The Wild, Witty & Wondrous Racing Life of Jimmy Maguire

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Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Racers Roundtable, a podcast sponsored by the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing where history meets horsepower and legends live on each episode brings together voices from across the motor sports world, from grassroots heroes to seasoned veterans as they share stories, insights, and behind the scenes tales that shaped their racing journeys.

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Lynn Paxton: We always put the best up here first, and then this is the rest. Okay,

Jimmy Maguire: is this on? Can people hear me? Is this on?

Lynn Paxton: I hope not, but I think it is.

Jimmy Maguire: I can’t hear myself talking

Lynn Paxton: now. I’ve stuck enough [00:01:00] needles in him. I, I want Ron Lauer to work on him here a little bit. My best friend in racing with your, I know I sat side with your background.

I didn’t realize until I read your resume. Yeah, I think your daughter put it out. I don’t know. I, I knew you were, you know, a RDC racer and in one races, and I knew you were A RDC champion won race.

Stink.

Ron Lauer: That’s when you were old and done.

Lynn Paxton: Got a point there. Anyhow, I want you to work on him a little bit. I’m gonna step back from the, the microphone here a little bit.

Ron Lauer: I knew what this was all about. See, Lynn knows that in a three hour segment like this, Jimmy’s gotta take at least six or seven deep breaths and I’m here to fill the gap.

But that’s about it, right? Well, actually I didn’t know Jimmy when he was taking people out at her rides. I was, I was just a kid. And, uh, but when he [00:02:00] had his, uh, accident and came back in the TQS and N-A-R-D-C, I got to know Jimmy, and he really does have a great story. When you go through the whole thing, you just don’t have to hear it as many times.

That’s all know now, really the things you accomplished, I, I know you didn’t race as long with both arms as you did with one, and you won more races with one arm than you did with two.

Lynn Paxton: Yeah.

Ron Lauer: 52 rashes total. 21 with two

Jimmy Maguire: arms and three, one with one on them. Now how many guys have done that? Come on. A

Lynn Paxton: he?

Jimmy Maguire: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. But he had a hand, he just lost his hand. He just, he just lost his hand. I lost the hand. See that’s right here.

Ron Lauer: LER won 52 races two years in a row with one leg. One

Jimmy Maguire: leg. Yeah. And I ran, you are seeing, finished his fourth and points and won three race. And I had my whole leg in a cast on the right side.

When I drove for Harry D and the way I worked the gas pedal, they gave me a test. I took a hammer and I smashed the ball of the cast so I could work the work. The gas pedal, [00:03:00] they took two laps. I just kept the, the gas pedal to the floor. The first two blows went

Lynn Paxton: to the head though, I’ll tell you that.

Jimmy Maguire: Two, two laps around the racetrack, but my foot to the foot and say, okay, can run all way.

Some along in 62. I goes, my crutches. Get in the car and run the car. Won a couple of races, did good. Finish both points so you can run a car with one leg. He should

Ron Lauer: breathe soon. I’m ready. Okay, we’re up here. Lynn’s not up here, so I don’t know what in the world we’re gonna talk about. You wanna talk about it then, or.

About who? Lynn.

Audience Q&A: Oh. Oh,

Ron Lauer: Mr. McCabe has a question for him. What

Audience Q&A: was it like racing with Hank Rogers, Jr.

Jimmy Maguire: Oh, Hank was the buddy man. He sold mine. He sold, listen, his

Audience Q&A: father,

Jimmy Maguire: listen, let me tell you about Hank. I wanted him down here so I could refute it. We raced against each other. A great guy. He ran for Kalen for two years, didn’t win the race, right?

So I appeared on the scene. We were at the Check five pain club and he said, Hey, my, my car owner’s getting another car. Would you like to drive? Oh, I’d love to drive. I didn’t have a ride for a couple years. So he got me a ride with Kaylin. [00:04:00] So I got in and of course I set my own cars up. Kaylin doesn’t set ’em up, right?

And that’s why they never won. So any, and I’m telling you, this is what happened. Anyway, I set the car up and after a couple of races, I won a race. So after I won a race, he set Hank’s car up that way, and Hank started to win races. So all season long was back and forth. I’d went and go ahead and point. So finally I had a little alation one night at the race and some guy, uh.

Call me a bad name. So I punch him in the mouth that, that, uh, suspended me for two races. So then I was still up there and fighting for the championship, two races to go the end of the season, Hank’s about maybe 50 points ahead of me. So we’re going to two asphalt tracks. Thompson, I forget what the, but I was good in asphalt.

Hank wasn’t. So what does his father do? He fires me right at the racetrack. I couldn’t even get, I was with his father going to the racetrack and I had hitch a ride from somebody else to go home and we were three oh oh miles away from home. So anyway, Hank runs, I don’t know, whatever it was, he wins the championship.[00:05:00]

So of course the night of the championship, and I congratulate him, but I kid with ’em all the time because I took my average, what I got for every race I ran, an average every race that Hank got. And if I had to ran the whole season, I would’ve won the championship with the average. If, you know, that doesn’t always happen.

So anyways, father fired me and you know, I still stayed friends. That’s the way it was. You know, guy had this swing about him once in a while and they fire guys. We go to the banquet, congratulate Hank and congratulate everybody. He finished first the championship. I finished second, but I always tell Hank, Hank, you know, I know you’re the champion, but we were gonna make a decision.

We’ve put this before a judge, and I said, I made so many average points per race and I even had so many average points per race. If I ran the whole circuit, I’d beat you. Right. I said before court of law, I’d win the race, I’d win the championship. So I was, so this is a ongoing thing with Hank and I, but he’s officially the A RDC champ for that year, and I finished second, but we always get together and we river on that, you know?

So [00:06:00] anyway, that’s what we is, and it gets him fired up. That’s why I wanted him here today. Get him fired up and he couldn’t make it. Great friend. Great guy.

Lynn Paxton: When you bump Wednesday out of that ride, that was over 60 years ago. Do you realize that? I know

Jimmy Maguire: that, I know. It was 1962 and it’s 19 2 23. So it’s 60 years in 1 61 years.

Yeah. Yeah. And I’m still here, so I must have done something. Right before that, we had a racer, Richmond, Virginia. I blew the engine to Harry D’s car. So there was another guy that wrecked his car. So I said, Hey, can we change engines? Okay, we up at Williams Grove. It was a seven hour ride to Richmond. We rode up, cut to Williams Grove at seven o’clock next Sunday morning.

We changed it. Took the engine out of a bunch of guys, helped me. We had a two by four in the field. We had spectators watching. Two by four. We lifted the engine out, took the engine out of Brownie sky, went to put it in. I had an eight tooth spine on the transmission heat at 10th. By this time it was one o’clock in the afternoon.

There I ran the heat. Bill [00:07:00] hints ran like that was right. He ran the heat, whatever he finished. So anyway, we get up the next day, one o’clock we couldn’t do. I’m sitting there like this. The car owner from cys or whatever cys car that he was driving. The car owner came over personally and said to me, what are you gonna do now?

I said, well, I don’t have a ride. I’m out of, he said, well, I want you to run the car on the feature. I said, what happened to Cy? He said, I don’t want in my race car. So he said, I want a guy that stands on the gas pedal. I know this. Kyle, go Now what this car was, this was a USAC car, a good car. So I said, I said to him, yeah, I’m a race car driver.

So on the way over there, once he grabs me, he said, where you going? That’s my race car. I said, no, that guy owns the race car. You’re just a driver and he wants somebody that puts the foot to the floor. So all I know is that’s my reputation. So I get in the race car, I start last in the race because first time I’m driving the car and he qualified through the consolation race.

So I start back. So I stepped on the gas bar. Wow. The going down the straightaway passed three cars. I said, wow. Kept my foot to the floor. [00:08:00] Passed before, you know, in four, five laps. I was in second spot. So I said, wow. He said, good car. So all of a sudden they had a red flag. Big stop, crashed someplace. They restart the race cookie os out is on the pole.

Now in those days you didn’t start side by side, you start single file. So Cook, we go in the corner. I’m right behind Cookie Os out. He spins right in front of me. Well, when you spin, he lets the car roll up the racetrack. I’m trying to go around the outside of my left front wheel, hits his left rear wheel.

I do a series of Andover and flips, which made the front lane paper of the illustrated news. I end over and over and I land upside down. Fortunately, I was okay because I held myself in the car, in the robot, saved my life so I get outta the car. So once he comes over afterwards and says to me, see that you wrecked the car.

That was my ride. The car owner said, look boy, you’re gonna run the car next week for me. You fixed the car that was open and twisted. You fixed the car all up. The next week I ran the car at Abbot, stop the car. In those days, the beat [00:09:00] was the number 27, the Venetia car. That was the car on the East Coast to beat.

Here I am, I got through the Tri Baytown here. All of a sudden you see this guy in front of me. Wow. I got close to him and I didn’t win the race. They finished second, so the car was happy. So that ended my ride, that car because, uh, the season was ended for URC. The last race for URC was in Shelby, not Carolina work.

And I was auditioning for him. He said, do you wanna ride my car there? You don’t? Yeah, I’ll ride a car. Anyway, I go down there. I was four. I won the feature, sat in back, I won the feature. That was my first feature with URC in 1962. And I had the ride for the following year. So when the following year started, now all, all went along.

I was a single guy, so I ate at his house every night. I managed kids. We had a good time. I became part of John LAN’s family. So the season started about a week before USAC was gonna run Langhorn. He said to me, Jim, I’m not gonna put you in the car. You’re too close to the family. Langhorn is a killer racetrack in them days.

And he said, A lot of you young guys go [00:10:00] wacky down there. I was mad as heck. I got so mad at

Lynn Paxton: him. He put Bobby Marvin in. He put Bobby in

Jimmy Maguire: the car, same age as I was. He was a crazy guy, but he was from Ohio. Well, he gets in the car and kills himself. He hit one of the chuck holes that I probably would’ve hit.

Goes in over in car catches, fires in them days where he had no fuel cells. The car catches fire. And of course you can’t see the fire burning. And you know what they had for a fire crew back in those days? A truck with a one, one bottle on it to put the fire on. Well, by the time he got to the car, 15 minutes later, it was all burnt up and alcohol.

He couldn’t see the fire. Of course, he burned the dead. The cow was surround. So I went over and apologized that, John, thanks for not giving me a ride up. This was a Sunday afternoon, right? I get home nine o’clock, Sunday night, I get a call from Venetia. Here I am 21-year-old kid. He says to me, Jim McGuire, right?

I said, yeah. So I says, this is sad, Venetia. I said, are you the guy that owns that 27, the one that Hank Rogers senior drives? He said, yeah. He said, well, we weren’t very satisfied with laying on today. He [00:11:00] should have went faster. So we want a young guy like your charger. You were the one that gave us the most hot time passing.

That’s right. You

Lynn Paxton: got Hank Senior fired out of that car so you could get in it, right?

Jimmy Maguire: Is that true? No. He said to me, Uhhuh, he said to me, Hank’s not Hank’s getting old now, he should have been. Go do it. He was 50 years old. He was an old man. So, uh,

Lynn Paxton: his son still holds it against you.

Jimmy Maguire: He says, we want you to drive the car for us. You’re a hot charger. Okay, so the first time I rode the car was, are we gonna yank asphalt? Which I’m good on asphalt. That’s what I was brought up in. So Bobby caught Wright al qui fighting with each other and they won first and second. I finished third, but but easy was happy.

Finished third on asphalt. Hank Rogers senior never did good on asphalt. None of the old time dirt drivers. Never did good on asphalt, but I did good. So I was happy. So he says, you’ve got the ride. So the next race we go to Georgetown. I win that race and I won. Did pretty good as the season. Went on an asphalt track again in [00:12:00] Quebec, Canada.

I was leading the race, running good, I’m laughing. Dave Humphreys, the rear axle breaks, he goes out in front of me, hit the tire, flip end over, and I land on the wall up, upside down and the wall, the back of the race goes shit. Right.

Lynn Paxton: Seems to be a pattern here, doesn’t it? One

Jimmy Maguire: behind the robot. Well that’s what happens there guys.

It, I only knew one way to drive before, got the floor. And car owners do a lot of money like and you like extra car

Lynn Paxton: owner. I only

Jimmy Maguire: knew one way to drive car owners, like guys that put the floor to the floor. They didn’t care if they have to spend the money as long as they want. That’s the way it was really.

So that’s why a young age. I got quick. So anyway, uh, I landed upside down the wall. She had the race car off the back. Said there like half conscious. I said to sab, how’s the race car? Don’t worry about the race car. You gotta get better. So we go to the hospital. I spend a week in the hospital. I get outta the hospital, I fly down on Friday to Georgetown, Delaware.

The car’s waiting for me. They get all ready for me. I win the race down there in the Georgetown. I was back. The newspaper says my body, what

Lynn Paxton: were you in the hospital for? Mental illness or what was it?

Jimmy Maguire: They thought I broke my neck. They [00:13:00] thought I broke ’cause my neck was hurting and they hooked me x-rays.

You’d

Lynn Paxton: have been in trouble if you broke your jaw because you wouldn’t have been able to talk

Jimmy Maguire: anyway. Hey, once talked a long time. He said a lot of nice things. All right, come on. He still talked longer than I did.

Lynn Paxton: They were better stories. He was an extra at attraction. That’s he put first. You know what’s

Jimmy Maguire: great about we?

Lynn Paxton: I was listening to a loser.

Jimmy Maguire: That’s why I was listening. So that was it. I was a winner. That was the difference. And the car owners liked winners. That’s why I got a best ride. The best guy Wednesday.

Lynn Paxton: You never got your car upside down, right.

Billy Wentz Sr: Never did. Right. It is everybody

Lynn Paxton: else’s car. Right.

Billy Wentz Sr: How far? Never did.

Yeah. But, uh, I’ve been held the car, couple them over,

Lynn Paxton: not as many as Wonder Boy. Over here. I went over, okay, thank you. I went over

Jimmy Maguire: 15 times in my career.

Lynn Paxton: His percentages. There’s 14 pictures over there, right in that Jimmy McGuire, case 14. Which one did we miss?

Jimmy Maguire: I didn’t put any of my Ricks in there. I’m glad you didn’t put any of my Ricks in there.

I brought that to Well, I got,

Lynn Paxton: I got one of Vene Carl [00:14:00] tour to hell. Who did that? Uh, yeah. Where’s that? The guy that just went, uh, that’s

Jimmy Maguire: Dick. Yeah. But he told me, he said to me, don’t worry about it. We’ll fix up. We’ll get to the next race. The next race at one part. We’ll see. When you drove for Ezio, I was a young kid.

I thought you had to win every race when you drove for him. ’cause the driver, Hank Senior did a job. He won 12 races one year for him. And here’s another thing I did. Whenever we were young drivers and you got a car, car owners, you got in, you know, some guy would say, well, can you change this? You can change that.

If I told Mari this a long time ago. I said when you we’re young guys, when you get in a race guy, never complain that something’s wrong. Wait till you do good, then complain. So I get into an easiest guy. I said, man, everything’s perfect. I love this guy. After I won my first race, I said, you know, this should be this way.

So then after you win and do good for him, then they changed for you. You know? And that’s the way it was in them days. Because the cos, well, one way Carl said one thing in their mind. Right? It my way. When I went to Kinesio, I said, everything’s perfect. Everything. Even when I finished third, everything was perfect.

Everything was perfect. [00:15:00] They were happy with me when I won Georgetown and I changed things, but I had to win first before they’d listen to me. If you didn’t win, they put another charge in the car. Right? And I’m telling the truth, right, bill? That’s it. You gotta put the guy. Hey. That’s the first

Lynn Paxton: thing they’ve agreed on for a long time.

Okay? They both remembered the situation. One a little different than the other, but that’s okay.

Jimmy Maguire: Well, anyway,

Lynn Paxton: but I forgot about it. Hank, how you stealing that ride from him? I came,

Jimmy Maguire: wait a minute. When I came back, after my being in the hospital, I was down a few points. Now I was a point leader before that happened.

They had a couple of races. SAB gets to me sign. He says, you know Jim, you don’t have to win every race. I said, I thought I had to win every race. That’s why I try and I crash if I can win. He says, Jim, ’cause I’d crash, I’d win a race. I crashed. I win. I crashed. He said, Jim, just finish second or third if you have to.

I said, oh, okay. So then I started, I started racing. If I finished second, and if it was hard to race, I’d finish third, fourth. I had 52 races in my career. Right. There’s probably about another 25 that this year won [00:16:00] when I never won ’em. Like on a weekend, on a rough dirt track. I’d be leading the race and all of a sudden a guy would come to challenge me.

I’d back off a little bit because my arm, my left arm was so numb. I didn’t have full control of the wheel. So I just let the guy go by me and I didn’t want to have to fight him. So some other times they finished second and third. I had the lead at that time, but I was good. If we had 10 laps to go in the race, I was strong for 10 laps.

If we had like a 25 straight race to run my amud weekend, I have to back off a little bit. That’s an honest truth. So, and we get to the end of the season, right? Where at Shelby, North Carolina. So he says to me, Jim, you got the point lead. All you’re gotta do is finish in the top 10 and you win the championship.

And he said that guy’s, even if he wins, you finish the top 10, you win the championship. So I got down to North Carolina, I worked my way through travel. I’m up in second spot and Earl Hor is in front of me, the champion that year before. So I said, set up a gun. I can beat Earl. I remember what Cas Sam said.

Finished in the top 10 and you got the championship. I backed off. Earl helped me. He was an older guy. He helped me a lot. Him and Bobby. Kwright [00:17:00] really helped me a lot in my younger career. He

Lynn Paxton: helped

Jimmy Maguire: me too. He seriously, he helped me. Bobby Kwright gave me the name Magoo. It was the first time I ran against him.

He couldn’t, I’d give you a different name than

Lynn Paxton: that, but I couldn’t repeat it up here.

Jimmy Maguire: And the way I got the name Magoo was my first year at Binghamton, New York. That was my first year running Spencer in 61. When you run asphalt to New England, when you get the move over, fight, you move down on dirt, you move up to leave the guy.

I didn’t know that. So when they gave me the move over fight for Bobby Cutright leading the race. I pulled down, which I cut him off. He didn’t crash, but Earl went around the outside, he won the race ball. We finished second and that didn’t mean too much then. But when the season ended in 1962, they tied from the championship.

If he had a pass mate, he would’ve won the championship by five points. So they were the first coach champs in the only coach Champs in URC. And that was because I cut Bobby, cut right off. So after the race, he comes walking over to me. Now he’s an old man. He’s 35 years old, right? I’m a young kid,

Lynn Paxton: 20 years old.

We should be 35 again. [00:18:00]

Jimmy Maguire: He says, he sees me coming down and he says, what’s your name, kid? I said McGuire. Jim McGuire, he is my first sprint. He says to me, McGuire, we’re gonna call you Magoo. You don’t know where the hell you are going. So ironically, that name is stuck with me all the time. And of course it helped me be Bump.

I bumped in a few guys along my way. So every time they say, McGuire named you Magoo. So that, that name stuck with me.

Lynn Paxton: Ey, you sure you didn’t give that name? Magoo?

Billy Wentz Sr: I’ll tell you one thing, ever since that happened, I never walked away from my ride

Lynn Paxton: at a boy.

Billy Wentz Sr: I stayed right there all the time.

Jimmy Maguire: Vince soon was a great driver.

Don’t, don’t get me wrong, he was a great one. So wait a minute, what? I kissed his daughter in Victory Lane. When I beat Foot, I did. I kissed Bill’s daughter in Victory Lane. When I beat Foy. That was the girl on the trophy. Okay, go ahead. Wait a minute. I didn’t do that. Hey, no.

Lynn Paxton: Who got paid that night?

Jimmy Maguire: Foy.

Yeah. Wanted the trophy. And I said, no, that’s my trophy. Yeah,

Lynn Paxton: the trophy. And I pulled it away from the hand on it top, the big [00:19:00] trophy, except for one piece. Foy has that

Jimmy Maguire: he took. I said, I’m so serious. I said to Foy, you got the money, I’m gonna keep the trophy.

Lynn Paxton: Yep.

Jimmy Maguire: I worked out in Indy for five years after that, and every year I went on to say, where’s my trophy?

Where’s my trophy?

Ron Lauer: Ray. Ray McCabe was gonna bring this up because as I’m sitting here next to you, tell him about the time you went to Pocono on the three quarter mile and didn’t have any of their stuff with you, and you borrowed everything and what happened after you? Oh yeah, that was, well,

Jimmy Maguire: that was Boston.

I went up there with Hank and I, him a ride. You’re a good friend, Dan. We’re best friends. We’re still out, I think. Uh, although, you know what? He got me fired from my car. That’s why he won the championship. I wanted him here to tell him that he was afraid I was gonna beat Hank. And his, his wife had owned the car.

That’s the way it worked. And he didn’t want his wife winning the championship.

Lynn Paxton: Kalen told me I was a bunch of bullshit. Hank probably

Jimmy Maguire: did too. Yeah.

Ron Lauer: Anyway. Tell when you went to Pocono.

Jimmy Maguire: So I went to the Poconos. I had no ride. [00:20:00] So all of sudden, and a three

Ron Lauer: quarter mile track inside Pocot.

Jimmy Maguire: And what happened is, uh.

Blackie came down. He was supposed to be a driver, but the forecast from New England was, it was gonna rain in Poconos. So the driver never came to the racetrack. So they said, Hey, Blackie’s got the car. And I knew Blackie very personally from back home in Boston. So he said to me, uh, do you wanna run the car?

I said, okay. I don’t have any equipment. So I borrowed a uniform from somebody. I borrowed a helmet from oil and I borrowed everything from extra drivers. I get in the car and I go out in the heat to qualify and man, Blackie had an illegal engine. They let him run. It was a sco, really built big illegal engine that’s a fresh, it was an oversized Nova sized engine, but they let him go because the guy guys had in it weren’t drivers.

So they never competed hard against anybody. So I stepped in the gas filet. I passed three off. He, I, whoa. Anyway, I got up the second or third spot. And I said, wow, this car’s flying, and all of a sudden I passed the two Scon brothers on the outside and I says, this thing’s flying. Then all of a [00:21:00] sudden I go in the corner, I lose it.

I hit the wall, I flip in over and I lost mother one. Yeah. That was my time. I hit the wall. I over.

Ron Lauer: Yeah, but how about when you were in practice and you didn’t have your racing arm with you and your other one kind of left the steering wheel. Do you remember that?

Jimmy Maguire: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I didn’t have my steering arm with my, had my regular artificial arm and Yeah, that’s right too.

That’s probably why I spun out. You’re right, right. By the way,

Lynn Paxton: we have his bag here. His one arm is hanging right there on the case, and the other one’s in the bag.

Jimmy Maguire: Well, the other one was a high, when you run heavy, that one I could run asphalt with. The other one, I had to run dirt because dirt was rough.

And when I ran this one on dirt, it broke in the elbow all the time. It was a rough dirt track. It was the one I run an asphalt. The other one, I took the screw off and screwed it in and it had quarter orange titanium rods on either side of it had all laminated so it wouldn’t break. And that’s the way I drove that one.

I drove on dirt and this one, I drove an asphalt. That’s why I had a big bag. I had a lot of things in my bag. [00:22:00]

Ron Lauer: Anyway, he came in after that warmup. He may not remember this, but somewhere along the line, his regular hook bounced off the wheel and his right arm was banging on the right rear tire. And he came in and there was rubber all over his hook.

And the guys on the track that didn’t know this was Jimmy McGuire, his arms bouncing on the back and they thought I lost every hand. And then you flip the guy’s car. You know, I was gonna bid on that neck brace they had. But it said on their living legend that I didn’t know you were still alive.

Jimmy Maguire: Well, you know, I thought it was, wait a minute, February 5th this year down in Daytona, I never had NASCAR in my life, but they made me a living legend along with Larry McReynolds, uh, Kyle Pit.

Oh, that’s right.

Lynn Paxton: That’s what this show’s all about, him being a living legend. I forgot about that.

Jimmy Maguire: And it says, and I got this February 5th. 2023. Honest to God, I was invited to come down. So Mario and Dirty sponsored three [00:23:00] tables because you know, I make friends easy. I cost eight. We’re gonna have

Lynn Paxton: Mario’s introduction for McGuire,

Jimmy Maguire: so, so $800 a table had cost these sponsors.

I had a good time. All my friend showed up. My daughter’s come down from Boston. One come, my daughters are there, and my grandsons were there. So a matter of fact, Mario gave me a tribute, which is on the wall. My grandson, 19 years old, gave me, he presented me the Hall of Fame down there and they said, and it’s all written on the wall then

Lynn Paxton: It’s not the bathroom wall, it’s the wall over there, Mario Speech

Jimmy Maguire: is on top and the grandsons on the bottom.

It’s got a picture of Mario and I together in 63 the year he finished Second Points with the A RDC and I won the championship in URC. So that’s all on the wall if you want to look at it. But anyway. I got pictures taken with Kyle Petty and all the other guys. But Larry Res was first getting, and he had to leave right away.

He had to be on TV the next day, so he left right away. So I never got a picture, but this year I’m planning to go up and I hope he’s there. I want, I get a picture taken with him. But that was quite, so I [00:24:00] got in there with those guys and those guys were real nascat guys. And I was just an outsider. You know what they call me?

They call me a Saturday night hero. And I guess that pissed me.

Lynn Paxton: They call

Jimmy Maguire: the award was a Saturday night hero.

Lynn Paxton: Saturday night special was always a gun to me. No

Jimmy Maguire: Saturday night, right? Didn’t I win the at A RDC at at Grandview because I was good with the fans. Right? Now you, Ernie Saxon had a favorite driver of roll water something every year, and I won six years in a row.

They finally ended it because nobody else could win it. And I was a ham. I was a ham. I’d get down an intermission, sit in the stands with all the fans, sign autographs.

Lynn Paxton: You ran second three times by the way.

Jimmy Maguire: So I’d get down to the fans, I talk with him, invite him up the trailer afterwards, and I was the only one that allowed to have the dog in the pistol thing.

He was on the trailer at Benjamin. And the kids would come around, I’d sign autographs with the kids that that bench. So I was kind of a, a happy fan, you know, with the fans. That’s why they voted for me. I guess I had a rule at Grand Grandview, whenever I wanna race, the kids had to all come in with me.

They weren’t allowed to give me the [00:25:00] presentation, take pictures, unless the kids were with me. So I have several pictures of me with all the kids when I went, they’d be in there and I hold a checkered flag and the kids would be in Victory Lane with me. That’s why I guess I got the most popular drive right.

I get the most That’s true. Yes.

Ron Lauer: You were very good with the fence.

Jimmy Maguire: And the promoters like me and the, the photographers like me. Why? Because every time the picture was taken with a hundred kids, how about the beauty queen down in

Lynn Paxton: Australia? Did she like it? Wait, wait a minute. We’re not getting in

Jimmy Maguire: Australia anymore.

That’s another story. So anyway, when I would, when I would, when I would get in the fans, hey five spin out, there’d be a hundred, there’d be a hundred kids in that picture, right? The next week the photographer there would sell the pictures. He made a ton of dope with me and Victory Lane. ’cause all the fans wanted that kid in that picture.

Take a breath, take a breath. I’ll keep, if

Lynn Paxton: you’re right, I don’t want to be, I’ll tell you that

Ron Lauer: now. That was pretty much all truth.

Jimmy Maguire: Pretty

Lynn Paxton: much, pretty much.

Jimmy Maguire: I exaggerate on a few things, like a talks about getting one more fish than you should want, [00:26:00] but I have fun.

Billy Wentz Sr: Hey Jim. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow over again.

Ron Lauer: Not in the morning, I hope.

Jimmy Maguire: I’m not taking off till four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

Ron Lauer: What type

Jimmy Maguire: of

Ron Lauer: car

Jimmy Maguire: did

Ron Lauer: you lose your

Jimmy Maguire: arm in? It was, it was a sprint car, and Bobby Marshman drove in. Usac. Now I was in USAC now, so he had a stock car race that day. So he called me up and because he was a former URC pupil, he said, do you want to drive it?

I didn’t have ride because my car owner, which I did good in, I, I ran a car that was owned by AJ Watson and I took a second and third to flight in my debut, and then I, so I wanted to go racing, so, uh, yeah, I said, I wanna go. It was, I was already living on Indianapolis. He said, you got my car if you want it.

So I got in it. And, uh, now normally if the car was owned eight cylinders, I would’ve qualified further. But the les that only had seven cylinders in it, I didn’t care. I went. So I qualified. Good. I qualified fourth fastest Les, when you have only seven cylinders, you don’t do the pickup. So I had to [00:27:00] go three.

Hes, before I qualified, I qualified ninth. Well with cylinders, but I worked my way up to fifth and that’s when the, he spun. Once you ran two laps over the end, the thing was built up, you know, the speed was built up and I caught guys, as long as the race went on, I pass guys and of course the guy spun out in front of me.

Chuck Booth spun in front of me and instead of staying there, he backed up the racetrack and I got pictures of it. He’s backing up and my left front wheel hits his left rear wheel and I, he did a barrel side rolls. And when you do it, no rinse, they, they’re wild looking into over rinse, but those are the best ones to take because only the front and the back of hitting, you’re in the race guy, you’re not hitting it.

When you are a side roll, you head hits the ground, you knocked out immediately and that’s when most drivers, you look back at K with side rolls because back in those days, because you didn’t do a side rail, you had hits, head hits the ground, you’re out like a light. So that’s what happened to me. But Bobby Martin in the car drove that and that’s, I lost Miami.

And another thing would probably be Marshman car. Most robots are three or four inches behind. Behind your head. Bobby Marshman car [00:28:00] was right eve with your head. So of course when I started flipping with my arms when the car landed, the robot saved my life. But I took my arm off because the arm was between the roll bar on the ground and a message that was new Bernan, right?

And I didn’t wake up till two days later. So I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know what the hell happened. All I know is I woke up, I could still see me waking up in the hospital. My dad was there, my girlfriend was there, which eventually became my wife, Henry Banks was there, all the big shots for insurance.

I was gonna act. I woke up and I said, whoa. I go, well on. I got. And I simply said, I got a new challenge in life. They all looked at each other and said, well this guy’s wacky. Said they all left. I had my one out. First thing I asked for was a pencil. ’cause I had to learn how to write with the left hand. And the whole six months I was in the hospital, I wrote, I learned how to write.

And you know what? If you ever talk to anybody that has lost a limb, when you learn how to write even with your other hand, by writing ’em the same thing as my right hand, you look at the signature, the only thing is it goes to the left. If I turn the paper sideways and I write, you can’t tell a my right hand or my left hand because you [00:29:00] learn.

Your brain only knows one way to write. You write slow. But it’s, I had to go back to drafting. My printing is the same as it was my right. You do it slower. Your brain only is one way. The right. So it goes back how I learn to write. ’cause I still have the feeling right now. I’m giving the finger to Paxton.

Lynn Paxton: If

Jimmy Maguire: I had this shirt off, you talk to your nerves are still, you have phip pain right now. If you looked at my arm off, you see a little nerve tch in there. That’s my little finger.

Lynn Paxton: Take a picture of that.

Ron Lauer: I’m glad you straightened that out.

Lynn Paxton: I’ve been told I’m number one. Before

Jimmy Maguire: when I laid in the hospital it hurt. I did not tell him, okay, I’m laying there and they said to me. Chuck Hal also. That was the number one driver for the Dean of Van Lion team. I was gonna take a test in the second car just to see if I could drive an Indy [00:30:00] car, but it never happened.

Sunday, I lost my arm. The next day I was supposed to sign my driver assist at Indy. So Wednesday I’m in the hospital, Jim Mcg again and Clint Brown and come in to see me. First they offered the ride to Roger Chop Penske. He said, no, I ain’t gonna drive any car. Me, I don’t want be killed. Roger Chop. Penske a nice guy, great for racing, but he drove sporty cars.

The ones that beat behind when they want to pass. That’s what he drove. I’m laying in the hospital of bed and they said, who are we gonna get for a driver? I said, well, did you ever hear of Andrei? He’s only, yeah, he’s a good midget driver. We read. But he’s the only 120 pounds and he only five foot four. I pointed to my foot in bed and I said, he’s got it there.

And I took my hand, I went, he’s got it here. Give him a shot at it. Jim, you don’t have any. And see Jim again. And I go to go up to Boston in the same racetracks. He was a mechanic and I was a driver. That’s how I knew him real good. He watched me as I was going through my career and he said, well, in the wintertime he said, we’ll give you a test.

And when I did good news act, he said, we’ll give you a test at, didn’t he? So it was all set up. I said to him, give Andre a shot. And I said, you don’t [00:31:00] have a driver. If you don’t like it, get rid of him. You don’t have a drive. Give him a shot and see what happens. Well, he gave him a shot and as the story goes, all the rest is history.

And he goes, well, let’s driving race here. And and another thing, he took a lot of flips. Did a lot of crashes, but that’s one of the reasons he never got hurt, except why he was so small. He was way inside the race car. So that’s it. That’s the story, my Andre. Now we get there.

Alison Kreitzer: So we do have this introduction to show you for Mario Andretti that he did for Mr.

McGuire, and we’ll play that here.

Jimmy Maguire: The awards, when I had the, uh, when I, when I got last February, I got the award for, uh, setting a hero for legends. So, uh, Mario gave a speech there for me and somebody videotaped it and the certificate speech, and I cried after I heard it. I called him up and I said, I wanna go back driving a restart again.

So I listened to the speech. It’s only a minute, nine seconds long.

Mario Andretti: And here we go. Hello everyone. I’m pleased you’re honoring Jim McGuire this evening. Our friendship goes back to [00:32:00] the early sixties when we were both carving our own way through our careers. He was really on his way to the top, no question about it.

What’s most impressive to me is after this accident, Jim showed you can’t keep a good man down. He reinvented himself by learning to write with his left hand and continuing work as a draft man, and designing and creating a system. There were allowed his prosthetic arm to connect with the steering wheel of a race car.

He was back on track racing again, but not just racing, winning, winning against the very best. So Jim, I congratulate you on this very special recognition and thank you for being such an inspiration to all of us.[00:33:00]

Jimmy Maguire: Call him up the next day and I said, buy me a race car. I’m spied. I want to go back. He said, when I go to a place and somebody talks about me, I feel like going back racing too. But we said we’re too old. I said, I agree with you. So glad you enjoy it. God, it was only, it was only a minute long, so that was it.

Good. So.

Ron Lauer: He knew your crash record. He wasn’t buying a car for you.

Jimmy Maguire: I get you. Smart ass boy. We got a lot of stories from Mario. Come here. We have a lot of stories. We may have to say a little, because we have a lot of stories. Mario, I Hey.

Lynn Paxton: You get some booze in him. You hear a lot of merrier stories.

Something you don’t wanna hear. I, I’ve heard

Ron Lauer: the, the Hershey and the Yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. You wanna talk about Hershey?

Jimmy Maguire: I didn’t

Lynn Paxton: think

Jimmy Maguire: so did you?

Ron Lauer: I heard you had a woman visit you in the camper.

Jimmy Maguire: I don’t drink anymore. And that’s one, that’s one of the reasons, yeah. The camp. Oh yeah. Heard that really?

Oh, you wanna hear that? Can I tell a story now? We gotta tell story. [00:34:00] No, no,

Lynn Paxton: it’s just a family show. Stay away from that story,

Jimmy Maguire: then you find out what we’re really doing to her show. Well, is anybody enjoying this talking here at all? What’s going on again, again, you gotta make the fans happy.

Ron Lauer: That’s what it’s

Jimmy Maguire: all

Ron Lauer: about.

I’d like to, but uh, I don’t have a chance. When you came back to the midgets, who did you drive for first? Not the TQ with, uh, Bob, but it was, uh, four Midgets, uh,

Jimmy Maguire: first race back. I was driving for Eddie Tow, really any out for a year. I drove for him. First time I drove for him was over to New Jersey and asphalt.

I finished nine. He was very happy with, because he just bought the car. He got the car and Ed clinic is taking care of the car, and I guess he recommended the driver. So I got in the car. Then as the time went on, I got better in the car and we had a Bobby Marshall Memorial at, uh, Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

That was the track that he, he promoted. A RDC and that was my kind track as I went there. In [00:35:00] sprint cars, I go in the counter, I take the lead in the first lap, 49 laps. I led that race, touch shape was right behind me, led the race. Just kept my foot to the floor. See a Hatfield if you’re in it good, you just kept your foot to the floor.

You were in right in the rim high bank. You didn’t have to take your foot outta the throttle. The last lap. I said, geez, I’m gonna win. I see the white. I’m gonna win this race. So I come off the bank, right? I come off the bank, come down, and Dutch Shaer goes right around the outside of me and wins the race.

I make more money than he did because I let every lap and then get front money. The fans pulled the hell outta him. He beat me, but he finished second and I told him Victory Land. I said to George, er, well, I wanted to win you your son’s memorial, because footy did for me after I lost my arm. ’cause I lost the arm in his sprint car that he drove.

He had a ride with a stock high that day. So he asked if I’d wanna run. So I ran it. But he F so he helped me out along the way with my rehabilitation. Touch Safer won the race. I made more money than, than I can say now. It took me seven times to run in the Bobby Marsh Memorial race. I finished second, third, fourth.

Every time I got in a car, I was leaving it. [00:36:00] I dropped back when I finally won it, when I bought a car, George just bought a race car finally. It had nothing to do for a year. He bought a race car, miss you. He was the sprint car owner, so he bought a car for him and we go up there with the Vene and Frank Jennings.

They brought the car up with him. We go up to Bloomberg, Pennsylvania. I’m sorry, bus Milwaukee was the car. See Jake Vago. Let me take the midget out. I was gonna run it during the month of May if I had passed my driver’s test. ’cause that in those days, every night across the street from the Speedway, they had a quarter mile track and they were in the track across the street from the speed all the drivers in practice, they go in the midget the night and eventually that went to Mario for the month of May.

But anyway, I was gonna drive it. Jake Vago gave me the car and I took it out there. So then when I wanted to run midget there, in fact get back in midgets, it was after the TQ season. I had done good. I won the hundred lap and I won the championship for Paulson. So I called him up and I said, Hey, can you bring the car up to, uh, Bloomsburg?

I’d like to run for you again. Yeah, okay. I’ll sit bus walkie with him. So bus walkie rides to the car. He was the type, [00:37:00] if anybody knows the name, bus walkie, obviously you know him. He was a mechanic, a big Indianapolis mechanic and a driver. And so he took the car up there. Anyway, I got in the car. I led the race for 24 laps, again, long, around 24 laps.

The same thing. I’m running good. It’s like I back off in the third and fourth turn ’cause I won, I won this race. Who goes around the outside of me? Bill Brown and, and Eddie Dar Scott wins the race. The fans booed the hell out of him, but again, he made only 600 bucks. Win the race. I made 850 because I got a lot money.

That’s what Gil Brown, I finally won that race with George Ey gave me a ride. I led the race, the whole race, and I won the race. And I think I got a picture there someplace with Frank Jennings, his son and, uh, me winning the race of Bloomsburg. I finally won the volume and I, and I had tears when I was up there on the stage with Mr.

Marshall. I was crying because I said it took me seven years to win this Bobby Marshall Memorial. So, and he was, he had tears in his eyes too because, you know, it was his son. And I always wanted to do that and [00:38:00] I always win that. Bobby Marshall Memorial took me seven races to win it, but I finally wanted, and, and like Far Gump says to the movie, and that’s all I got to say about the matter.

Ron Lauer: That’s funny. ’cause my first midget ride was with Ed Toth at Mahoning Valley in 1971. You were almost retired by then.

Jimmy Maguire: Yeah, I Did he tell you I won the first race with him?

Lynn Paxton: Yeah.

Jimmy Maguire: And I won the first race. I was first race on him. Then that year, after that year, then he went to, with Williams going, he bought a sprint car, I think.

Yeah.

Ron Lauer: I, I had something to do with that.

Jimmy Maguire: Oh, you did? Okay. You did you drive the sprint? Yeah, I

Ron Lauer: destroyed his midget, so I went sprint car. Oh, that’s, that’s he went,

Lynn Paxton: he went with Oz. Yes.

Ron Lauer: Ozzie built the cars

Jimmy Maguire: and drove. He was a good car. I he

Ron Lauer: a good guy. Yeah.

Jimmy Maguire: Did he get steering that sprint car? I don’t know if he had, I was gonna call him and see.

He had steering, but I was happy running mid. No, I was, he might have later on, but not at first. He did. Yeah. Right. Because I, if I had punched a guy, I would’ve talked to him and let me drive it. I had a good way with words with car owners. That was a good race. Car isn’t midget. Oh yeah. [00:39:00] Back in those days, they were all rigu sprint cars with Offie and Hickey took em care of most of the cars, you know, Offie, when I, when I ran for all the time, I had afi, just like Ferguson ran the five years I ran for Ferguson.

Fergu had office. Yeah. And you ran him with afi, but he ran No, I didn’t run an off. You didn’t have an off? What did you have? I ran a Sesco. Oh, you had a Sesco? Okay. Yeah, that was later on. Oh, then I was done. I Was that when you were in Caleb’s car? Yeah. Okay. That’s right. You were gonna win the championship.

Yeah. Right. Okay.

Lynn Paxton: But you didn’t win Williams Grove that day. I guarantee that.

Billy Wentz Sr: I wanna ask you a question. You have a guy by the name of Shark that comes here and his grandfather had a race car. Yes, yes. That I ball up at Lincoln. Did anybody? Oh, I didn’t know you tore sharks car up down there. Yeah, that’s a whole story.

Yeah. Well, you had come after me, then you’ll be, you’ll be at a retake. It didn’t have a safety there. It came out. I went up in the air. There’s no picture. Oh, you crashed too. Oh my God. Crash. I broke my back that day. [00:40:00] Broke your back from out on a race car like Superman. And I landed in the infield and it had it raining and it was like mud.

So when I landed, it was a soft landing, but my ass was sore and I had to drive home from Lincoln with a broken back and went to the hospital the next day and then got the operation. But sure when they got there, they didn’t have a driver. And they said, am I interested? I said, yeah. Hell yeah. And it was a rocket.

Had a good motor. I don’t know what that frame was made out of, but they said the back and the front fold together. If I’d have stayed that car, I’d have been drunk. So I came out of the car like, you think you’re better than junk right now? Well, I made it this far. All right. I not, and I’m not in the junk yard yet.

Thank you.

Ron Lauer: You all guys think you’re the only ones that crashed, right?

Lynn Paxton: Yeah. Well, he wanted finally to admit to come up and say he crashed. That was great. Well, I

Jimmy Maguire: had 15 [00:41:00] crashes in my career. Flips rather. I had a lot of crashes, but I had 15 flips. I probably had more than 15 crashes and one championship. I, but I always won.

I always won. I won more races. How many guys here won 52 races? Accident won 250. I’m sorry. And how many have done it with? 31 with one arm. And 22 with two ounce.

Lynn Paxton: I I wait to the fans for the other one.

Ron Lauer: I got the two covered.

Jimmy Maguire: I got a picture of me in Victory Lane. Now they beat foot before they took it

Lynn Paxton: away from me and I got the four foot trophy.

Hey Joe. Hold. Hold it up there. Explain it. Hold the mic at the same time we wanna watch.

Jimmy Maguire: Okay. That night I won. I got Bill’s daughter in one here, her mother’s right behind us, so it was all legal to see in the picture. And I’m holding her and giving her a big kiss for about a minute, and then everybody’s laughing like hell behind me, you can see in the picture.

And I got my, that time I had two arms. I’m holding a four foot trophy. Whenever my daughter shows that picture [00:42:00] to French, she says, oh, that’s my mother. That’s his wife. The daughter shows that. She says

Lynn Paxton: he kids’ wife. How about the queen down in, uh, Australia?

Jimmy Maguire: What about her? You weren’t there. You don’t know what went on.

Lynn Paxton: I read the paper.

Jimmy Maguire: I know. Well, what happened there? I, I went to Australia in 69. That was a nice deal. I had six races over there. Has anybody here ever been to Australia? Okay. It is about the same size as the United States. New York is is Sydney, Texas is Adelaide and Perth is California and I raced in all three places.

When you run to Australia a Holden, I won a Holden. A Holden is a Chevy two over there. They call ’em Holden’s. It was Chevy when I won races. Third and a win a hundred lap in Adelaide. I had an offie that was the caliber of the road, so I won with the roads a quarter mile track, and the guy was behind me the whole time.

They had champion. But he couldn’t get by me ’cause I ran the car, I put the car sideways, I’d watch him, it was a small truck, and I’d watch him [00:43:00] shadows behind me. Wherever he’d go high with the shadow. I’d get in front of him when there was no shadow. I knew he was underneath me, so I’d cut him off and go high back and forth, back and forth.

That’s the way the whole race was won. And I got a picture going on the car to finish line. He’s right on my tail. Uh, did you ever drive a VW Power Plant car? Oh yeah. What are you talking about? With Eddie Dar, it was the first time I drove one and I got him. We’d run the Silver Dome and do it when I went on.

He, he wanted to go. So he hated my guts but he wanted to go because bench was gone. And I got the invite to go out there. ’cause Mario said he, the way we got to go out there, Mario said he was gonna be cheap and get another car. Of course he never showed up. But I got the ride out there and that was the first time a Volkswagen said, wow, it’s a good car.

And we didn’t do anything there. We made the race for, didn’t do anything. But then the next time I drove the car was when Hank Rogers was running a car. He won the championship but he had to do a wedding. So he called me up and he said, I talked to, I drove for Mike Chin once with an off hit and I won the race at IC Junction.

That was one of the very few times I’m the only driver ever to win the midget race at IC Junction on Friday. [00:44:00] And the next day I went, I won the sprint race. It was the easiest car. So I did drive for Mike. She, so he said, okay, let Jim drive it. I get in the car at Middletown, the York and Wow. I won the heat running good.

It rained out. The feature rained out. I never ran the car. And that was the only time I ever ran a Volkswagen that I, in the feature truck. I probably didn’t wanted it. It was fast, fast, race, car and, but that was the only time we had a Volkswagen. They were good. Yeah, I ran SESCO’s, but then when I got to, uh, Sydney, the guy who owned the car was an engineer, smart guy.

He had a fiat in there. And the fiat was a tough runner. And, and it’s still a tough runner in Formula One car, but he had a 600 of fiat in that. And of course he couldn’t run hard with, he just about made the race. When I got in it, first of all, all the guys, the beginning guys all raised 60 pounds inside weight.

When I got in the car to get in it for warmups, I couldn’t even lift the rear left rear tire. I took three turns outta the left. Dang. I put three turns the right way, and I got weight on the outside. Kyle was straight as an arrow. I went everything I wanted, the heat, the semi, the match [00:45:00] race, and I won the feature.

So when I went home, I said, that’s the way you gotta run the car. But he said, but the car was so straight under dirt, don’t you go sideways? And he said, no, that’s why I won everybody else’s sideways and I’m straight. So that’s, that’s what happened over there. They, they, they brought up heavyweight in the inside and all the race cars were sideways.

Everybody was side. And as long as the top guys run sideways, all the other guys do the same thing. Stare all running sideways. When you are run sideways, sure you look, you can win as long as everybody else is sideways. Well, when I went over, I kept my race car straight and every time I’m at the corner that’s how I’d pass.

I’d pass him on the inside. Coming off that picture over there, if you look at it, me and usac Mario was sideways. And I’m straight and narrow. And you win races when you’re straight. That’s how you get the whole bike. But the dangerous thing about that is when you hit a chuck hole, tips over much easier.

You just gotta make sure that the, the rear is over the hole and the front coast of the, and so I was lucky like that outside race is the place to go. When I ran asphalt, like down the wall stadium and I always had 30 pounds outside weight with an offie and I won down [00:46:00] there. And uh, always on asphalt, I ran outside weight, put a little more on asphalt.

But when I ran the dirt tracks, I ran 15 to 20 pounds outside weight. Remember the midges little smaller when you run a sprint car, I imagine like those guys, when you see kings with them guys, they had to run at least. 60, 70 pounds the outside weight. ’cause that’s why their right front tire lifted up, you know, and you ever see the sprint go on the probably 60, 80 pounds outside weight.

That’s how they keep their foot to the floor. When you give your foot to the floor, you take your foot out, the front end wants to push right away was the right front, so light. But all those will, and even now, Williams Grove, you see they keep the foot right to the floor. They took their foot outta the floor, the right front, and they’d go right to the wall.

But you gotta keep your foot to the floor. It makes that right front real light and, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah. I won four outta six races over there. I finished third and, uh, one of the, my first time over there, and then I crashed in the other one. What else? So anyway, uh,

Lynn Paxton: imagine something like that doesn’t matter.

Oh no. Wait a minute. I didn’t crash. They have a rule when I you driving on the wrong [00:47:00] side of the track. At Perth. At Perth,

Jimmy Maguire: what they do at Perth, they have a guy at each end of the corner and they have a white curb going on a six foot square curb. If you hit that curb, you disqualified. They, they say wife, they see a tire, so they watch it.

So I was on my second race, I was racing. I hit the curb. I didn’t know that was the rule. And I had black tie mark on. They dis, even though I won the race, they disqualified me ’cause I hit that tire. So I made sure the next time I didn’t do that, I stayed out and I did not, they had a white curb going around the racetrack and I said, boy, that nobody ever told me if you hit it, you’re disqualified.

So I got disqualified. Otherwise I would’ve won three races over there. But I won two races there and I came back to Adelaide. I took, I won a hundred lap there, then I went to Sydney and one there and, uh, how about the queen? Oh, now the queen. Okay, this is the queen that was in Adelaide. My wife was over.

We all go to the beach with the, the car owner, which was a rich guy who one the newspaper owned. Odd guy. He owned everything and he brought me over from the, he owned the racetrack. We ran Adelaide, owned that racetrack. [00:48:00] Finished third, my first time there. Then about six ladies, I’m back there on lap. Uh, we go to the beach and we’re at the beach.

During the week, nanny was taking care of the kids, boyfriend was there and everything else. We were all at the beach having a good time. She says to me, oh, Mr. Benign asked me to be the queen for Saturday night’s race. You know, this is like Wednesday or Thursday. I said, well, who’s gonna finish second? She says, what do you mean?

I said, well, if you’re gonna be the Queen, I’m gonna win the race. She says, why? She says, because in America we kiss girls when we win the race. So my boyfriend’s laughing, my wife’s laughing, and my wife would say, yeah, that’s right. When you win a race you kiss the queen. So, you know, that was just a joke.

Saturday night comes, I win the race. So anyway, I win the race. So as we’re going to victory circle over there, they don’t give trophies, they give coffee. Tea sets a big tray with four cups on it and a tea. Dang. So anyway, in the newspaper, as the article outcome comes out the next week. We could do the kissing.

I kiss her and all that stuff, but then I picked her up. Right now she only weighed about a hundred pounds by one arm. They picked her up. She was in a bikini. I walk all the way across the racetrack. They report [00:49:00] this in the racer paper. They say, I guess in America they take the trophy girl home with him, because Jim, Jim McGuire was seen leaving the racetrack, and I was born on the stands.

I sat her down beside her boyfriend and my wife was there too. And the whole crew, everybody’s laughing, all the fans are laughing. So that’s what happened. The newspaper didn’t know that. I carried it in the stand. They thought I took her home. They said, I guess, I guess in America they take the trophy home.

So that’s what’s in the race paper. So that was the joke.

Ron Lauer: How many times did you go back to Australia? To Australia? I don’t. They went again. I never went again. Never went again. They never invited. Well,

Jimmy Maguire: I wouldn’t go anyway because they wouldn’t let him back in. No, I never, I never went back again. I think what it was, I wanted more money.

That’s what it was. I wanted more money. See what they did, they, it was a good deal going over there. They paid your expenses, playing gift you going over, they gave you a certain amount of money no matter whether you win or loss. They gave you the same amount of money. In other words, I forget what it was, it was good money.

I mean, I made money outta it. I come home with a few thousand in my pocket. It was more money, but you get it guaranteed no matter whether you [00:50:00] crash the win or whatever. My name was the name. So the next year I went back, I knew it. I asked for a little bit more money and I wanted a percentage of the purse.

They said, no, I can’t do this because I had a good ride back in the United States. And uh, who was I driving by then at that time? So where here? Ferguson? I think it was Ferguson. Ferguson probably. Yeah. Yeah. And I had a better deal there with Ferguson. So you

Ron Lauer: had a deal with Ferguson? Oh yeah. I got 50%. Well, yeah, there was nobody else in the car when you got there.

’cause I tried that. So wait a minute. I only got

Lynn Paxton: 40% when I drove,

Jimmy Maguire: but when I went in, I, he gave me 50%, 50% and plus. He had a nice wife too.

Ron Lauer: I drove him for

Jimmy Maguire: five years.

Ron Lauer: He’s got a better midget record than you. He drove a midget once and won. That’s right.

Lynn Paxton: No, I drove twice. Twice.

Ron Lauer: Oh, okay.

Lynn Paxton: I ran sales because we probably could have won up there, but we kept popping. Right. Retire off.

Jimmy Maguire: Not a bad record. Did I run against you when you won that night?

Yeah. Oh, I did. Oh, I was in the other camp. You were in the camp car. I, I finished second. You’re right. No, you finished

Lynn Paxton: third.

Jimmy Maguire: Okay. Sorry. [00:51:00] To a guy like you, you had two, two guys in front of me drove with two arms. I had a handicap. I was the first handicapped. You had a

Lynn Paxton: handicap with two arms. I want to tell you

Jimmy Maguire: I was handicapped, so I figured I won the race with a handicap.

I was the best handicapped driver there. Yep. Now, does anybody wanna ask me a question? I’ve given you a lot of,

Audience Q&A: I got a question for you to ask Lynn. You have, you had 50 wins? 52. I want you to ask Lynn the truth. Stand low. And Smokey SBA told me that half a Lynn’s 250 winds were in a snowmobile come

Jimmy Maguire: race. Hey, wait a minute, I’m a race. Well, when is the wind? I ask the wind if he ran. That’s the

Lynn Paxton: first time he’s ever defended me in his life. Look,

Jimmy Maguire: house [00:52:00] for two days. Speak to me. His wife’s nice at night. Everybody’s nice. His kids at nice. I’m not gonna say him bad about him. What’s his name? Joe. Okay, Joe.

Lynn Paxton: On pitching, you know

Ron Lauer: where it’s going,

Lynn Paxton: but

Ron Lauer: on pitching.

I mean, like I said, I didn’t know you were still alive, so

you gotta be alive to be a living legend. Well, that’s why I’m a living legend. I’m

Jimmy Maguire: alive. That’s what you read. The what over there says, I’m a living. I didn’t make it up. All of a sudden, NASCO calls me up and says, I said, what? I never in Nasco in my life. He says, you’re a living legend. So you’re going in, you, you’ve been all over the country, know we had

Lynn Paxton: two choices.

Living or

Ron Lauer: dead. Who’s your PR person?

Jimmy Maguire: Nobody. I don’t know who. I know who it was. I dunno how they

Ron Lauer: got your name. Well,

Jimmy Maguire: I knew a few guys in nascar. They knew of me, I guess. I guess. I don’t know. They had some, but all I know is I was so surprised. I called Maya and I said, you have anything to do with, no, I didn’t have anything to do with this.

And he said, well, I said, and then I get the book and in the [00:53:00] book there. Now listen to, in the book, Ernie Saxon about 10 years ago, was a living legend. He’s in as a writer and Mario and was in there from back in the day when he was the world champion. So he, he’s in there too. So I guess. Maybe they ask guys, Hey, who do you know?

They wanna be a legend, so whatever. Somebody was good to me. Whatever. I have a legend shirt. We don’t wanna go there. I know. Well, I was gonna take it off, but the legend shirts, we see it. Did we see it? Hold it.

Lynn Paxton: You

Ron Lauer: had to do that, didn’t you?

Lynn Paxton: Don’t take two of them. What the hell are you doing?

Hold the black

Ron Lauer: one down. Hold the black one. Oh my

Lynn Paxton: God. He needs help. He does need help.

Jimmy Maguire: This is the one Daytona gave me, but it had only stock cars on it. NASCAR’s stuff. Oh, I didn’t know

Lynn Paxton: you drove stock

Jimmy Maguire: cars. I did. I I wanna erase it. Uh, AllBridge. And that’s one of those pictures you got in that book Shows me the stock car.

I cut that picture out [00:54:00] now. It’s in there. I saw it in there. That’s the one I took out the other day. I’ve never made the stock car. 26 Ford at I won the race center and the planet all put it back down.

Ron Lauer: Who sponsors your underwear? I

Jimmy Maguire: don’t wear.

Ron Lauer: Oh, thanks for telling me. We needed to know that. I’m ready for action all the time.

What else do you have to tell us?

Jimmy Maguire: How about the Pauls jack? Whoa. The Pul adjust. Yeah. Yeah. When I was in the hospital with my one arm, he came to Indianapolis. He always went to Indianapolis and he said to me, do you want to go back racing? I said, sure, I’d love to go back. He said, well, I got a tq. It’s for him, tall ones in the country.

And he said, uh, would like you to drive, give you a shot? I said, okay. So I got outta the hospital and get married. Matter of fact, we getting married, my, my head wasn’t right for about a year, married

Lynn Paxton: a year. So you, [00:55:00] crap,

Ron Lauer: you got a big.

Jimmy Maguire: So about six months after I get outta the hospital, I get married November 7th and my head didn’t clear till about April of March of the next year. So every once in a while, you know you have family arguments with either wife. I said to her, you know, I get in a no and I said my head wasn’t right then you shit at me, you still isn’t right.

They all laugh, go to bed. You happy with each other, but. That really happened. That really is one of the things that happened. I got married when my head in my head was still in a circle, and you know what? My wife disappeared. She died 17 years ago. I’m trying to get up there, but she doesn’t want me. They said, you don’t want me up here.

You wanna keep me down here on earth, bother everybody. But I, I told my goal is to be a hundred years old now at Paxton, and I told Ton how I get there. I take 32 vitamins a day. Six of ’em I took at Pax House this morning. First thing I had, his wife made me a bowl of cereal. I took my six vitamin pills in the afternoon.

I have a bottle of Boost, which is B-O-O-S-T. Got 27 vitamins in that. I’ve been taking that for like 30 years and that’s why I’m in good shape and [00:56:00] do everything. I play bce. As long

Lynn Paxton: as you stay alive till 5 55 tomorrow afternoon when I put you in the airplane. That’s all I,

Jimmy Maguire: so I recommend that Boost. I don’t get any money for that. Boost is great Liquid drink. It is a, you’ve probably seen it on the market. It’s the most popular nutrition drink on the market. That’s why it sells out. The minute it goes into Walmart or anybody sells it, sell sells out immediately. So anyway, June came the following year.

I got in the car playing Pleasant Pleasantville Racetrack. I won the heat, the semi in the feature, and my first racetrack. I went arm and I had the hook that night to put the hook around. You know, I, I used this spinning knob like, you’re buying a stove for 25 cents. And I put my hook around there and I put elastic band around the hook to keep it closed.

You went on a bumpy track, your own asphalt. So I won the race and you know who I passed in the last lap to the league. Hank Rogers, Jr. Was his first race. He was served that kind of four years. It was his first year back and he got in Lenny Boyd’s car. He was running, leading the race. And of course I beat him.

And of course I didn’t really [00:57:00] know him till after the race. But then as time went on. He was the one that got me a ride to be a teammate with him, to Midt. And I also took the, even though he took my father’s ride, he said, I want you to be my teammate. He said, great

Lynn Paxton: Hank’s father. Did he send you Christmas

Jimmy Maguire: cards?

No, he never sent me anything.

Lynn Paxton: Oh, okay. Thank you.

Jimmy Maguire: Race drivers usually don’t send Christmas cards to each other. Oh, that’s a dig. In other words, uh, in Indian interviews when we talk about it, we kidding around with a driver. We say, well, he doesn’t send me Christmas cards anyway. You know, that’s the thing of I’m not gonna send you a Christmas card.

Or they’re the thing, you know what? They used to write about me when I was going to the USC championship. Yeah. They used to say, we’re gotta send McGuire Christmas cards in August because he’s not gonna be here. The way I used to drive, I mean that’s the way it was. I just was one of ’em guys to get my foot to the floor.

You see in all these young guys, they drive crazy and hard and you know you wanna run and look at the young guys that went in. That’s the way it works. You gotta move guys. Order, get out of the way. That’s the way it is and that’s the way I was. But I was young. I wanted to go fast and after about 15 times on my head, I slowed down a [00:58:00] little bit.

What happened when you fell off the bicycle? Oh, that’s another crash. I forgot I had another foot when I come down here. Now listen to this. This is something I come down here, I get in this over 55 group down here, right? I arrived the first Senate. And when they had trivia night, right? I go in the hall and I see a tape, all these guys sitting with yellow shirts at the table and they, they says, easy ride around ’em.

I said, this must be a motorcycle crew. So I said, do you have, can I sit in this chair? I went, yeah, sit down there. So I sit down there, I passed that night. The next week comes over and I ride at the table. Now I’m friendly with these guys. I said, listen, uh, what kind of bikes do you guys ride? He said, motorcycles.

He said, we don’t ride motorcycles, we ride bikes. Oh. So I said, well, can I join the club? Yeah. Trouble is I can’t ride a bike. I fell about five or six years before Riz. You couldn’t

Lynn Paxton: drive race car. But that didn’t stop.

Jimmy Maguire: Well, they said, I, what happened is I fell, I fell in my driveway and hit my head, and I got a bad concussion riding up with my two wheel bike.

That was about five years before. So I said, well, I said, you got anything against the three [00:59:00] wheeler? No. So I got a three, a nine speed, three wheeler, and I joined the club. And every, what we do is Monday, Wednesday and Friday we ride to a restaurant five or six miles one way. And then we ride home and we do about 10 miles a day every other day.

So I joined the bike club. That’s what I do. I, it’s part of my exercise. About three or four months after the three wheeler, we have a rule in the club. Stay six foot apart for each. Don’t ride vania. This one guy wanted to talk to me racing. So he pulls up beside me, right? And he’s got a regular two wheel brake.

My bike is wide. The three wheeler, if anybody rides it, his handlebar hits my handlebar. He calls my wheeler, go in, I flip in over in, oh, crash. I’m unconscious for half hour, right in front of one of the developments. They call the ambulance. I wake up, I’m in the ambulance. Where the hell are we going? He says, you had a crash on the bike.

What? Three weeks in the Holmes Hospital in in Melbourne for three weeks getting rehabilitated for a concussion. I broke three ribs on my left side. I got my side all scraped up. I had a helmet on, but you know that one of those cheap helmets from Walmart, it cracked. I got a inch and a half cash in my [01:00:00] head.

I had four stitches in my head. Anyway, I spent three, three weeks in the hospital and I got out and uh, I was okay. And here I am, crashed on a bike. Can you imagine that three wheel bike? What’s next? Nothing. I, I still ride the bike, but what I did is all the guys had these regular bike helmets. You see ’em, it’s just a flat thing, top of your head.

And they all wear that, but they didn’t have a crack. When I crashed, I did it. I split my head wide open. So you know what I did? I bought another helmet. I bought a full racing helmet. So when we’re all riding, I get the full racing helmet completely

Lynn Paxton: closed,

Jimmy Maguire: and they say, what you got? I said, I’m riding with this.

So everybody’s got the regular bike hats and I got a regular full helmet with flames on and everything else. And so I looked a little out of place. I’m riding with him, but that’s what I’m gonna ride with.

Ron Lauer: I told Lynn one time after you gave him your arm, I said, I’ll give you a helmet and a uniform, but you ain’t getting an arm from me.

Okay, so yours is the only one in here.

Jimmy Maguire: That’s right. I’m telling you interesting. I may not be millionaire like Mario, but uh, I do. Okay. Done a lot. [01:01:00] Other accomplishments, I guess, you know, I got a lot of friends in racing. A lot of people have been good to me. Like here, even though I get busted once in a while, guys like Len and, and uh, bill Wentz.

But it is all part of the game. It’s all like race drivers. We all exaggerate a little bit.

Ron Lauer: Yeah. We’ve heard everything else. How’s your level? Well, I was, I was

Jimmy Maguire: very good, you know. How far are you going with it? We’ve been in the movies a couple of times together and she’s 82, 81 years old. I’m 83. So the guys in the club say, ’cause she’s at the apartment next door.

She put a door from your apartment. Her, the condo says, she said wouldn’t approve that. But we’re all the same age. The oldest guy in my club, and he plays bocce. He’s 97 years old. The second oldest is 95, third oldest is 92. And they play bocce. You know, we have to hand him the blow, you know, and they can’t pick it up.

You know, we’re all full of pep and we do the things and I ride a bike and we swim. I swim six lap. Every other day and ’cause I hate to be outdone and when I see somebody older than me doing it, do it. You have any

Lynn Paxton: accidents with a bocce ball?

Jimmy Maguire: No. Nobody threw at you? No, not yet. I dropped it on my foot [01:02:00] times coming, I dropped it on my foot a couple of times, but, uh,

Lynn Paxton: yeah.

Jimmy Maguire: Do you wear, do you wear your helmet to play

Ron Lauer: bocce? None. Only when I ride the bike. I’m glad I asked that last question there a red line, 7,000 movie. Did you hear that question? Were you in a red line? 7,000 movie? There was a one arm driver in that movie. Oh. Hm. I thought it was, I

Lynn Paxton: thought she did a movie.

Didn’t you do excerpts for a movie? Well, I did a, yeah, I did a movie talking to the microphone. That’s did, I

Jimmy Maguire: did a movie, but I didn’t to drive race car. Was that a movie with a race

Lynn Paxton: guy?

Jimmy Maguire: It was a one arm driver. I, I did, made a movie, it’s called Baren Wolf Game on Trips, the worst movie that was ever made.

And they hired me to be a, a stunt driver. Lou Timon asked me, he was a radio announcer and the weatherman, they knew he was a race driver, so they needed stunt drivers to make this movie. So he called me as a stunt driver, and me and him were gonna be doing crazy things in race, in cars, regular cars called race and stuff like that.

But then when they, [01:03:00] when I appeared on set, the guy says to me, man, you could be a sto. See they had two stooges, STO number one and STO number two. And I was stu number one in the movie. That was my nanny. What we did is you were number one and two both. And when I, when I did the stunts, I had to wear a beard because they didn’t want me to look the same.

So I did a couple stunts wearing a beard. When I did in the movie, they had me go to a hairdresser, so they made hair all curly. They curled me hair up to look battalion and they gave me a suit and they made me hook 12 inches in diameter and put a little, and then they put a thing on the steering wheel and I drove a Cadillac.

We did crazy things on the road crashing here and there. One of the things these I did was my boss was a gangster and he had lent money to this guy to make a movie and he couldn’t pay my boss back. So we had to go after him. And that’s what the theme of the survey was, trying to get the money from this guy.

All the movies were made at night. We went to Brooklyn, right? We went to the Brooklyn Bridge and I got the guy and we want that money so he wouldn’t pay the money. So what we did is we took the hook, pushed him off, and [01:04:00] we hung him down with a rope on the Roosevelt Parkway and he’s traffic’s going, mine, he’s hanging by this rope.

That was one scene. Pull him back up. And through the whole movie, we’re trying to catch this guy to get the money. Catch this guy. It finally ended this way. We’re in Little Italy, right? And we’re at the counter like this, and I’m in the counter. You see my hook and my boss is sitting at the table with this guy.

So this guy, the bad guy, the good guy, and he’s starting to get the, he takes a fork and he sticks it in. My boss’s throat was sitting at the table in an Italian restaurant, and we had seven. We did this seven times. Every time he sucked the thing and bud would come all over the white jacket. But what the scene was, you saw the arm going forward, back in the studio, they had a guy there with a fake throat sticking the fork in it.

Bud skirt all over his jacket. So every time you did seen about seven scenes, they did the actual bleeding in the uh, studio. So you thought this guy was getting the throat stuck in him. So when this happened. The guy runs out. I run out after him and I get in the Cadillac, he gets [01:05:00] in, he gets in a sports car and I’m chasing him down the highway, right?

This is the way the movie ended. He lock some drink spin around, hits towards me, right? I, the last thing you see in the movie is me going, oh shit. He hits head on. There’s a big sport, big explosion in the movie. We both, we all get killed in the movie The boss is dead for, but I get killed from the head on collision and the last thing you see is me saying, oh shit, big explosion.

It was a canned explosion. Fire goes up like this. Then the curtain score across the screen, that movie couldn’t sell. It didn’t sell. So it went on private star and you know who was in the movie with us? She was the mama Do, no, we don’t wanna know. Joan Ell was the star. She was a mama do. And she ran Ahoe house.

This what. House. House would refused. And the hero was one. She, he went there all the time. So that’s where went, she’s in the movie running, doing something. I wasn’t even in that scene, but she was in the movie and a lot of [01:06:00] other stars were in the movie who made the movie. So the guys who made Shaft one, two, and three, they made this movie.

So anyway, how long, how long was that movie? It lasted about an hour. I, it was horrible. It was a horrible, when I saw the whole movie, you even, and they showed it, one of the guys from the Retirement Village I in, they found it on the, it’s on the, if you look on the Joan but ELs movie, it’s called Going to Netflix.

It’s on the Barn. Wolf one came, he found it and showed it at the clubhouse. It was horrible. We all laughed like hell at it. And they showed it at the Clubhouse in Florida and horrible. But you can get it if you go on Netflix. And go under Joan Mantel’s movies and read down a credits when you get Tover and Wolf Main trips.

I’m in that movie and, and you went to the Academy Awards? No, no. It’s a horror movie, but I made $3,500 because I had to join the Actors Guild. As long as you show up in the city, you get paid. I made 3,500 bucks for three weeks work, so I didn’t laugh at that. So I had a lot of, a lot of [01:07:00] memories in here.

Somebody told me, my lawyer told me, they said, you know, we should write a book. We probably make a few bucks. I said. Well, why don’t we wait till I’m a hundred years old? Because I mean, there might be a lot of things happening. You know how when you write a book, you sit down in a column with a writer and he pulls things outta you?

Lynn Paxton: Well, if you’re gonna write with your right hand, I’m quitting right now.

Jimmy Maguire: You know? That’s how writers sue. They sit down with the, with the victim or whoever you are, and they pull things outta you, and you say, yeah, that’s right too. I did that. I forgot that. And they read about your scrapbook and they say, what about, look, I’ve had a scrapbook for what, 60 years.

There’s a lot of things in there. I’m gonna sit, I’ve won 52 races, I only remember about 30. Who knows how many races I could have won, but I’m happy I’m alive. I had a lot of fun. I’m remembered I’m in Hall of Fame here and there and blah, blah, blah. And here I am here. But I, I gotta read the, read about it.

I say, oh geez, I wanna race there. I wanna race there. And I gave a lot of my trophies away. I got about maybe down in Florida, I got about 20 trophies. The big ones I got, I gave some to my father, my brother, you know, when I was single. Like the guy I stayed with for two years in Jersey, when I went to [01:08:00] race, I always gave him the trophies.

I was staying at his house, you know? So I just looked him there.

Ron Lauer: When you left Jersey to move to Florida, did you dig up all those cans in the yard with money in them? Yeah. I dig those. I thought you would I dig all those. That’s how I,

Jimmy Maguire: that’s how I paid cash for everything. I went to Florida. There you go.

You all had cash. I said, wow. What I did, I had four, two cars and I used to park my antique cos in the backyard. And my money was all, I was a ground guy. I put everything, I didn’t put anything in the bank or stocks or anything else. I put all my money in the ground. I used to tell the guys this. I had a metal plate.

I parked the antique pedal with the metal plate and, and the guys wouldn’t believe me, the guys I backed all the cars, that one, they lifted the metal plates up. One hit twenties and one hit tens and one hit fifties in and they were all filled up with money and I didn’t know how much was in there.

Finally, when I came to Florida, took on all and the guys believed me and they didn’t believe me when they said, wow. So all my antique cars, I parked a car on top of ’em. They had to steal the antique car to get the money, but everybody knew that. But nobody did anything. ’cause see, I knew all the crooks in town.

That was the secret.

Lynn Paxton: Hey, I don’t want you to let all your nuggets out. Now save [01:09:00] some of them. You don’t see pizza very often, but there it is. The only

Jimmy Maguire: reason I come up here is to look at this. It pretty spies me when I come up here. Thank you all. Thank

Lynn Paxton: you. Thank you everybody. Your water, your water’s down.

Crew Chief Brad: We hope you enjoyed this journey through racing history and the personal stories that keep the spirit of motorsports alive. The Eastern Museum of Motor Racing is a premier destination for motor racing enthusiasts, showcasing a vast collection of historic racing cars, artifacts, and memorabilia. To learn more about the EMMR or to be a part of the next in-person Racers Roundtable, you can plan your visit or support the museum’s mission to preserve and celebrate the legacy of racing by heading to www dotr.org.

Follow them on social media for the latest news, upcoming events, and exclusive content. Until next time, keep the engines running and the memories alive.[01:10:00]

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Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Racers Roundtable, a podcast sponsored by the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing where history meets horsepower and legends live on each episode brings together voices from across the motor sports world, from grassroots heroes to seasoned veterans as they share stories, insights, and behind the scenes tales that shaped their racing journeys.

Whether you’re a diehard fan of dirt tracks, drag strips, or open wheel icons. The racers round table is your seat at the table for candid conversations and timeless memories from those who lived it. Strap in tight because it’s time to talk racing history one lap at a time.

Lynn Paxton: And I’m sorry to say, here’s my ears, so you gotta put up with me today. I know you’re all disappointed, but that’s tough. Shit. That’s the way it’s gonna be. Anyhow, before we get into our subject matter for today, I had a guy I thought was worth coming up here. [00:01:00] Billy wins.

Billy Wentz Sr: Billy, I know you guys. Uh. Glad to be here.

This is very impressive him. And, uh, thank you for all the work you guys did you put this thing together?

Lynn Paxton: Billy delivered parts from Bethlem over here to me today, and I offered to go pick him up now Billy, 96 years old and, uh, I, uh, I raced with him a little bit. Uh, he drove for SCAT team for I think eight years, something like that.

I know he is got one story when he had a good sprint car race. Do you want to tell us that story about how you run third in the heat race or feeling the car out? I to roll? Yes. Yeah.

Billy Wentz Sr: I can tell you a better story. I stand correct. URC had a race at William. Well. And we would invite all the people as long as they conform to our rules.

That means Kenny, well, Jan, I from Mitch Smith, whoever wanted to come in and I’ll tell you what, those [00:02:00] guys were just awesome. There was no contest. Well, we drew. We drew for spot starting spots. I got the full position. Wow. And guess who was outside Kenny Weld In Whiter car. So I thought, well, this is, this is gonna be no contest.

It was a Sunday afternoon. And the, and the, the cars couldn’t grab that track at all. It was slick as could be. It was just right. I had a 3 27, I was half wore out and I looked at, I heard that whiter car next to me. I thought, this is gonna be fun. It comes down for the green flag. All I heard was buzzing on his, on outside, and I grabbed the racetrack and I took off.

This went on. We had four restarts and every restart, I beat him to the punch. I come off first, but by the time I got going good, they got pictures of it. The front shocks went out and one frame, this wheel was up. The other frame, that wheel was up and it was so much for me to hold on [00:03:00] to. Went down in one and two, and I spun the car.

But. I kept going and I thought, well, I come out about 10th or 11th from first, and I thought, well, I’ll, I’m still in the race. So I came about and they give me the black flag that can’t be for me. So Louis Ks was, was the starter that day, and I refused to come in. They almost had to come out there and yank me out of that car.

I come in and I was so goddamn mad for him doing, I said, I didn’t spend and stop. I just spun. He says, well, the guy in the corner with a yellow flag, he hung it up. He said, had no choice. I said, well, at least I give him a little bit of a run for money. But, uh, to start alongside a Kenny welder in any car, it was a thrill for me.

I would go to the Grove every chance I get. And we always had underpowered cars that just for scratching, no chess With scratching? Yeah, with scratching cars. Well, they were always underpowered. They had, yeah, probably [00:04:00] we, we did pretty good. We qualified and I guess one year we got a seventh or eighth out of it and it wasn’t too bad.

Just the idea going out and competing with these guys. It was just awesome.

Lynn Paxton: But I’m talking about 1962. You had a, a ride you were gonna go to Florida with, and you got Oh yeah. Okay.

Billy Wentz Sr: I got a call one day, it was in the winter time, and it was a guy by the name of JJ Smith from Straton said, bill, do you want to go to Tampa?

Drive my car? Uh, I had to think that one over. I said, hell yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there now. I didn’t know if I could get time off, but I was going no matter what. So we made arrangements. He said, I want you come up to the garage, get fitted in the car. We’ll talk about the arrangements about how to get the car down.

You’re gonna have to take it down. He worked for the railroad, so he just rode the railroad. So now I’m all pumped up. I’m going to go to Tampa. I have my bags packed, everything ready. A week before I was ready [00:05:00] to leave, I got a phone call from his kid. He said, Hey, um, my dad fell and broke his heart. I said, really glad, I’m sorry to hear that.

He said, we won’t be going to Florida. I said, well, the car is ready to go, isn’t it? He said, yeah, but that car don’t go unless the old man goes. I. So you could travel with a broken arm. It ain’t that bad. He says he’s not going to take the car down. And I thought, oh shit. You don’t know how pumped I was. He said, listen, in a couple months it’ll be nice and the The Grove will be open.

So you’ll have the rides for the grove. Well, I guess I had to wait for the grove finally came around. Race day. I’m ready. I’m pumped. So I go out there. It was a pretty good race car that had a flathead board. They ran pretty good and it was a decent ride. I go out there, I get fitted in the car, we go out warmups.

The car felt. We got a fourth. I’m taking an easy field in the car out. I thought, ah, good. Now [00:06:00] we’re all set for the future. I figured I think I could eat a hot dog. So I went down to the stand. I got a hot dog and a Coke, and I’m talking to my buddies down there. Oh, i’s getting feature time. I better get back up there again.

So I walk up the. I looked at the car, somebody’s sitting in my car. I felt like the three bears. Somebody’s in my bed. Who might that a bit? I don’t know. I don’t. I looked at it, says McGuire. Gimme McGuire. What the hell are you doing in my whatcha doing in my seat? He says, I’m driving a car. I said, the hell you are?

He said, I’m driving the car. I said, how’d that happen? And the owner didn’t even want to talk to me. He was embarrassed. So I finally collared him. I says, Hey, what’s going on? I drove the car. He said, listen, bill, I’m gonna pay you for the heat. I said, you paid $10. He said, I’ll pay you for the heat, but Jimmy’s gonna drive the car in the future.

I said, why? I qualified the car. He said, well, Jimmy says you don’t have the [00:07:00] experience he has and he could do a much better job if this none of a bitch can drive. Like he talk like he talks, he’s gonna win the feature today. Well, you wanna hear the end of the story? Yes, we do. It was kind of sweet to me, but not the reach.

To wish anybody bad luck. He fold it up in the feature and, uh, loading it up on a trailer, I walked over, I said, you know what? I could have done that myself.

Lynn Paxton: Now, McGuire, you’re gonna allow to rebut that later on. Not right now, but later on. Okay. Anyhow, I remember the first picture I seen of him was in an old number three. It was in NARA, it would’ve been in the fifties. It was a basket case looking and he was just a young pup in there. But tell him what car that was and who helped you put that together.

Billy Wentz Sr: Well, you know, I used to hang out at a hill to shop [00:08:00] and I’d go down there. Any fact, a tavern, I’ll hang out down there. Any place there was a race bar or or drivers, I would be there. I wanted so much to be a part of it. We had an old car. It wasn’t much to talk about, but it was an introduction to racing.

So I walked behind Hill at the shop and I saw there’s an old frame there. It was a two frame, and I thought, my God, it’s all busted up. I’ll bet you I could buy this from fire. So I went in there and said to hire him. I. I wanna buy that car back there. He says, it’s not a car. It’s only pieces. It’s junk.

It’s not for sale. He says, that’s a car that Ley Campbell got killed in. And he says, I don’t want to sell it to anybody. Well, I, I went back the next day and the next day and the next day he got tired of seeing, he says, what the hell are you gonna do with it? I said, I need the tubing. I’m building a race bar.

I said, that’s called Molly. I need some of that tubing. He said, but if you make a car out of this thing and something happens, it’s gonna make me look [00:09:00] bad. I said, I promise I won’t make a car out of it. I lied. I took it home. I didn’t have a garage. I didn’t have any tools. I didn’t have a welder. I had had nothing.

All he had an idea that I was going to be a race car driver. Somehow I took this down in the basement, took a carpenter square, and made a a rectangle out of it and start laying the pieces out. I thought, well, how am I gonna do this? I don’t have the facility, the faculty to do these things. If I go over to Sketch, he’s gonna kill me.

I’ll take it down to Frank Murray. Now, Frank Murray was building his own shop, his own body shop at the time by hand, digging the foundation, putting the blocks in and everything. So there were three of us. I took my other two buddies in with me under the condition that this is our car, not my car, it’s our car.

We were all three of us in it. But guess what? I’m the driver. I don’t care what you guys do. I’m going to drive this thing, no matter how it turns out. So [00:10:00] I finally convinced him. We took it down to Frank Murray. His wife says, get that thing the hell out of here. We’re trying to build a shop and I don’t want you to waste Frank’s time.

They said, listen, mark, stop and think of it. He’s over there with a shovel taking a foundation. One person, he can be working on our race car, and there’s three of us with three shovels doing three times the work. You know, backhoe would’ve been a lot better. Saw the bus that for a while, he says, okay, so Frank took it over.

No, we had the pad, just the, the, the concrete pad to start with. And he took it over. He had a couple rings in there and a jack and he welded that that thing straightened that thing out. They used a stainless steel wire to put it together. We’ve got all four parts. Whatever it stock is two wheel mechanical brakes.

Terrible thing you bought for 50 bucks. Well then I had $50 on my pocket. I went over to huffing junk yard. I said, I got 50 bucks. I want buy a motor for a race car. You get the hell outta here. [00:11:00] I said, well, this is what I got. And one of his helpers said, Hey, that Ford six that came in here in 1954, it was on fire.

He says, I’ll bet that you could make a good race car engine out of that thing. I went down and took a look at it and said, how much you want? He said, 75 bucks. I got 50. That’s what I’ll give you. So we went back and forth, took the 50, we loaded up, took it home. We fitted that thing in. Long story short, we didn’t have all the money to put it together the right way, so we bought flexible tubing and we used that for an exhaust pipe, and we went around the track.

It was at least a whistle, and it was so unique to hear it. You could hear that thing. Whistle. Was that you whistling or the car? No, the car with was, I was just smiling. All I was happy Went at to Lee Height for the first race up there and I won. There was 10 cars, shows up, 10 cars with a national, all the Racing Association, 10 cars show up and I won the feature.

Guess how much I [00:12:00] got? Nothing. We didn’t have enough money to pay everybody until the guys from out of town get to town at 10 and $15. I said, forget about it. I know I won. That’s all I need to know. Who built the body for the car? The body was there. He just straightened it out. He didn’t straighten it.

Very good. Look like a refugee from, we went to Hy Hill and he had a guy by the name of Drum Hiller. We, man. Yeah, yeah. And he made up a, a hood and a cow for that was 75 bucks. That was the most expensive thing on the car. But we got it together and we went racing with it. It didn’t go very fast. The only people scared was the driver.

So as far as tires go, we go to Charlie Sacks and buy his tires when the knobs were off for five bucks, and we use them tires on every surface. Guess how fast we were? Mm-hmm. It was experience, that’s all it was. You weren’t the guy that put ’em on the front, were you? No. Oh, okay. So I [00:13:00] finally got a couple rides here and there and I made my way to, Scott’s asked me to drive for him and that was a big thing for me.

And I drove for Scotts for eight hours, eight years. And he was the best person I ever met in racing in or outer racing. He was a hell of a man. I have to say. I quit him one day. He said that You can’t quit me. I said, why? He said, I had Mario in my car. I had everybody, all the good drivers I had in my car.

The only guy I ever put in my car was McGuire. I said, well, I don’t know how you missed that, how you missed that race, didn’t you? You, he didn’t have a good enough car. No. That’s Say you the only guy that did, he offered, he offered me driving the car, but he

Lynn Paxton: said, bill, what’s describing it? I said, I don’t want.

Jimmy Maguire: I’m,

if he’s driving that, I don’t wanna drive.

Billy Wentz Sr: He said he

couldn’t afford you.

Jimmy Maguire: That’s right, that’s right. Well,

I, I

required 50% whenever I drove any, anybody,

Billy Wentz Sr: but I, I drove for him for, uh, quite a while and I, him, he was there to play, [00:14:00] didn’t want getting his daughter though, so I was out of there. I got hooked up with Pete Sach and it was much better for me.

But as far as the person goes. You couldn’t beat Scot. He was just amazing, man. How about, tell me a bit about Scott, about your association with Stan Lopez. Well, I met Stan out at the shop, down s Scott’s shop. He’s another guy, you know, I used to go up there for the, for the banquets for this party a lot.

He was just amazing. One day he said, uh, I wanna show you something. When said, took me over to his, one of his Quo Hus and he said, I have your first race car. I said, the hell you do. I said, you couldn’t have it. He said, I have your first race car. And he showed it to me and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that he had that first one.

The body was made from an old Coca-Cola side. It was crude as you can be. We had a pull it with a rope. That’s how we started. We didn’t have a bumper for him the hard way. That’s the way I had the hard way, but had a lot of fun. Had a lot [00:15:00] of fun. Has

Lynn Paxton: anybody got any questions? I mean, he’s seen it all. He precedes me by a whole lot, and that’s hard to say, but he does.

Audience: Did you ever think in your lifetime you’d see a sprint car race? Pay a million dollars to win? A million to win What Eldora did this year?

Lynn Paxton: This year paid a million dollars to win the race. Bobby Allen’s car won it.

Billy Wentz Sr: Oh my God. Yeah. Million. A million

Lynn Paxton: dollars. A million bucks. One race. Damn. I raced my whole

career.

Didn’t make that kind

of money. They made it one night.

Billy Wentz Sr: If I ever got a hundred dollars, I thought I’d win the lottery, but you know, it wasn’t about money. I want to have enough money so I could keep raising, put the money back in the car, which I never did and never paid for until. I’m borrowing a little bit out a paycheck once in a while.

Lynn Paxton: Take

food

off the table for the family.

Billy Wentz Sr: Yeah, working two extra jobs. It was tough to keep it together. Then finally, when I and I, I never turned my old car over when I drove for other people. Yes. [00:16:00]

Lynn Paxton: Was that intentional?

Billy Wentz Sr: No. No. It does not. It just happen

that way.

That’s built in.

Lynn Paxton: Anybody else? You

got a chance here.

Audience: Did you ever run Lang?

Billy Wentz Sr: It was one of my long desires. I’ve always wanted to go there because it was a, to me, when I seen those guys run down there, that was the extreme test. I never got to run. Not lying horn, but I did run the mile and eight at Nazareth and Syracuse. I love Nazareth. Nazareth Track was great.

I drove a, a car for, uh, Jimmy up there one time and it was a lot of fun.

Audience: Did McGuire ever get any good?

Billy Wentz Sr: I can’t say he not. He’s not smiling over there looking. Come on Jimmy Smile.

Jimmy Maguire: I take three hours. Can I do that?

Lynn Paxton: No, you can’t.

Billy Wentz Sr: What do you want me to do?

Lynn Paxton: I can’t have you both [00:17:00] up here at the same time. You know why? There’d be a hell of a fist fight and your nose would be on the other side hand.

Billy Wentz Sr: You gotta gimme a hand getting down.

Lynn Paxton: We thank you very much. He was hand, we only had pay him a hundred bucks to come, so that wasn’t bad.

Jimmy Maguire: I’m here for No, you’ll put me up. You know I’m making money with you. That’s good. I’m giving it back to you.

Lynn Paxton: Anyhow. Anyhow, what can I say now? You heard how you cut him out of a ride and he told the story pretty good.

I thought, is there a rebuttal to the story?

Jimmy Maguire: Of course there is.

It was

I

a lie.

Lynn Paxton: It didn’t happen that way

Jimmy Maguire: half a lot.

Good ride. I’m gonna, I’m gonna see if I can lie better.

Crew Chief Brad: We hope you enjoyed this journey through racing history and the personal stories that keep the spirit of motor sports alive. The Eastern Museum of Motor Racing is a premier destination for motor [00:18:00] racing enthusiasts, showcasing a vast collection of historic racing cars, artifacts, and memorabilia.

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