose piece fit, and use a real grille instead of a airbrushed one.................Rich

 

Actually, real sprint car racing was purty well finished in the late 60s when they turned them all into supermodifieds by adding roll cages.... The cages took all of the art and finesse out of sprint car driving and replaced it with the fearless slide job as the standard passing method.

mac miller in INDY

 

Back a page on CAE cars ever winning a sanction championship. I believe this to be the car in question. Bolt on cage and all. Winchester lists him as being the 1970 champion in a program , but names no division. At that time Winchester ran both Imca and the short lived ASA super sprint division and of course USAC. I didnt think they actually had track points then. Maybe someone else can fill that in. I was a kid and followed that stuff like crazy but just cant tell that stuff, I was to young. I dont even know if that car was a CAE but it has a bolt on cage like theirs. I'm sure several of you guys on here can tell by these photos.

 

Tommy, I have noticed, that is my complaint, can't see the drivers working in any of the cars. Yup I'm hoping to make Stan's party. Denny Z.

 

You got that right Mac. Denny Z.

 

This covering the entire right side of a sprint car with like a little window to look out of is flat ugly. Not many types of racecars left that you see anymore than the top of the helmet in anymore. I understand the need for safety improvements but all this aero crap makes these cars of all classes have no personality at all anymore.

 

I may be mistaken, but the car shown in the posted pictures is a Ronnie Ward car that Harrison bought to replace the CAE that he won the IMCA championship with.

 

The second photo shows a big block car and a small block car. Did they all have to have similar ci displacement? One destroked or stroked?

 

Amen to that.

 

Maybe, but roll cages saved lots of lives. Trumps aesthetics. At Speedy Bill's Museum, I commented to the extremely knowledgable tour guide that those old rollbars didn't look like they would do much good. He quoted some old racer that the only difference between those little roll bars & none at all was the difference between a open & closed casket funeral.

 

IMCA and ASA did not have displacement rules - run what you brung

 

The #44 car doesn't appear to be a CAE car. In that era it would probably would have looked more like this. I can usually spot a CAE car by the angle of the injector stacks, Culbert liked a lot of tilt in the motor plate.

 

HA! I wondered how long it would take for some bleeding heart safety paranoid to come on here and tell me how many under talented, overly fearless drivers have been saved by roll cages.
Actually, aesthetics do matter. Why would I pay 25 bucks or whatever to go watch a bunch of ugly cars with fat cartoon tires when I can go down to the local Kmart or Target store and see all of the "ugly and fat" I can stand for free?
There is absolutely zero relationship between the real sprint cars of 1969 & earlier and the caged supermodifieds of 1970 and after.

mac miller in INDY

 

Watched part of a dirt modified race from Syracuse yesterday. Those are butt ugly cars.

 

Kinser had a coupla cars with BB Chevies in them. the other car was a upright run on dirt. I also remember a few cars that had Hemis in them in the mid sixties.

 

I agree Mac.
Jim Graybeal

 

They sure are. It was a lousy race too.

 

You are absolutely correct Mac. And then you add those god awful wings. . .

 

I believe this is an Al Franks chassis.....also note the Karl Kinser roadster...

 

Well since i been looking around for more pics of the Century tool & die car, I'll toss a few others in outta a Winchester program for a IMCA race.

 

come on Tom don't hold back tell us how you really feel, Oh and it would also keep all the 13 year old kids with rich dad's out of cars

 

Did anyone check in on Spike? He hasn't been on here since August.

 

Towards the end of the no cage era this car to me was one of the neatest cars out there. I look at it now-a- days and it still just looks fast and smooth. Pic at New Bremen Speedway. photo credits to John Mahoney and Harry Goode

 

I don't see how a cage (but no wing) can be such an eyesore. Perhaps I'm not old enough? Ha ha. Perhaps down tubes are a little too much? But as often as I've seen cars flip or get pitched out of the park, I just can't under stand the brave versus more brave analysis. Both kinds of cars manage to do those very same stunts, increasing the chances of major injury or worse seems so little to compromise on. So why don't the diehard, non-caged fans just run in jeans, T-shirts, black low quarters; and drive with no helmets or seat belts? I'd conceed goggles and perhaps a bandana, but any more than that would just incourage some extra bravery, right? Gary