History So all Stockcars were crudely built junk? You better think again!

The Ted Hogan, Doug Duncan and Mike Wells modified from the Canadian National Exhibition in the late 1950's. Incredible car that still exists.



The Joe Hlywka super modified from the mid 60's, another Canadian car.

 

Many of them are talking about stock cars and stock car racing as a whole.

I have done battle with one member who was sure the Nolan Swift car was butchered I guess the complete tube chassis doesn't count.

In another thread said all stock car racers were dumb asses who cut up and destroyed perfectly good bodies.

 

Well the Pinto I cut up wascertainly going to bea collector's item some day! Not

And there was a Gremlin or 2, a Vega sedan, not the fast back, a Chevy II, and an aborted VW ministock (thank god!). I'm sure they are missed today... well maybe

But the 37s were both already race car bodies, so we were early environmentalists in reality recycling instead of scrapping rusted out old cars.

Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Keep posting those pictures of this type of car, it's what I grew up on.

 

We cut up a many good 67 Chevelle's

 

South Georgia and SC dirt track cars (in the mid 60's) were mainly 55-56 Chevys...early 60's Chevelles.
BBC engines were the norm but........a SBC with 360 degree tuned exhaust could "sing" them all a song!!(and DID)
Talk about an "ear/sound festival"!!!
Red dust everywhere.....100 octane fumes...chili hot dogs...hamburgers...beer...cigarette smoke..burnt rubber...engine coolant....overloaded/over used restrooms.......all mixed into one giant smell!
The smell of fun/hard work/excitement/adrenaline that has been planted in my mind for ever!
Today's muffled-up clones-of-real race cars .....ehh
"Good-old-fashion-dirt-racing-has-left-the-building! IMO
I sure miss 'em
6sally6

 

That's the thing at the time they weren't collect's items they were just old used cars.

My dad's 64 Chevelle late model was a Powerguide automatic with a bad 283, hardly desirable when he bought it in 1970.

Today any 2 door hard top 64 Chevelle is interesting back then it was just a used car with a bad engine that a guy wanted out of his back yard.

 

Dirt car in April versus Dirt car in October are 2 totally different beasts. Then the 2nd and 3rd season's. Ouch. Time and resources to maintain, repair mid season are tough and often depends on sponsorship $ availability.

I really appreciate the pics of clean well done cars on here.

As far as cutting them up - drag racers do the same. I don't even want to hear from the restoration crowd.

 

Back in the late 90's to 2006, we ran Hardtops about every other Sat Night, my Brother Jerry's # 2 was a fine example.

 

An early (Martin) Riiska's (owner/mechainic) Yellow X it's tough to make out but this was a 180 degree supercharged flathead!

 

My club is keeping the faith-
>>Click Here 2021<<

>>Click Here 2020<<

>>Click Here 2019<<

The lone flathead in the club >>Click Here<<

 

These two were pace cars for opening week. They finished 1 - 2 on opening night 50 years ago.



Each was restored by the family of the original drivers. I remember seeing these cars race as a youngster.

 

Boy I remember when Doug finally retired. He took one hell of a ride in his last race, but fortunately lived to talk about it. His successor in the X was Clarence Jelly, better known as Butch. He lived close to where my mom's house was.

Funny story. Butch was my favorite back then as we knew him. We lived in western Massachusetts and my dad was an orthopedic surgeon in Pittsfield. Butch was working at the Berkshire Eagle mid 60s. He got injured on the job, a broken leg. My father was the attending physician, and when he got home that night, he told me about having to put Butch's foot back on backwards. Being young of course I believed it, and didn't know how he was going to race again.

BTW Butch was back that Saturday night with cast and all racing!

 

I had been inside Charlie Jarzombek's shop around 1979. Right on the family farm, they built beautiful cars with reportedly help from the 2nd and 3rd shift at the Grumman machine shops.

Other shops like mine, we made do with whatever equipment we had. I converted a roll cage from what was probably an old coach modified to fit a Nova, but in the end it was a nice job. Anything cut with a torch was cleaned up with a body grinder.

Guys who ran 3 nights a week, some had 2 cars to fall back on. Those cars tended to have a better appearance, also more crew members to get it done.

 

Some of the old race cars may have looked crude because the good stuff was often times hidden so as to not be seen by the other racers.....just saying.

 

Yes, very few people realize what it took to run for a NASCAR National Modified or Sportsman championship.

There was no tour or series to follow. Points were collected by the number of races you ran both weekly and NASCAR National Championship races and there was no rhyme or reason to how many points National Championship races paid, some paid double. To find out where the races and how many points were paid required calling NASCAR head quarters on almost a weekly basis which was no cheap thing to do, unless the were Richie Evans who rigged the pay phone in his shop so he could make calls for free!

Locally in the early days (early to mid 50s) for NASCAR there was the Fonda Speedway Fonda NY, State-line speedway on the New York-Vermont boarder (turn 1 &2 and the straight-a-ways were in NY turns 3& 4 were in VT) and Otter Creek in NY.

In the late 50s to the mid/late 60s and early 70s the track included Victoria 1/2 mile dirt weekly mid week, Fonda 1/2 mile dirt Saturday nights, Malta a 4/10 mile paved Friday nights (now dirt) track, and Utica-Rome which was a 1/4-mile paved track Sunday nights. (Now a half-mile dirt track) and many in western NY.

Some of these guys were racing three to for nights a week locally, and also hitting one or two big mid week NASCAR National shows.

It was not uncommon for some of them to be racing 5 or 6 nights a week sometimes two races in a day!

Don Mac Tavish would run Norwood Arena (South of Boston Mass) Sunday afternoon staying buckled in the car on the trailer sleeping while the crew drove to Utica-Rome NY Speedway where he raced Sunday night! They would arrive just in time to race the Connsi and make in in the feature! Almost a 4 and half hours Norwood to Utica-Rome!

It was not uncommon for some of these guys to race over 100-150 sometimes 200 races a year from the start of the season in February at Daytona to the end of the season. These races were all over the east coast Maine, Conn, Mass, NJ, North and South Carolina, the Crown Jewel event being Martinsville VA.

When you're racing that many time a year if there a crash it wasn't laziness or a lack of caring that the body work might be a little rough, it was a matter that fixing chassis and suspension took priority.

 

Yes it takes a team to race even twice a week, and sometimes even once a week depending on the circumstances. Engines, a pair and a spare. Read that in Smokey Yunick's book. Never had the spare. Even having a 2nd engine was a big lift. Usually just a spare shortblock. Hope the heads survived any rapid disassembly. Had 1 set of ported 492 angle plug heads and 1 set of bone stock 492 angle plug heads. Yes there was a difference!

Balancing the looks of the car to hopefully keep sponsors happy vs. getting back on track, that's a fine line sometimes.

 

I ran a car in the lowly hobby class at our local dirt track. One year my buddy from work was driving my car, and his father was a sponsor on the car, something like $25 a week. We raced Sunday evenings. One night my buddy got into one of those car killing crashes, fortunately he wasn't hurt past the aches and pains a crash like that gives you. We were running a basic stock production body, and the crash was bad enough the cage got bent too bad to "fix" and get moved to the "new" car.
That Sunday night after the crash, my neighbor that happened to own a local junk yard, stopped by and told me he had "another car" sitting that I could pick up after work Monday night. We got the wrecked car off the trailer after midnight Sunday evening. I had to be on the job at 5AM! Monday after work I hooked up the trailer and hightailed it to the junk yard to pick up the still unknown "new car". It was the same make and model as the one we had wrecked, and he had it mostly stripped for me! We loaded it onto the trailer and I paid him for the car ($25 + the old one, whenever I had everything I wanted off of it, and he would come and pick it up). We were able to reuse nearly all of the drive train from the old car. My buddy that was driving was feeling the effects of the hard crash from the night before, so he wasn't much help until about Wednesday. A few friends showed up to help through the course of the week. I picked up roll cage material (black pipe) and started on the new cage, my volunteer friends pulled the drive train and other parts out of the old car.
Lots of long hours (in addition to my 60+ hour a week job), but Sat afternoon we were putting the paint on the new car. Sunday morning, the number was painted on, and the quick sponsor name was added, the paint would have until 5pm to dry. We finished 3rd or 4th in the new car.
On Monday, at work, my buddy told me his dad was upset because the sponsorship lettering didn't look as good as it did the week before! I told him to remind his father that the car was totaled last week and this was a completely new car, the sponsorship name would look good this coming week. I don't think he paid me for that week. Gene

 

We purposely made things we wanted to hide as ugly as sin, so no one would give it a 2nd glance. We also cultivated the art of throwing in something bright and shiny that the tech inspectors would focus on.

 

Evans and Cook were practically neighbors. Some nights they chased points, some nights they chased the money. Either or both had more than 1 car and tow rig ad would send the decoy one way and go race the other way.

 

We ran 2x a week for a couple of years. It was rumored that we had 2 of the Fords after it was crashed bad on a Friday night and ready to race 20 hours later. That was 5 guys pulling an all nighter, catching cat naps when we could. One of the girls ran food for us. With my Nova I did have back up engines, but still a big deal to swap everything over especially going from a BBC to a SBC.

 

Yes, and Lou Lazzaro was just up the road in Utica as were the Kotary brothers- Cliff "The Copper City Cowboy" Kotary, "Fireball" Robbie Kotary , and "Tiger" Tom Kotary

The Kotary family >> Click here<<

 

Here is a good example of what I am talking about. I doubt anyone ever took a photo of the chassis of this late 50s early 60s Super Mod. before the crash....



....but look at the rear suspension, a slider on the right rear and a dead perch on the left rear, however that was not photographer's primary focus at the time.

 

The clarity isn't the best due to enlarging the photo but you can see the block off plate.

 

Few more Canadian cars and drivers .
Hazen McIntosh cant find a picture of his Hobby car ,but was Sutton speedway track champion 1959 and a few of his Supermodified's 1960 and 1967

 

Now that's a race car! Can you imagine driving it? Tight in, hammer the throttle, loose out!

 

I've seen many local old coupes (un-restored outside of paint) and some of the craftsmanship was like eh... They did just enough to hold them together from race to race. Ultimately cars were handed down and may have had a 1/2 dozen owners before the car was DONE.

 

Back in about 1980 I bought an old "late model" chassis that was originally built in 1961 or 62 by a pretty well know central Iowa racer. At the time the car was built for NASCAR, and competed in a few races and finished OK. After that, it went to ARCA, which had more races local to the area. After the ARCA racing stint, the car turned into a dirt track car, and hit up a few USAC races. It became pretty well known in the eastern IA and western IL dirt track racing, mostly by the original builder and driver. I know for sure the car was rebodied several times. Sometime in the mid 60s the car was deemed outdated and the original owner/builder/driver sold it and built a new ride. After sitting idle a couple years, and likely stripped down to the basic chassis, the car got sold to someone more local to me. He put it back together, rebodied it, and put it back on the local dirt tracks. He ran it a few years and sold it to someone else that also rebodied it, he ran it a couple of years. About that time, the guy I bought it from bought it. He ran it for himself a few years, the parked it for a couple years.
Then he met up with a very good driver, they came up with a very good sponsor, the car was rebodied again and ran 3 years with that team, they did very well. One of the amazing things was, after all those years, the car still handled very well. After the team broke up, the car sat, once again stripped of many parts for 4 years.
My buddies and I was running together and our cobbled up car was in bad shape. I chased down the guy and found out he still had the old car. I bought it for $400 and drug it back to my place. The last body the team ran it with was still there, except for the front sheet metal. I put on different front fenders, add our parts and hit the track at the beginning of the season. The old car was heavy, but still handled great, you could pretty much put it anywhere on the track you wanted to run. We were underfunded and just didn't have the HP the car really needed, but that old chassis sure taught me a lot of stuff. We ran the car two seasons and then built a new to us car. About that mid season, a guy showed up at my door and offered me $400 for the old car!
He took it to his place, and removed the old body. He told me a few months later he "cut off all the extra junk I added to the car and got the weight down where it should be." I smiled and told him the only thing I added to that car was my motor, trans, and tires, and he probably ruined the handling on the car. When he made it to the track the next season, the car handled horribly. He made a comment to me, and I reminded him he was the guy that cut it up. That was the last time I ever saw the car, and probably would have been in the mid 1980s. That old chassis lasted 20+ years during a time when chassis development was growing rapidly and it still worked well, and it went through a lot of owners before that last guy ruined it, and I assume cut it up. Gene

 

I was looking at a chassis for sale locally online. It had been bodied with everything from a Chevelle to a late ARCA late model GM body. The lineage of who built it, modified it was impressive. But it looks heavy and probably rugged. I kept my cars lighter and easier to put a new clip on if I had to. The one in the ad was a virtual tank, but was ran at some larger and faster tracks.

 

Yes, there were some shoddy god awful cars and craftsman ship in early days, which I mention in my opener.
Many times it depended on if it was an outlaw or NASCAR sanctioned track. NASCAR had rules from the beginning on the appearance of cars. I will have to find my reprint of the 1948 rule book for the exact rule but there was a time line to repair damage.

I like period correct hot rods and drag racing, but there has been a lot of revisionist history from trend chasers that all hot rods and drag cars where masterpieces of craftsmanship and every stock car every build was pure junk build by drunk hillbillies who beat and banged on the track only after having massive fist fights in the pits.
The same people then turn a blind eye to some of the workmanship in the early days of hot rodding and drag racing.










Unlike the hot rodders, the stock car guy's didn't hide their work.