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From Drafted to Driven: Bill Jackson’s Lap Through History at Le Mans

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November 11, 2025

From Drafted to Driven: Bill Jackson’s Lap Through History at Le Mans

On this crisp Veteran’s Day evening, we want to welcome listeners to a special installment of “Evening With a Legend,” a series dedicated to icons of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This time, the spotlight fell on 91-year-old William S. Jackson – co-founder of the Society of Automotive Historians, Cold War draftee, and motorsports veteran whose life reads like a screenplay written by fate and fueled by octane.

Bill’s journey to Le Mans began not with a checkered flag, but a college flunk-out. Twice. Industrial engineering gave way to business management, which gave way to Thursday-night departures for weekend races. His academic advisor didn’t mince words: “You’re not stupid, you’re racing those damn cars.” And with that, Bill was out – and soon drafted into the U.S. Army.

At Fort Riley, Kansas, Bill’s military training and Boy Scout instincts earned him the role of acting master sergeant, responsible for 44 men. During a brutal winter maneuver, while other platoons froze around bonfires, Bill led his men into a dry stream bed, dug fire pits, and insulated tents with buffalo grass. The next morning, while other units suffered frostbite, Bill’s platoon emerged warm and intact. “Where’d you learn to do this?” asked the colonel. “Boy Scout Troop Seven, Clearfield, Pennsylvania, sir.”

In 1957, Bill was tapped as a relief driver for AC Bristol’s Sebring entries. Though he never raced, he practiced alongside legends – Mike Hawthorn, Stirling Moss, Juan Fangio – and earned his FIA license in record time.

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Bill’s military service in Germany was no less dramatic. Assigned to Company A of the 8th Infantry Regiment, his unit was tasked with holding the Folda Gap for two hours if the Soviets ever crossed the border. He ran patrols near East Germany, even waving to Russian soldiers in guard towers.

During a live-fire exercise at a former SS training camp, Bill was ordered to fire tracer rounds at a pillbox while his company advanced. Suddenly, he heard the distinct bark of a BAR – aimed at him. A fellow soldier had stepped in a rabbit hole, locked on the trigger, and fired a full clip just ten feet away. Miraculously, Bill survived.

That close call led him to a desk job in the Public Information Office, writing hometown news releases and sports stories for the 8th Division’s newspaper, The Arrow. His knack for storytelling earned him a promotion to sports editor – no KP, no guard duty, and weekend passes galore.

Bio

Like most of us, William S. Jackson, became involved with automobiles at an early age. During the early 1950’s, he was a member Penn State University’s hot rod club, and in the mid-50’s he was racing in SCCA events with a Jaguar 120-M and some Morgans. After his military service, he completed his degree at Penn State and began a lifelong career in journalism. His editorship of major vintage car clubs magazines during the 1960’s and 70’s gives Bill credit as one the founders who launched the then-fledgling “old car hobby” turning it into the vibrant community and economic powerhouse that it is today.

Bill is a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians, founded in October of 1969. And during the Annual SAH Awards Banquet in 2023 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Bill presented his Auto-Biography to the banquet audience, including his recollections of the early days of the SAH; and the following recording was made by Bill, from that same script, in 2024.

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Evening With a Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to legends of the famous 24 hours of Le Mans giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you sharing in the Legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing. And as your host, I’m delighted to introduce 91-year-old William S. Jackson, one of the co-founders of the Society of Automotive Historians, who isn’t just a veteran of motor sports from being drafted during the Cold War to racing alongside legends like Carol Shelby and Sterling Moss.

[00:01:00] Bill’s journey to LeMans is a tale of grit, ingenuity, and unexpected grace. Today we’re taking you back to 1958 to a time when racing was raw, personal, and deeply intertwined with the world’s shifting tides. You’ll hear how a flunked college career turned into a military path that led him to Germany, where a chance friendship with a former Lifa pilot changed his view of war.

Peace and humanity, and you’ll ride shotgun as Bill recounts his time behind the wheel of a 1935 BMW three 15 restored with reverence and raced with heart on the hallowed grounds of Le Mans. And with that, I’m your host Kru Chief Erick from the Motoring Podcast Network, welcoming everyone to this very special Veteran’s Day evening with a legend.

Alright, bill, so we’re gonna talk about your experience at Le Mans. A very special experience at Le Mans 1958, right? So that’s Le Mans retrospective. A lot of our members probably don’t even know what that is. And so to lay that out, it’s a precursor to what we know [00:02:00] today as the Le Mans Classic. So let’s talk about your journey.

Getting to Europe, your road to Le Mans.

William S. Jackson: Okay. Well you know, it’s kind of an interesting story. I was a Cold War soldier and not many people know much about what it was like being a draftee during the Cold War years. And this is a kind of a humorous personal story. I’d flunked out of industrial engineering into business management and that flunk out of business management.

’cause I was racing sports cars. I was leaving Thursday night and getting back Sunday night and that just didn’t work well. The assistant dean of the College of Business called me in and just chewed me up one side and down the other Bill, you’re not stupid. You’re racing those damn cars and you’re not applying yourself, and you could succeed if you just get away from that.

And he said, you’re outta here now. And he said, I’m sure the draft is going to get you pretty soon. And he said, but after you’re in and out of the army, if you’ve decided what you want to do with your life, I’ll get you back into Penn State. If you could [00:03:00] show me something. And as I’m getting ready to go out of his office, I’m thinking, does he do this with every student?

Flunking out? Anyway, I, I was drafted roughly, uh, June of, uh, 1957, sent to Fort Riley, Kansas as a member of the first Infantry division. I was a graduate of Valley Ford’s Military Academy, so I wouldn’t say that basic training was easy, but I already knew how to play the game. What that got me is I ended up being named Outstanding trainee of the first division for the year of 1957.

After we had a two week vacation after basic training and came back to start advanced infantry training, right. My company commander called me in the office and he gave me a master sergeant’s armband. And he said, you are to wear this and on base you are a master sergeant and you are assistant platoon leader for the fourth platoon, which was 44 men.

And I’m just coming out of basic training and I [00:04:00] all of a sudden, bam, I’m an acting master sergeant with a responsibility for 44 guys. We went out on a winter maneuver in December. We were supposed to be out for three days. What they called in Kansas, a blue northerner blew in it, dropped to about 20 above with wind.

They canceled the operation, but they couldn’t get us trucks out to pick us up till the next day. So the company commander says to each of us platoon leaders, you take care of your guys tonight and when we’ll get outta here tomorrow. Well, most of the platoons built a gigantic bonfire and gathered around it and cooked their front and froze their rear.

I took my guys down into a dry stream bed and we dug fire pits into the sides of the stream outta the wind. I had them put their pup tents up. Two pegs high instead of three pegs high. So they would cut the wind and as per usual, put dirt around the edges so it wouldn’t blow away. Fill ’em full of buffalo grass and then get their sleeping bags out.

And I went [00:05:00] around and checked every one of ’em to be sure they took their boots off where they got into the sleeping bags. Well, the first Sergeant comes around, Jackson, what is all this non reg stuff? You are not allowed to do this. Put those tents up properly and yes, sergeant. As soon as he left, I told the guys, I said, just leave everything the way it is.

Well, the next morning the colonel of the regiment comes around with the company commander and the first sergeant. They suffered 11% frostbite. They came down into to the sunken Stream bed. My guys are gathered around the fire pits in the side of the stream and, and, uh, they’d all had a good night’s sleep and I hadn’t lost a man.

Colonel looks around. Says, who’s in charge here? And the first Sergeant is smiling. You know, he says he is. So I’m standing there at attention and the colonel says, Sergeant, what is all this? Where’d you learn to do this? Boy Scout Troop seven Clearfield, Pennsylvania, sir. Got a big grid on his face that says, carry on Sergeant.

And they went away. [00:06:00] And the first Sergeant is kind of behind him going, credible. But, uh, anyway, that was one of the most interesting experiences I had as a platoon sergeant right out of basic trading. Well, I, when I went over to Germany, of course I was back as a PFC. Again, I went over, I think probably been September or October or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: So before you got deployed in Germany, you were racing here in the States?

William S. Jackson: Oh yeah. My very first event was the Breakneck Hill climb outside of Cumberland, Maryland. Because I had just finished my 21 hours of observed practice and were required to get your SECA license and they liked you to run two or three hill climbs before they cut you loose for road racing.

So I started racing with a 54 Jag xk, one 20 modified Roadster, and it was soft sprung. You know, you could bottom out and take out $300 worth of mufflers. So I had made a set of straight pipes, came out under the driver’s door. So, like I say, this is my [00:07:00] very first event. I’m under the car putting the straight pipes on.

Somebody starts kicking my foot. I look out from underneath and I see the bottom of farmer bib overalls. Thought some stupid farmer’s going to ask me a bunch of dumb questions. So I yelled out from under the car, what the hell do you want? And there’s silence. And then he all got, if Jack, having lived in Texas, I recognized that the accent.

And I’m thinking, there’s this guy from Texas that had been racing on the west coast. They said it’s coming east. That races in farmer bi overalls named Carol Shelby. So I rolled out from under my car and sure as hell, it’s Carol. Yes, Mr. Shelby. I have a jack. He was driving for some millionaire who had bought one of the last front engine Ferrari Grand Prix cars and hired Carol to drive it and they was going after the SECA unlimited Class Hill Climb Championship.

So. I go with Carol up to the Ferrari pit and Eric sits with a flat left rear trier and somebody forgot the jack. [00:08:00] Anyway, that was the beginning of, of a relationship with Carol ’cause he had come east and was running some of the same courses I was back up to, to, uh, January 57th. Driven for the Morgan Factory team.

I they read in the spring sprints at Upper Marlborough. The AC Bristol Importers had run a big article in the Washington Post. That they were coming to Upper Marlborough for the SCCA spring sprints, and they were gonna show the locals how it was done. So long story short, I beat the top AC Bristol driver for new production in the spring sprints at Mar Gra.

So afterwards, I’m down in the pits, we ru run what you brung, and I’m putting a windshield back on and taking the racing screen off and all. And these two suits commit coats and ties and they walk up to my Morgan. Bag over the hood. The guy said, is this belong to you? And I said, yes. He said, if you can be our top driver with this piece of shit, you gotta [00:09:00] drive for us.

How’d you like to go to br? Well, ACS plan was to have four cars at Seabring, but they only gave him three interest, so I ended up as a relief driver of the other three. I’ll be honest with you, I never got in the race. Mm. I got to practice, you know, I was on a track with Mike Hawthorne and Sterling Moss.

Juan fgi and I mean, but you still had to get your license, right? That’s where I got my license. You had to have an FIA license to run sibr. And I had got, you know, real quick, I mean I had about a month and a half. I got my FIA license based on my SECA license.

Crew Chief Eric: For a US race you need an international license.

Yeah, you had to have

William S. Jackson: the international license. ’cause apparently Sebring was on the international calendar. But anyway, fast forward, Sebring, Carol Shelby and Roy Salvador, the British driver are driving a Maserati for the fact. And they did something 62 laps in and were disqualified. So Carol is just walking the pits and he comes over the AC Bristol pit and our practice [00:10:00] car, which I ended up buying from the factory incidentally for $3,500 is sitting in the back of the pits.

And Carol says, bill, would you mind opening that hood and Annette, and let me look in that engine bay. So I go back and, you know. I put the stick in it to hold it up, and he’s back there for about 20 minutes practically climbing into the engine bay in that AC Bristol. So I finally, I went back just to see what he’s doing, you know, and he, he’s checking out the front suspension and the steering and everything, and he said, man, you could fit a big American V eight in here and you’d really have something.

This is March, 1957, first Cobra of 64. He was thinking about it even then, and of course. AC Bristol quit making engines. So they’re sitting there with that beautiful Roadster with nothing in it. And Carol had already been talking to Fort and he brought ’em together and, and voila, we had the Cobra. But, uh, [00:11:00] I was side to company a of the Eighth Infantry Regiment of the eighth Infantry Division in Mikes Heim, Germany.

Our mission, we had pre-planned positions in the folded gap for World War ii. It’s where the Germans came through, uh, when they attacked France. And our mission was if, as we called it, if the balloon never went up, then the East Germans and the Russians came across. We were to dig in and hold in those pre-planned positions for two hours till they got reinforcements up.

Initially, I was a BAR man, but then when the company commander found out about what I had done in basic and advanced infantry training, I became company guide, what they call a Pathfinder now, and I used to run patrols up near the East German board. Even right up at the border, they, they, uh, I don’t know whether it was these Germans or the Russians that built ’em, but they had built some guard towers.

I even got close enough one day to wave at the Russians up in the guard tower. One of our maneuvers or training was a live fire [00:12:00] exercise at a, uh, what had been a German SS training camp in World War II at Wild Flick. At. I’m company guide. The range Officer brings me aside and he hands me full tracer ammunition and he says, private, I want you to go down the hill, cross that little stream, start up that hill, and when I blow my whistle, once you hit the ground and start firing with your tracer ammo, it was an old German World War II pill box up on top of the hill, and I was the direct fire at that pill box.

And he said The company will then be firing and advancing by platoon. And when they get up to you, you fall in with ’em and going up the end, top of the hill, and that’ll be the end of the exercise. So I go down the hill, cross the creek, start up the hill, he blows his whistle, I hit the ground, I start firing, and then all hell breaks loose over my head as they start advancing by platoon, live fire, live ammo.

Anyway, they come down across the creek, start up the hill, and. All of a sudden [00:13:00] I recognized the BAR being fired at me. ’cause they do sound different. I rolled over and looked off to my left and here they’re coming at me. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I just, I froze and he put the clip through it 10 feet from me.

Story was, he didn’t do anything wrong. Even matter of fact, he was doing everything right, clutched his BAR heart into his side and looked ahead to watch where he was firing. And stepped in a rabbit hole and destroyed his knee and went down and locked on the trigger and had it pointed at me. Well, I went looking for a desk job.

Fortunately, my best buddy from basic training was in regimental headquarters. He was able to get me a job in PIO, public Information Office. Writing hometown news releases. Johnny Jones is in Mines Germany, driving into two and a half ton truck, da, da da da da. Sending him the hometown papers. But we had a lot of sports teams, you know, to keep us active and keep us out of the bars.

And had, having been sports [00:14:00] editor, my paper at Valley Forge, I started writing sports stories for the eighth division newspaper, the Arrow. I got a call about two months later from a major Grady. Who was head of the eighth Division newspaper and he said, private Jackson. He said, I like what you’ve been doing.

I just lost my sports editor. Would you be interested in a job transfer to division headquarters, general Smith? No kp, no guard duty, weekend pass every weekend. Oh, I don’t want that job. So I became sports editor of the eighth Division’s newspaper. Well, while all this was going on. My hope was when I went to Germany to find a Bugatti and bring it home.

Well, I had no idea how to go about it. You know, I didn’t speak German, but shortly after I got there, inexpensive, 35 millimeter cameras were just coming in and. They made arrangements through John Gutenberg University and Mines, and [00:15:00] they sent a photojournalism prof out to the base to teach us film speed, F setting shutter speed.

We had to know all that and taught us how and as as we were buying through the PX at the time, mostly East German 35 millimeter cameras. And then they carried it a step further and built a dark room, and he taught us how to develop, film and make prints well in conversation, we discovered he was a car guy.

Ernst Char was this man’s name. He had raced Formula two right after the war with a BMW 3 28 based car. I, I don’t think it was a Veritas, it was a special. Anyway, he was also a race photographer for the Frankfurter ung and the Rhine Zeitung newspapers. I became his gungadin. I started carrying his camera bags to the races.

Grand Pia Holland, grand Prix Europe in Belgium. I mean, just, I got to go to up to the thousand Kilometers and Berg ert. [00:16:00] Well, among other things, he became my chairman editor when I was editor of Anti Automobile. Anyway. When I went to Germany in the Army, I hated every German that walked the earth ’cause my father is buried in Belgium.

He was killed February 23rd, 45 as an infantry man crossing the rural ROER River in Germany to a capture town of Duren. When I met and got to know Earnst, you know, he pretty soon picked up my story and he was a really sharp guy and he started diffusing me. You know, we would go somewhere and he would say, oh, you see that over here?

Well, you know, that was the town church that you guys came in and just bombed it flat, you know, I mean, the one that I remember most, we were going to a race and we were on the Audubon. You know, there were no rest stops in the Audubon, but the Germans were very casual, so we just had stopped to get out and pee.

And I looked down in this valley and there’s the remains of a village, pretty obviously unoccupied. And I said to Ernst, I said, I wonder what story is there, why that? And [00:17:00] he says, I’ll tell you what the story is. I mean, he had very carefully planned this. He said the American infantry was coming up that valley, and he said this.

This was near the end of the war. At that point in time, the American Army and the Army Air Corps had worked out where the ground units had a ground air radio, and there were media bombers just flying around waiting for assignments. Anyway, this infantry unit started taking artillery fire. And they thought the spotter was in the steeple of the church in this little village.

So they called in media bombers and they flattened this town. You know, T is telling me this story said that when the infantry unit occupied the town, there was no artillery spotter in the church steeple. And I said, you certainly seem to know a lot about this earth. And he said, yes, my grandfather was one of the ones that was killed.

But he very carefully did this. And diffused me. I mean, I came home [00:18:00] at peace, but the thing that was the biggest shocker with Ernst, after he got to know me about six months, he invited me over to his house and I walked into his living room and framed over the fireplace, the dual controls, out of some kind of an airplane.

And I said, Ernest, what? What is that? That’s the dashboard out of a B 24 liberator. I said, where the hell did you get that? He said, I shot it down. He said, as a matter of fact, I shot down five of them. He says, bill, I flew a Falk Wolf one 90 in the Li wfa. I hated Hitler. I hated the Nazis for what they’ve done to our country.

But if you said anything against them, they took you out and shot you. And he says, but Bill, I am a German and you were kicking hell out of my country. ’cause you know what he had showed me. Was where we had unnecessarily killed civilians. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I mean it’s just like the Russians now Yeah. In Ukraine.

And he said, so he said, please don’t ask me to apologize. And I got it. [00:19:00] And like I say, I came home in peace. I thought about it in retrospect. I became the son. He wished he’d had ERs and I really bonded. I had told him about wanting to Bugatti. Well, he knew his way around. And then we found two Bugattis in a bombed out garage in V spot at the end of a bombed out alley.

We couldn’t find out who owned them, and Ernst said, bill, we’re gonna hack our way in that alley and hack our way into that garage, and somebody’s gonna show up and say thank you very much. He said, let’s keep looking. So it wasn’t too long after that that he said, I found a car for you. I said, what is it, Bugatti?

No, it’s not a Bugatti. What is it? Well, you’ve gotta see it. So we went down into the old part of M’S to an old home and to the horse stable in the back and in the horse stable. And he whips the tar pole off that beautiful 35 BMW, which I knew nothing about. I wasn’t up to speed on. [00:20:00] Vintage BMWs, so he told me about the car.

It had originally been delivered to helm, HELM, Kler, K-L-O-C-K-L-A-R, the main BMW dealer in Frankfurt in 1935, and he had hill climbed with it. Ernst and I, we were told that he had won the 1500 cc German Hill Climb Championship in 35 with it. BMW would not verify this. Hel clerk was a Nazi and they would not talk about anything Nazis did with their cars.

So whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But anyway, I said to Ernst, ’cause I said, who owns this? And he says, I do. I said, you know, we’ve been looking for a car. Why didn’t you tell me you had this? And he said, U gis. He said, you come over here, you buy these vintage German cars, you run ’em into the ground and then you just go home and leave them there to rot.

And he said, that can’t happen to this car. But he said, he says, I’ve gotten to know you and I’ll sell it to you. I had to pay $1,750 for it. And he said, [00:21:00] you can do this. We’ll do this one of two ways. He says, you gimme $1,750 and you can do it what you want. He says, or you give me the 1,750, I’ll keep 1400 and I’ll use the rest to restore it under my supervision.

’cause he wanted it done right and he had the context. Now, the one reason my car is only worth 120,000 instead of over 200,000, like the two for sale in Germany is. When they got the car to a garage, it had one of the earliest hurt roller bearing crankshaft engines, and nobody knew how to work on that. So what we did, we found a stock 35 type three 15, and we took the lower end, took everything from the head down.

And rebuilt that and put the racing head with three carburetors on it. So that’s why, you know, mine does not have the proper serial number on the engine to go with the VIN number,

Crew Chief Eric: but it’s a little bit more of a hot [00:22:00] rod.

William S. Jackson: Yeah, I mean, for a purist, that’s a death. No. Was it

Crew Chief Eric: difficult to find parts for a nearly 30-year-old BMW at

William S. Jackson: that point?

Not at that time. There was a vintage BMW Club and ERT had connections there and we were able to get enough parts to rebuild it, get it on a road, and it became my everyday driver. I mean, everybody in the eighth infantry regiment knew my car.

Crew Chief Eric: You wanted a Bugatti because obviously it’s racing pedigree is known around the world, so was it always your intent to go racing in Europe?

No,

William S. Jackson: I figured my racing career at least, was temporarily over until I got out of the army. But anyway, I’d gone to Europe with no plans really to race. I mean, I had my AC Bristol at home in the garage. I bought our practice card from Seabring from the company afterwards, and I had to pay $3,500 for it.

It’s big money in the 1950s, but it was sitting at home in the garage, you know? So I didn’t have money to, you know, to really buy a exotic new race car. But [00:23:00] anyway, Ernst and I, we would take my BMW and go to the races and that. I’ve never forgotten. We were going to the thousand kilometers up at the Nu Burn ring.

I was worried about parking that car just in the parking lot, but as we got close to the Nu Burn ring, the police just kept motioning me through right up to the race. And when I got into the paddock. There are at least a hundred Bugattis. It was the annual gathering of the Bugatti Clubs of Europe and the Bugatti Club of Deutsche Lawn was the host that year.

And of course, the police didn’t know the difference between A BMW and a Bugatti. They just knew it was an old race car. So I pulled into, into that paddock area with all these Bugattis, you know, and all these guys are looking. And I got US forces plates on it and they started to come over and look at it.

T was with me and of course, and I [00:24:00] noticed three guys talking with their heads together. Then they came over, shook my hand and explained to me in German with Ernst Telling, you know, what they were saying. And what they said was, we really appreciate your appreciation of a German engineering of a car and.

In appreciation for what you have done. We are making you a lifetime member of the Bugatti Club of Delan, and they presented me with a beautiful car badge, which is on the side of the hood of the BMW still. So, I mean, that was one of the thrills I had with a. I joined the Hess E-H-E-S-S-E Motor Sports Club, which was like saying the Pennsylvania Motor Sports Club.

Mm-hmm. Did some not serious airport racing, but some fun racing with the German guys. You know, they really liked the fact, again, that I had had this work done on this [00:25:00] car.

Crew Chief Eric: So how did you hear about the Le Mans’s retrospective? I mean, was Le Mans’s ever? Well, with her

William S. Jackson: connections, he came to me and he said, bill.

How’d you like to run the La Man’s retrospective race? I thought he meant the 24 hour, and I said, I can’t run, run the BMW for 24 hours. He said, no, no, no, no. He says, the day before the 24 hour, there’s a one hour race called the Le Mansn Retro Retrospective for cars that raced there prior to World War ii, prior to 1939.

He says, your BMW qualifies and I can get you an entry. So PFC Jackson goes to his company commander in the Eighth Infantry Company, A of the Eighth Infantry Regiment. And I said, I, everybody knew my car on base Captain I, I said, I have an opportunity to run my BMW in the La Man’s retrospective race to explain to him what it was.

And he said, Jackson, that’s above my pay grade. I can’t give you permission to do that. You’re gonna have to go see the colonel. So I go up to headquarters, the eighth infantry [00:26:00] regiment to the colonel’s office, and I go in and I. Make a same presentation and he says the same thing I, that’s above my pay grade Jackson.

You’re gonna have to go to division headquarters and talk to somebody up there. So I drive up the division headquarters in Bud Krono bark in the general’s parking lot next to an Austin Healey. Somebody’s a car guy. PFC Jackson just walks in cold into the commanding General’s office and there’s a major sitting there at the desk.

You know, what the hell do you want private? And I said, well, sir, I, I was told I have to come see the Commanding General. I have an opportunity to run my 1935 BMW in the La Man’s retrospective race. You what? Let me get the general guess who the car guy was. So he comes rushing out of his office, you know, and I told him the whole story and, and he says, of course you can, private Jackson.

He says, but you damn well better tell him you’re in the eighth Infantry Division. Yes, sir. [00:27:00] So me and my best Army buddy, Jack Gobel, hop in the car at the time. You know, the easiest way to go to La Mans was to go to Paris and go south. Well, Paris was off limits to GIS at the time, so we went south through, I can’t think of it.

We went south and almost straight across at LeMans, we hit some towns that we were the first GIS there since World War ii. I mean, it was a relatively quiet area. Anyway, we got to LeMans and uh,

Crew Chief Eric: were you well received by the French?

William S. Jackson: Oh yeah. They loved the car and the fact that we were GIS and they, like I say, these towns that we hit, you know, like we were the first American GIS back since they’d been liberated, you know, they were very happy to see us.

Crew Chief Eric: So what did you think of Le Mans at that time?

William S. Jackson: Well, of course coming from the States, that was one of the. Golden wishes for anybody racing cars was to go to the mall, you know, with some factory team. It just blew me away to, [00:28:00] to be there, to be on that track with vintage Bentleys and Rolls Royces, a Buggati and Al Alpha Romeos, Andela Hayes, and the Lodges, and all the beautiful vintage cars.

I think we had a LA mall start. With our cars angled.

CAR SOUNDS: Mm-hmm.

William S. Jackson: You were allowed to have a passenger, you know, if you had a two man sports car. And so Jack, my best buddy on the Army, Jack Gobel, got the ride the whole hour with me.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s unpack that a little bit more. So driving Le Mans, did it live up to all the hype?

Did it live up to your expectations?

William S. Jackson: Oh yeah. I mean, I had seen some film of previous Le Mansr races. Forgive me, I still call it Little Mans. That’s

CAR SOUNDS: fine.

William S. Jackson: But you know, it was just a thrill to be on that track. I mean, it would’ve been the same way if I’d had gotten to run in the Indianapolis 500. I just, it was that kind of a thrill for me to, you know, to get to go down the Ong straight, wide open.

And I had one [00:29:00] experience during the race. My boomer had mechanical breaks, and I had one that started locking up, so I’m sure you’re familiar with the laud course. Mm-hmm. At the end of the Mosam Strait, you turn, literally turn, right?

CAR SOUNDS: Mm-hmm.

William S. Jackson: My top speed was probably 80, 85, and when I’d start the break, that break would catch and I’d kind of skidder through the turn.

And by the third lap, when I would come through the Frenches were getting up on the hay bills and clapping, and I made it through the turn.

Crew Chief Eric: So since you spent an hour going around the circuit, obviously the Mosan always has, its appealed because you can just go flat out and you can really test the limits of your card.

Yeah. But was there a section of the track that you really liked past the pits you went

William S. Jackson: through semester? Mm-hmm. And I liked that.

Crew Chief Eric: And the Dunlop Bridge was there at that time. Yeah, yeah.

William S. Jackson: Yes. Gimme a break. How many years ago This is, and I’m 91 years old. [00:30:00] But, uh, yeah, that was the other part I liked when we hit those S turns, the Dunlop Bridge, but you know, everywhere, all the way around.

The course of people were standing up and clapping when we went by, and they loved the cars as much as we did.

Crew Chief Eric: If you watch any of the old videos of Le Mans from the fifties, it’s all black and white footage and there’s some classic scenes of some of the pro drivers in like D type jaguars and things like that.

And you see women literally walking down the road with grocery bags because it’s old farm roads, right? Oh yeah. At that time. Yeah. So is that what you encountered when you were driving? Obviously it was in full color for you, you were there, but for those of us that saw the old footage, what was it

William S. Jackson: really like?

One of the thrills of of my life as far as racing. I mean, even though it wasn’t really a race, it was more than anything else, a one hour continually running around the la long course for people to look at all the beautiful old race cars. I mean, it, it was just a thrill, you know, to be on that track. Well, we, [00:31:00] we took, had taken along our sleeping bags and one of our pup tents and we just set up a pup tent in the, in the pit area and slump in our sleeping bags.

But you know, there was plenty of food and drink available and uh, what became big time drivers were there for the 24 hour to see some of them. I talked to Phil Hill again and I don’t know if Carol Shelby was there. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: 59 would’ve been the year he was there with at the Aston DBR nine, so that would’ve been the next year.

William S. Jackson: I’ll be honest with you, I don’t remember the guys, but there were some of the guys that I’d raced with in the states that were there. So, you know, it was a great, I think we were there about three days total. Back to mine, Scott.

Crew Chief Eric: So to continue to talk about the Le Mans experience a little bit, one of the questions we asked the pro drivers that come on and talk about their experiences at Le Mans, one of the things is, what did Le Mans teach you?

’cause a lot of people will take what they learned from that experience and bring it back to their [00:32:00] racing when they come home. Uh, so what do you think Le Mans taught? You

William S. Jackson: Don’t do anything crazy in showing off. As I said, our race wasn’t really a competition. Mm-hmm. So there was no reason. To press it. I can remember a couple times hitting a turn with, say, a vintage Bentley.

I would just kind of, after you, my dear Alfonso, you know, let him, let him go. There was no reason to turn it into a pitch battle. Uh, there was nothing to be gained. And, and very honestly, I was looking at the cars as much as anybody else thinking. Here I am on the track with a vintage eight liter Bentley.

Uh, it just blew me away. And then of course, seeing the cars in the pits, you know, before the, before the race. It was kind of like a dream come through for a young guy like me.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you ever race anywhere else in Europe after that?

William S. Jackson: With our Hesse boat sports club? We did. Like I said, we did some fun competitions on a couple of airports.

[00:33:00] Nothing really serious. Okay, I got to drive the Berg ring and that was fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you ever return to Le Mans after that one time? Never had the chance. Did you keep up with it? Many decades of racing now have evolved at Le Mans. Yeah. You still keep up with the 24?

William S. Jackson: Not really. I, when I came home, I, I was getting on with my life.

I had the AC Bristol, but I was going back to college. My major Grady, we became friends when I was sports editor of the eighth division of Paper. And you know, he sat me down early on and says, what are you gonna do when you get outta the Army Bill? And I said, I don’t really know. And he said, did you ever consider journalism as a career?

And I said, no, I hadn’t. And he said, well, you should. He said, we have the University of Maryland overseas program right here on our base. And he said, I’ll bet if you took a couple of courses and got good grades in them, you could go back and show them that, and you’d get back in. And that’s exactly what I did.

I, I went back and, of course, knew what I was doing. Finished my degree in business management, took my master’s in journalism. The

Crew Chief Eric: [00:34:00] retrospective the year you did it? 1958. That wasn’t the first time they had run it. Do you know how many more times the retrospective ran after you did it?

William S. Jackson: I have no idea. Were you able to find, was I the first,

Crew Chief Eric: so right now you are the.

Earliest person we’ve ever interviewed that has turned a lap at Leba, whether it was in anger or whether it was for fun, like you said, Shelby would’ve been the year after you, Andretti, who we’ve interviewed, didn’t race until the sixties, Uhhuh mid to late sixties. So that’s almost 10 years after you. So right now, yeah, there’s nobody else that we’ve talked to that has run it that far back.

Which is pretty cool.

William S. Jackson: And yeah, I’ll say, I mean you, you know, you mentioned you thought I was mm-hmm. When we first talked

Crew Chief Eric: and our goal with this whole program is to talk to people that have turned a lap at Le Mansr or been involved that came from the state. Right. Because it is such, like you said, it’s such hallowed ground for a lot of people.

Mm-hmm. It’s that bucket list I wanna get there one day sort of thing. And so it’s pretty amazing to hear the stories. Would it surprise you to know that? And it’s [00:35:00] not a direct correlation that that has morphed into something that is now known as Le Mans Classic. Do they still run it? They are now running it starting this year, every year from now on alongside of the 24.

24. Well, that’s what they did then, right? So now they do it two weeks later and they run three days. Oh, they don’t? And it’s a full competition. Would you like to guess how many people attended this year’s Le Mans Classic?

William S. Jackson: I have no idea.

Crew Chief Eric: 220,000 people. Wow. We’re in attendance. It’s the biggest vintage race of the year.

Well, people like old cars. Yeah, right. What people don’t know unless they’ve looked into it, is there is a class for your BMW to continue to run.

William S. Jackson: Oh, really?

Crew Chief Eric: Even today at Le Mans, which is really, really cool. So yeah, that’d be kind of neat, right? Yeah. Maybe it’ll find its way home one day and run Le Mans again.

Well, on that note, bill, appreciate you spending your afternoon with me and Oh, sharing some stories and some memories. Well, I

William S. Jackson: love, you know, I mean, somebody that’s interested, you know, I’m nine one, how much longer am I going to be around? Or this is all going to be lost.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, good [00:36:00] memories, right?

William S. Jackson: Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: And a once in a lifetime opportunity. Absolutely. Absolutely. Fantastic. Absolutely. As we cross the finish line on today’s episode, we are left with more than just the echoes of engines and the scent of old leather and gasoline. Bill Jackson’s journey reminds us that racing isn’t just about speed. It’s about memory, meaning, and the quiet moments between laps from Cold War barracks to the paddocks of Le Mans.

Bill’s story is a testament to resilience, craftsmanship, and the human connections that outlast even the fiercest competition. His friendship with Ernst, his reverence for the machines he restored and his reflections on time and legacy. Invite us to consider what we’re really racing towards. We hope you enjoyed this presentation to look forward to more evening with a legend throughout the season.

And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you Bill for sharing your stories with us.[00:37:00]

SAH PROMO: This episode is brought to you in part by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation.

Through the modern age and into the future. For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and the A-C-O-U-S-A from the awe-inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance.

The 24 hours of the Le Mans is an automotive spectacle like no other for over a century. The 24 hours Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate for the benefit of future motorists, and it’s a [00:38:00] celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motor sports. To learn more about or to become a member of the A-C-O-U-S-A look no further than www do Le Mansn org.

Click on English in the upper right corner, and then click on the a CO members tab for club offers. Once you’ve become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook group, ACO USA Members Club, and become part of the Legend with Future Evening with the legend meetups.

This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsport and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at [00:39:00] www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.

Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the episode.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Meet William S. Jackson
02:06 Bill’s Early Life and Military Draft
03:08 Cold War Soldier Stories
06:22 Racing Beginnings in the USA
10:58 Racing Adventures in Europe & Finding Peace in Germany
19:09 The Search for a Bugatti
20:37 The Vintage German Car Dilemma … Restoring the BMW
22:22 Racing Aspirations in Europe
25:00 The Le Mans Retrospective Opportunity; Experiencing Le Mans
32:49 Reflections on Racing and Life
35:47 Concluding Thoughts and Legacy

Learn More

Evening With A Legend (EWAL)

We hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more Evening With A Legend throughout this season. Sign up for the next EWAL TODAY!

Evening With A Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to Legends of the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

Bill arrived in Germany hoping to find and restore a Bugatti. Instead, he found Ernst – a photojournalism professor, race photographer, and former Formula 2 driver. Ernst taught Bill photography, darkroom skills, and introduced him to the European racing circuit. Bill became his assistant, traveling to Grand Prix events across Holland, Belgium, and Germany.

But Ernst offered more than motorsports access. He offered healing. Bill’s father had been killed in WWII, and he carried deep resentment toward Germans. Ernst, a former Luftwaffe pilot who had shot down five B-24 Liberators, slowly dismantled Bill’s anger – not with apologies, but with perspective. “Please don’t ask me to apologize,” Ernst said. Bill understood. “I came home in peace,” he recalled.

Photo courtesy of William S. Jackson, SAH

The BMW That Became a Legend

Ernst eventually led Bill to a horse stable in old Mainz, where a tarp concealed a 1935 BMW 315. It wasn’t a Bugatti, but it was beautiful. The car had hillclimb pedigree, possibly a 1500cc German champion, though BMW wouldn’t confirm it due to the owner’s Nazi ties. Ernst offered Bill two options: buy it outright or let him restore it under strict supervision. Bill chose the latter.

The car’s engine was replaced with a rebuilt lower end and a racing head – making it a hot rod by purist standards, but a driver’s dream nonetheless. It became Bill’s daily driver, known across the 8th Infantry Regiment.

Le Mans Retrospective

In 1958, Ernst asked, “How’d you like to run the Le Mans retrospective?” Bill thought he meant the 24-hour race. Instead, it was a one-hour event for pre-WWII cars held the day before the main race. His BMW qualified.

Bill climbed the military chain of command – from his company commander to the colonel, then to division headquarters. At the general’s office, a major barked, “What the hell do you want, private?” But the general – clearly a car guy – emerged, heard the story, and said, “Of course you can, Private Jackson. But you damn well better tell them you’re in the 8th Infantry Division.”

Bill and his buddy Jack Gobel drove to Le Mans, passing through towns where they were the first American soldiers seen since WWII. The French welcomed them warmly, especially the car.

The Track, the Crowd, the Moment

With cars angled for a classic Le Mans start and Jack riding shotgun, Bill took to the track not for glory, but for memory. Mechanical brakes gave him a scare – one locked up and sent him skittering through a turn – but by the third lap, French spectators were cheering him on from the hay bales.

The track was alive with vintage Bentleys, Bugattis, Alfas, and Delahayes. Bill didn’t race them – he admired them. “After you, my dear Alfonso,” he’d say, letting a Bentley pass. It wasn’t about competition. It was about reverence.

After Germany, Bill returned to racing stateside. His first event? The Breakneck Hill Climb near Cumberland, Maryland, behind the wheel of a soft-sprung ’54 Jaguar XK120 Roadster. While fitting straight pipes under the car, a pair of farmer’s bib overalls kicked his foot. “What the hell do you want?” Bill barked – only to roll out and find himself face-to-face with Carroll Shelby.

Yes, that Carroll Shelby. The Texan legend was chasing the SCCA Unlimited Class Hill Climb Championship in a front-engine Ferrari Grand Prix car. Bill lent him a jack, and a friendship was born. One moment stands out: Shelby, fresh off a disqualification, wandered into the AC Bristol pit and asked to inspect Bill’s practice car. “You could fit a big American V8 in here,” he mused. The first Cobra would roar to life in 1964 – but the spark had already ignited.

What LeMans Taught Him

“Don’t do anything crazy showing off,” Bill said. “There was nothing to be gained.” He was just a young man on hallowed ground, surrounded by legends. Though he never raced at Le Mans again, his lap in 1958 made history.

Today, the Le Mans Retrospective has evolved into the Le Mans Classic, a three-day vintage race drawing over 220,000 spectators. Bill’s BMW still qualifies to run. “Maybe it’ll find its way home one day,” he mused.

ACO USA

To learn more about or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www.lemans.org, Click on English in the upper right corner and then click on the ACO members tab for Club Offers. Once you become a Member you can follow all the action on the Facebook group ACOUSAMembersClub; and become part of the Legend with future Evening With A Legend meet ups.

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Leipert Motorsport celebrates Lamborghini Super Trofeo season Finale!

Motorsports

#44 Thalin (SWE) / Bergman (SWE) – Pro class (European rounds
and World Finals)

Photo courtesy Liepert Motorsport; photo by Fotospeedy

For Calle Bergman and Manz Thalin, round 6 was a rollercoaster ride. In the first race, Bergman had to swerve to avoid a spinning car and was unable to prevent contact. After the unfortunate exit, the team remained focused and staged a strong comeback in the second race, which was rewarded with 9th place. In the subsequent World Final, the duo did not finish the first race due to a technical defect, but were able to finish the second race without incident in 16th place, making up almost 20 positions in the process.

#56 Roberts (CAN) / Courtney (USA) – LC Cup class (European rounds and World Finals)

Fred Roberts and Jeff Cortney also delivered a solid performance in the LB Cup in Round 6. After a scary moment in Race 1, when Roberts took a hit to his rear wheel and spun as a result, he was able to continue and finish the race in 5th place in his class. In the second race, the duo also remained confident and achieved a strong 4th place. They finished the first race of the World Finals in eleventh place and the second race in seventh place in their
class – a positive result to end the season.

#70 Stati (AUS) / Leitch (NZL) – Pro class (European rounds)

Nicolas Stati and Brendon Leitch put in an outstanding performance at Misano. They confidently secured overall victory in both the first and second races of Round 6. Leitch started from pole position in the second race and the duo even managed to extend their lead to an impressive 15 seconds. Particularly noteworthy: this was only Stati’s second race weekend ever in a GT car – an extraordinary achievement for the Australian single-seater driver.

#70 Riegel (GER) – Pro class (World Finals)

In the subsequent World Final, Jacob Riegel competed as a solo driver in the #70 car and finished 12th in the first race. In the second race, he put in a very strong performance, making up a total of 13 places and finishing the race in a well-deserved 8th place.

#99 Rytter (DEN) / Pretorius (ZAF) – Pro class (European rounds
and World Finals)

Anthony Pretorius and Silas Rytter impressed in both races of Round 6 with a consistently strong and flawless performance. Despite a difficult start in the second race, in which they lost a few positions, the duo fought their way back and finished 5th in the class in both races. In the subsequent World Final, they continued their previous performance and finished 4th in the first race. In the second race, they were also in the top 5 for a long time, but received a time penalty and spun after a collision. Despite these setbacks, they finished the race in 11th place.

#227 Brown (SGN) / Riegel (GER) – Pro class (Asia rounds and World Finals)

Ethan Brown and Jacob Riegel impressed in the first race of round 6. Both drivers delivered a flawless race and rewarded themselves with a strong third place in the overall standings. The Leipert duo also delivered in the second race: Riegel got off to a strong start but was pushed off the track in the early stages. After the driver change, Brown excelled with consistently fast laps and secured fourth place for the duo. These important points meant that Brown finished as runner-up in the PRO classification of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia – a strong end to the season.

#227 Brown (SGN) – Pro class (World Finals)

In the subsequent World Final, Brown finished seventh in the first race as a solo driver, but had to retire early in the second race.

#289 Song (CHN) / Leitch (NZL) – Pro-Am class (Asia rounds and World Finals)

Round 6 was an unfortunate one for Jiajun Song and Brendon Leitch. After setting a strong pace and leading the PRO-AM class for a long time, a puncture on the last lap prevented them from securing a podium finish – a bitter end to what had been a great race up to that point. In the second race, the duo once again performed well, but had to settle for fourth place after a collision. In the subsequent World Final, the team retired early in the first
race after a collision, but put in a strong performance in the second race and finished ninth in the class after leading for several kilometers.

Final thoughts on the 2025 Season; Looking Ahead

“We are very satisfied with the overall performance of our team at the season finale in Misano. With six cars and almost 8,500 kilometers covered, this event was certainly one of the most intense of the year. The double victory for #70 was a great end to the European season and underlines the strong performance of our drivers. We are also particularly pleased with Ethan Brown’s runner-up title in the PRO class of the Super Trofeo Asia – a well-deserved reward for his consistent development and hard work. In addition, our drivers impressed with strong performances in the World Final and impressively demonstrated the potential of all Leipert cars. A big thank you goes to our entire team, all drivers and partners for their commitment and the successful 2025 season.” said Marc Poos and Marcel Leipert

In addition to preparatory test drives for the 2026 season, there is another race on the agenda. Leipert Motorsport will participate in the 12h Malaysia in December with a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2. The line-up will be announced shortly.

About Liepert Motorsport

Leipert Motorsport was founded in 2002 and became one of Europe’s top GT-Teams in Sprint- and Endurance-Racing. Spreading its GT-Engagement even wider across the continental borders, this step is the logical consequence for the German team after being a front runner and championship winning team in multiple competitions.

Watkins Glen: Where Formula One Met Small-Town Soul

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

-

November 4, 2025

0

Watkins Glen: Where Formula One Met Small-Town Soul

In the golden age of Formula One, nestled deep in New York’s Finger Lakes, a curious anomaly unfolded: the world’s most elite racing series made its American home in a village of fewer than 3,000 people. From 1961 to 1980, Watkins Glen hosted the U.S. Grand Prix, earning accolades from drivers and fans alike. But behind the glamour and grit of the Glen lies a story of collaboration, conflict, and cultural collision.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Dr. James Miller, professor emeritus and motorsports historian, paints Watkins Glen as a case study in contrasts. On one side stood the “sporting gentlemen” – wealthy, Ivy-educated cosmopolitans drawn to the ritualized masculinity of European road racing. On the other, the Glen’s residents – rooted, civic-minded volunteers who saw the Grand Prix as a community endeavor.

This unlikely alliance birthed a racing legacy. But as Miller argues, the very differences that made the partnership powerful eventually tore it apart.

Bio

Dr. James Miller has a longtime interest in media technology, and this led him to the historical study of the automobile as an under-appreciated site of media consumption. From there, the highly digitalized modern race car presented itself as a possible precursor of future mobility. This was also an excuse to intellectualize the pleasure of motorsports, which has resulted in a connection with the IMRRC and membership in the International Motor Press Association. Miller is professor emeritus of communications at Hampshire College, a former member of the graduate faculty at UMass Amherst and a member of the Porsche Club of America.

Synopsis

This episode of The LogBook – our History of Motorsports series – features a lecture by Dr. James Miller on the history of Formula One racing at Watkins Glen from 1961 to 1980. Miller argues that the collaboration between sporting gentlemen and local residents made the event possible but that ultimately, their differences led to the event’s decline. The episode covers the origins of road racing in Watkins Glen, notable figures involved, the town’s socioeconomic context, and the tensions that arose between local organizers and the globalizing forces of Formula One. Miller also speculates on the possible outcomes had different decisions been made.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argo Singer Family

Crew Chief Eric: Formula one at Watkins Glen Sporting Gentleman in a small town by Dr. James Miller. When James Miller attended F1 races at the Glen during the 1970s, it was for fun. Now they have become the focus of social and historical analysis. In fact, the 20 years of Formula One at Watkins Glen from 1961 to 1980 are worthy of subject.

They afford a case study of the transitional racing era between the near amateurism of the 1950s and the increasingly commercial globalizing periods that followed most especially Formula One at Watkins Glen is anomalous. How do you explain a Finger Lakes village hosting the mostly European pinnacle of Motorsport and be remembered by Jackie Stewart as the most nostalgic US Grand Prix?

That [00:01:00] Formula One ever had? One answer is the unusual collaboration between Patricia Enthusiasts, community leaders and the volunteer spirit of a small town, an effort that began in 1948 with the first race through local streets and roads. Dr. James Miller is a professor emeritus of communications at Hampshire College, and a former member of the graduate faculty at UMass Amherst, a senior researcher at the I-M-R-R-C.

He’s a member of the International Motor Press Association.

Kip Zeiter: Our next presenter is James Miller, who’s gonna be talking about Formula One, a Watkins Glen Sporting gentleman in a small town.

Jim Miller: The 20 year history of the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen was bookended by two dramatic events. The first was the approval in August of 61 for the event to take place, leaving only six weeks before the October race date.

The second occurred in the spring of 1981 when Formula One at the Glen was removed from the racing calendar due to its inability to pay participants from the previous race. [00:02:00] A year later, the track was sold at a bankruptcy auction. Over time, it became clear that what made both the first race possible and the apparently sudden demise inexplicable, was the remarkable collaboration between organizers and Glen residents, local civic leaders and racers found common cause with villagers of all sorts.

To bring about an annual international extravaganza that drew hundreds of thousands of spectators to what remains the longest running venue of Formula One Grand Prix racing. In the US three times, formula One drivers voted the Glen the best organized race of a season. It was cooperation between these two distinct groups.

Organizers and local residents that made it all possible. The truth of this familiar claim is not denied by adding a paradoxical complication that in the end, the group’s differences were stronger than their shared interests. This may have been discovered only too late, and that’s what I’d like to argue today.[00:03:00]

In 1969, camera and Argetsinger proposed to the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation that he and private investors buy the track. In order to finance the continuing improvements necessary to hold Grand Prix racing, his proposal was rejected and Argo Singer left the organization. This, it turned out was the beginning of the end, even though a full decade of racing remained.

My view is that Argo Singer and his allies understood road racing in general. And the Grand Prix in particular, in ways ultimately at odds with local members of the corporation and maybe some villagers. I’m going to label these two groups, sporting gentlemen and residents of a small town. My point is not to assign blame, but to offer an explanation that goes beyond mere finances for what many of us see as a tragic outcome.

Sporting gentlemen brought an orientation to road racing that had relatively little to do with the geographic location of a circuit or its benefits to a local [00:04:00] community. They were primarily about masculine competition in the context of highly ritualized upper class games. With serious but amateur traditions.

These were learned in prep schools, private colleges, and Ivy League universities and yacht clubs and country clubs, and in sports like golf, dressage, sailing, and the like. They were cosmopolitans attracted to the involvement of European cars and drivers. In American racing, many possessed the business savvy of wealthy people and had a feel for both the scale of capitalization and political skills required to pursue road racing.

Early road racing circuits were necessarily located in the rural countryside, of course, but were nearly always near metropolitan areas. Where sporting gentlemen lived Lime Rock in 56. Well, that’s New York Bridge, Hampton 57, the other side of New York City and Elkhart Lake 59 in Chicago. Small town people were less likely to be racers [00:05:00] were, by definition rooted in their village, happy to volunteer their efforts that in turn produced benefits for the community.

Maybe they were possessive about keeping the Grand Prix synonymous with the people of Watkins Glen through maintaining what they saw as local control of the event. Here’s how I’ll try to make my case. First, the small town. This will necessarily be a broad brush treatment of the American small town, especially in the second half of the 20th century with reference to the Glenn and a few key local organizers of different sorts.

Next, a presentation of sociologists, Digby bolt sells sporting gentleman notion, and three organizer racer biographies that I think illustrated. Third, a two brief account of the fatal collision between sporting gentleman’s sensibility and small town attitude that ultimately brought an end to Formula One at Watkins Glen.

And lastly, some counterfactual. Historical fun, focusing on camera and aring, and the recent development of Formula One [00:06:00] Grand Prix Racing. The American small town has a double identity, one mythical and the other historical. The first is profoundly nostalgic, a celebration of an idealized past. The other is more complicated.

One historical fact is at the turn of the 20th century, about three quarters of Americans lived in small towns. Perhaps out of this widespread experience. Grew an outside imaginary significance. In fact, a study in the twenties and thirties, fiction in widely circulating magazines found that farms and small towns were depicted as enjoying a way of life whose essential goodness contrasted with the evils lurking in big cities.

But as early as the 1880s. There was concern for the future of small towns that were bypassed by commercial roots or emerging industries. And around the time of those magazine stories, the census reported that for the first time, city dwellers constituted the majority of the US population, especially during the post-war period.

The rural small [00:07:00] town was under existential threat, industrialized agriculture transformation into bedroom communities. Outmigration in search of better opportunities. Greatest population loss occurred from the thirties through the seventies. One estimate is that between 1950 and 1970 towns the size of the Glen lost one third of their local retail businesses.

In the early fifties, one of the most important American community studies took place nearby in the wonderfully named Small Town of Candor, New York. Arthur Viic and Joseph Besman described a kind of collective delusion that candor was actually the master of its own fate. They also revealed a shared illusion of democracy when actually a limited number of influential citizens called the shots, and when church members organized most of the town’s public life.

They termed the crisis of the small town modernization, by which they meant an often unwelcome intrusion of outside influences that were imposing [00:08:00] new ways of living. These inescapable authorities ran the gamut from radio and TV to national retailers to state level offices of education. Watkins Glen would not have been immune from these unsettling dynamics around the time that road racing arrived.

Part of racing’s allure all the way through the F1 years was surely a manageable antidote to forces that threatened a deeply established, rewarding small town way of life. Watkins, as it was long called. Shares the features of many other small rural towns of upstate New York for decades. However, schooner and steam ferry boats crisscrossed Seneca Lake, facilitating local travel and trade and bringing visitors.

By the end of the 19th century, the boats had been replaced largely by the railroad, which then brought international guests to the curative waters of the very grand Glen Spring sanatorium and hotel. Next door to its 300 acres. New York established a state park in 1906. [00:09:00] Its centerpiece is a 400 foot deep gorge.

That, along with a score of waterfalls, was given pride of place when the town literally changed its name in the 1920s to Watkins Glen. During the Grand Prix years, the Glen’s population was less than 3000, except for the unusual production of salt from brine wells. The local economy depended on tourism, agriculture, and retail.

The first bank was built in 1922, the first cinema. Two years later, the municipal building, A New Deal project housed the fire and police departments and the mayor’s office, the court, and also the library. Another depression area intervention was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which established several local camps where young men work to improve the state park, making it more accessible and more beautiful.

Jean Argetsinger in her history of the local Catholic church says that the Erie Canal and the local Mong canal, and later the railroads brought waves of immigrants to the Glen [00:10:00] to work as loaders of coal barges, stone masons, farmers, and at the hotel jobs. First the Irish, and then in larger numbers, Italians joined the descendants of the early British settlers.

The primacy of tourism, a seasonal economy that encouraged openness to visitors was threatened when the luxurious Glen Springs founded in 1890, closed its doors during a war after Cornell briefly housed GI Bill students there. It became a Catholic seminary in high school for 20 years and then was abandoned.

Perhaps the loss of the resort was an incentive to try to extend tourism into the autumn, which was a rationale for October road racing and, and later Formula One. During the fifties and sixties, regional tourism promotion became an organized effort using Finger Lakes to brand the area. It emphasized boating and camping and stressed the ease of transportation afforded by the new interstate highways, Cornell University, even established and Office of Regional [00:11:00] Resources and Development.

Here are biographical sketches of five men with different sorts of local identities who were involved in racing. Donald Brubaker brought his five children to the Glen in the forties to start a new life. After the death of his wife, he had connections here, new Yorker cartoonist, Sam Cobe, a friend of Cameron Argetsinger, who lived in the village was his cousin.

Brubaker was a graduate of Penn’s Law School, but he became proprietor of the Seneca Lodge, whose food he grew organically. The lodge was famous for housing, F1 teams, and its raucous post-war celebration. Active in promoting local tourism. Brubaker became president of the Chamber of Commerce. Malcolm Curry came to the Glen from Massachusetts and with a partner bought local newspapers beginning in 1951, which they published until 1987.

He later succeeded Argetsinger as executive director of the Grand Prix Corpor. Henry Valent was the son of Italian [00:12:00] immigrants and a native of the Glen. He graduated from Cornell and its law school later establishing his own practice in town. He was co-owner of the local AM and FM radio stations and like other leaders, he was active in a number of organizations from the Chamber of Commerce to the Board of Education and the area hospital.

Liston Kuhn was born in a rural hamlet near the Glen. His father was a farmer and male carrier and his mother, a teacher. After a short period following the war teaching school, he attended Cornell’s law school and he practiced law in the Glen. Later he was elected district attorney and county judge, and served for decades in the Air Force Reserve and was active in the county Republican party and other organizations.

Joe Fran’s parents were Italian immigrants. He and his wife Helen, built tourist cabins during the late thirties on the family farm along the lake. After the war, they established the Glen Motor Inn, which featured 40 rooms or restaurant and a pool. It became a storied [00:13:00] lodging place for Grand Prix teams and operated until just a couple of years ago.

They donated land that became the local golf course. Where Joe taught Formula One drivers how to play the game, he too was president of the chamber and their son Vic was himself a racer and a racing team owner, sporting gentlemen, is Digby Bolt sells term for the tradition of gentleman amateurs, upper class Protestants, mostly who followed conduct imported from aristocratic England at its core is the idea that games demanded loyalty, self-discipline, and a sense of command and accomplishment.

Their code of conduct stress quote, winning is less important than playing hard and fairly in the states. The newly formed national upper class of the 19th century steel and railroad economy imbued these values in its sons by means of Episcopal boarding schools in New England and the originally Calvinist colleges of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

So to say, sporting and gentlemen, implies social [00:14:00] position. Competitive, but rule abating, masculinity, a deeply socialized sense of how to play well, certain valued games, and a shared sense of camaraderie among the select few. Both cell even suggests that underpinning this orientation is the unstated view that sporting gentlemen possess the natural fitness to rule.

Three biographies of sporting gentlemen capture its varieties. The closing weeks of the 19 39 40 New York World’s Fair featured a race of 18, mostly European sports cars, over a seven 10th mile circuit between the exhibition buildings. The winner who averaged 35 miles an hour was 26-year-old Frank Griswold Jr.

Months before he owned a car that ran in the Indy 500, and in 1948, Griswold won the first road race at Watkins Glen. He ran a machine shop outside Philadelphia and became the North American importer for Alpha Romeo Weber Carburetors and Nty Steering wheels. Frank Griswold Jr. [00:15:00] Grew up on the family’s 34 acre estate on Philadelphia’s main line.

In Harvard’s class of 18 94, 20 fifth anniversary report. His father identified himself as a retired banker and broker, and his club as the Racket Club, which today says, quote, continues to be one of the most prestigious private city clubs in North America. Griswold’s parents and grandparents appeared in the 1917 social register.

They were said to season in Bar Harbor and Newport of Palm Beach and in Europe. Finally, it seems likely that the extensive Wikipedia entry for the Griswold family refers to Frank’s relatives who first arrived from England in 1639. William Milliken Jr. Was born in 1911 in Old Town Maine, a town known for canoe building and paper making.

He and his buddies entertained themselves by constructing various kinds of vehicles, including an airplane. Milliken’s academic performance at the neighboring University of Maine. [00:16:00] Persuaded his parents to find money for two years at MIT, where he in 1934, earned a degree in aeronautical engineering and math.

His long life. He lived to 101 was filled with remarkable achievements. His work for Boeing carrying out high altitude test flights led to flight dynamic research at Cornell’s lab in Buffalo. This soon expanded to research with GM on automobile control dynamics and passive safety. Two of his books on race car dynamics and chassis design are considered classic references.

Milliken was an early official at the SECA. With Cornell colleagues, he designed the Glenn’s first permanent track and he served as chief steward at the Grand Prix races competing in more than 100 road races. Included campaigning a 1932 four-wheel drive Miller at Pikes Peak. Carl Luson named him Mr.

Supernatural. Cameron Azinger was born in 1921 in Youngstown, Ohio. His [00:17:00] father, James Cameron, or jc, the first became general counsel and vice president of the Steel Company, Youngstown Sheet and Tube. He was born and raised near Watkins Glen where his parents had established a farm in the late 19th century.

Cameron was the only child of wealthy civically engaged parents, both of whom graduated from Cornell, where his father also attended law school. JC collected cars and own a number of packers. He taught Cameron at age 12 to drive the country roads around the glen, where they had a summer place on the lake.

Shortly before his 20th birthday, Cameron became co-owner of a Youngstown area Packer dealership, which closed a couple of years later when he and his partner were drafted. What is now Youngstown State University grew out of a 19th century YMCA school. In the thirties and forties, it became Youngstown College and severed.

Its YMCA roots. It was very local, a commuter school, financially supported by the [00:18:00] president of Youngstown Sheet and Tube among others, and prominent people were members of its board, including JC Argetsinger. It was the logical place for Cameron to attend after the war when he was married with children.

If he hoped to become a lawyer like his father, Youngstown College would’ve given him the necessary undergraduate degree without complicating his life or perhaps taxing his mind. Cameron’s dream of racing on the streets and roads of Watkins Glen began about the time of his graduation. He would spread magazines on the living room floor to explore different possible circuits.

Maybe with thoughts of the Targa Florio and the Vanderbilt Cup swirling in his mind. Cars were a lifelong infatuation and Cameron’s daily drivers were Packards and Cadillacs. He also owned an MGTC, an Aller J two a Bugatti Type 35, a Healy Silverstone, and a Mercedes 300 SL. In 1970, when the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation rejected by one vote, his offer to buy the circuit.[00:19:00]

Cameron resigned as Executive director. A post he’d held since 1955 replaced by Malcolm Curry, who had been press officer. Argo Singer, soon left the corporation. His son, Michael, writes that Henry Valent pressured the board to vote against the proposal. Vol also falsely claimed that the race might be removed from Watkins Glen.

During the late twenties, the Grand Prix Corporation embarked on projects to improve the track. These included a 4,000 seat grandstand, expanding the pit lane facilities, and enlarging the Kendall Tech Center. After the vote to retain nonprofit ownership, still more was done to modernize the track at very great expense.

The circuit was lengthened by a mile and widened, and two new buildings were constructed. About seven miles of armco. Barriers were built close to the circuit. This design later contributed to two driver deaths in 73 and 74. The GP driver’s Association demanded the barriers be moved back from the circuit, but [00:20:00] the improvement project had already been funded by a $3.5 million bond, plus the expense of another million dollars.

Today, these figures would total a debt of $36 million. What was probably an early, slightly desperate sign of financial problems along with unpaid bills took place in July of 1973 when the track was rented for a weekend rock concert. Summer Jam. Featuring big names like the band sold 125,000 advanced tickets.

Eventually, attendance doubled the size of Woodstock to 600,000. Traffic was backed up for scores of miles and services were overwhelmed. Afterward, local people filed more than 20 lawsuits against the corporation. It’s felt that summer jam damaged the collaborative spirit between track and village.

During this time, Bernie Ecclestone’s, formula One Constructors Association flexed its muscle against the FIA over regulatory and commercial issues and prize money awarded by organizers. It was a tumultuous time in [00:21:00] the sport that put additional unprecedented pressure on Watkins Glenn. After he won the final F1 race at the Glen Alan Jones, who was also that year’s champion, said quote, sure the Glen is a nice scenic track, but that doesn’t mean we should have to live in the Stone Age.

Henry Valent admitted that the race failed to break even during its last four years. Two accountants separately reviewed finances and both concluded that conventional accounting practices had not been followed. This led Cameron Ainger to remark quote, why no one has blown the whistle on this business Is hard to say.

Adding that in his last year of the corporation, the race earned a hundred thousand dollars profit. Reflecting on the situation, I’m inclined to sum it up by employing two metaphors that I used last year. For sporting gentlemen, the Grand Prix was like a traveling circus. It came from far away places once a year bringing exotic entertainment and displaying advanced technologies.

Often seen. For the first time, there was danger [00:22:00] in the activities, which were often death defying. Its visit was briefed but exhilarating. It had no local link except to the fairgrounds it paid to use, and for the circus. This was just another stop in a season of travel facilitated by local organizers.

For villagers, the Grand Prix may have been more akin to a county fair, which is supremely local except for the visiting amusement rides. The fair is all about displays of local good natured competition, fruit and vegetable canning, tractor poles, livestock breeding, and nostalgic objects like old time farm implements.

The long local history of the fair itself is proudly evident at every turn in posters, signage, and activities. Generations of local families participate. But a circus is not a county fair, nor is a fair a circus expecting one to be the other is bound to provoke, clash. The loss of the Grand Prix and the bankruptcy of the track had negative consequences for individuals on both sides of the local issue.

Henry Valent and Malcolm [00:23:00] Curry raised money by mortgaging their houses. Valent died barely a year after the track was sold at 67. Curry was younger, but he too lived only to 67. After he left the corporation in 1970, Cameron went to work for Jim Hall on a project with gm. He then served as SCCA Director of Professional racing and its executive director.

But in 1977, at age 56, he returned to Watkins Glenn to open a law practice. He died 31 years later. Argo Singer’s full-time auto racing employment after leaving the track was brief and he came home just in time to witness the corporation begin its grim, slide into oblivion. He must have felt a deep sense of frustration and disappointment.

It’s hard to imagine that being a small town attorney afforded inger the same satisfaction as running F1 races. Michael Ettinger reports that near the end of Cameron’s life, a journalist asked if he regretted that NASCAR had replaced F1 [00:24:00] nascar. By the way, first raced here in 1977. Well, true enough, but pretty bloodless and maybe masking the passionate feelings of a sporting gentleman.

Racers like Cameron and Volunteer Villagers would surely agree that the unique reward of hosting Formula One transcended mere commercial activity from the mid seventies and after F one’s departure from the Glen until 2017 when Liberty Media bought the sport. The US Grand Prix raced at seven Tracks.

All but Indianapolis and Austin were temporary and they hosted the race from one to eight years, four times. There were four US Grand Prix in a single season, only at Coda, a new $300 million permanent track. Did the race finally find something like a. One reading of this is to say that it was chaotic and reveals an uneven, maybe declining US.

Interest in Formula One, NASCAR and American Open Wheel Racing were likely more popular then with network TV coverage and Fortune 500 sponsorship. [00:25:00] You could almost say there was US Grand Prix racing before and after Watkins Glenn, with neither comparing favorably with the Glenn years until very recently.

This raises the intriguing question, what if Cameron Argetsinger had bought the track? There were public perplexity and disgruntlement when the race was lost. Lenz and Curry’s lives and maybe reputations were damaged. Cameron and Argo Singer’s full-time involvement in motor sports came to an end three decades before his death.

None of these things might have occurred. The next years of Formula One transformed the sport, especially technologically with respect to engines, aerodynamics and safety TV coverage in the US was sporadic, but in retrospect, F1 was maturing alongside new media like cable television that soon brought about the mediatization of sports generally.

Finally, formula One became a globe spanning business, so. Could a successful USGP have influenced these changes and [00:26:00] made the sport more attractive to North Americans. If the USGP took place at multiple venues, there are now three. Could Watkins Glen have been their owner or partner? Might this have given the Glen a seat at the table or offered at a role in sanctioning when Liberty bought the sport?

And conversely, would Watkins Glen International be a different enterprise? Most of all, less dependent on NASCAR for big crowds and financing. And finally, in 1974, Cameron Argetsinger proposed a US Grand Prix race through Central Park in New York City. Think about that if only Thank you.

Kip Zeiter: Thanks, Jim. That was fascinating. I always liked Alan Jones until I heard that comment. Uh, stone Age. Come on. Uh, does anyone have any questions for Jim?

Joe Schill: I have a question about the relationship between Mr. Valent and Mr. Argetsinger. [00:27:00] Was there a history of bad blood there, or why was he so opposed to Cameron Argetsinger purchase offer?

Jim Miller: So there’s a great deal of speculation in this kind of analysis. It’s difficult to find records, for example, where are the minutes to the corporation meetings where you might have seen a disagreement? One could say from what is on the record and even some of what I proclaim today, Valent was a very local guy who did very well for himself and probably had strong connections in the community.

Different from Cameron, who arguably des descends from a family who had spent more than a century here, but was a kind of outsider and a and a privileged guy. And there may have been something at the very, very personal level that had nothing to do with. And I guess I would wanna say that if any of that is the case, I, I wanna try to locate, locate it in this idea of, of a sporting gentleman, which I would say Cameron Arge Singer, the guys who initially set up road racing, uh, shared, and then someone like vit, smart, educated, but very local in, in a different way.

[00:28:00] There’s also probably a danger and over personalizing this kind of thing.

Niger Hale: No, I just wanted to clarify the two quotes that you attributed to Len. In 11 years, he switched his point of view from private being bad to private being good. That’s what you put up there, right? I think

Jim Miller: I’d rather just let this, those quotes stand alone.

I mean, I, it was remarkable to see that whatever was going on, I mean, he just may have been very frustrated and angry at the end. Full stop.

Audience Q&A: As far as you know, have there been any clashes between sporting gentlemen and local places elsewhere, or is this a uniquely Watkins Glen phenomenon?

Jim Miller: Well, what I might pursue next is something called the Watkins Glen Effect, where there’s a claim that.

In the fifties when road racing came to America and tracks like the three I mentioned, bridge, Hampton and Lime Rock and so forth. They were sort of part of a larger phenomenon that the Glen had led the way and there was a kind of imitation and cross fertilization. Now, would that mean there was [00:29:00] a tension?

Well, bridge had doesn’t exist anymore, and a lot of that is due to people hitting the noise and what have you. You can’t race on Sundays at Lime Rock. So maybe this happened, but it wasn’t fatal, and maybe that’s the case because the stakes weren’t as high as Formula One racing. That’s an intriguing question because if you claim to be doing a a case study, well then a what and how about some other examples

Alana Roberts: to the previous gentleman’s point, I think Las Vegas was actually a great example of that, where at one point they blocked the view of the course for the walkway.

So you’re seeing sort of an urbanization where you’re still creating a, an us and them. And so I guess my question would be with the major circuits being in major cities, how are we transitioning from this? Small town, us and them to big city, us and them.

Jim Miller: I think what I’m trying to describe was a different era.

Post Liberty Formula One is something entirely different. It’s a media spectacle and these cities are knocking Liberty’s doors down to have this opportunity [00:30:00] for attention and moneymaking and, and most of all, celebrity presence. So it’s sort of an apples and oranges comparison and maybe last year’s. Las Vegas race was kind of teething problems as they figured out how to organize things.

The best. The more interesting question about Vegas is that there was one years ago through a parking lot, I’m forgetting the author’s name, but it, it was heavily inflicted with or assisted by the mafia. You know, so that would be more interesting Vegas then and now. Yeah.

Audience Q&A: You had brought up the possibility of proper accounting methods weren’t used in those final years.

How did that play out in the town when, I have to think that just brought in suspicion of theft and questionable use of, of proceeds and monies.

Jim Miller: I think, again, there’s a problem with lack of records and when I’ve talked with people, they would say things like, well. Sale of tickets was always pretty casual.

There was even someone suggested there might have been phony tickets, you know, produced [00:31:00] and sold. I think in a, in a way, maybe some of this has to do with a conception of this whole enterprise. It’s just a bunch of friends who get together and do things that are good for the local people. And was there criminal activity?

I don’t know. The lack of records is really a, a difficult hurdle. And maybe in the end it doesn’t matter. ’cause the effect would, would be the same. Would anyone like to challenge the sort of argument that I’ve laid out?

Joe Schill: Okay. I’m not gonna challenge, but as the new archivist at the International Motor Racing Research Center, we’re gonna get you those records.

That’s, that’s a promise.

Jim Miller: It sounds like you’ve just arrived the other day, right? Dusty boxes of. Okay.

Kip Zeiter: I’m old enough. I was at one of the original Las Vegas gr pri in the, uh, parking lot. Did somebody else have a question? Did I step on somebody else there?

Lyn St. James: I just had a comment. Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. Lynn, I’m gonna challenge you Good when I make my presentation.

Oh, good. Good.

Kip Zeiter: Ooh, [00:32:00] stick around for that.

Jim Miller: Yeah, I was actually going out for lunch during that time. Uh, I just wanna say that that’s the nature of this kind of work. None of us claims to have the truth, you know, it’s a conversation that doesn’t stop. So thank you. I, I would be honored.

Kip Zeiter: All I can say is somebody old enough to have attended a lot of those Grand Prix up on here.

It was just a magnificent time of year. We geared up for it. It was great. Vegas, the first Caesars Palace Grand Prix was really corny and fake and ridiculous. I was at Long Beach when they were still running Grand Prix cars, and that was pretty cool. I liked Mosport a lot too, but this was still not to sound like the old guy telling people to get off my grass.

This is really the rightful home of the US Grand Prix, and that was a fascinating presentation, Jim. So thank you again very much.

Jim Miller: Well, I can’t, since you’ve mentioned old guys getting nostalgic, I can’t resist the reference to weather everything you read about the Glen, you know it’s in the fall and the leaves are turning.

I came here one year and it’s snow. Thank.[00:33:00]

IMRRC/SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports. Spanning Continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers. Race series and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive [00:34:00] Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

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Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 The Golden Era of Formula One at Watkins Glen
01:33 The Rise and Fall of Watkins Glen
02:03 The Community Behind the Races
03:36 Sporting Gentlemen vs. Small Town Residents
06:01 The American Small Town Identity
11:01 Key Figures in Watkins Glen Racing
19:21 The Financial Struggles and Final Years
21:41 Reflections and What-Ifs
26:51 Q&A Session; Closing Remarks and Credits

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The Glen’s first F1 race in 1961 was a scramble – approved just six weeks before the October date. Yet it became the longest-running U.S. Grand Prix venue, voted best-organized race three times by drivers. The secret? A deep collaboration between organizers and villagers.

But by 1981, the dream unraveled. Financial woes, unpaid prize money, and mounting debt led to the race’s removal from the calendar and the track’s bankruptcy auction. Miller suggests the split began in 1969, when Cameron Argetsinger – founder of the original street race and a quintessential sporting gentleman – offered to buy the track. His proposal was rejected, and he resigned. The rift between cosmopolitan racers and local stakeholders had begun. Miller profiles five key figures who embodied the Glen’s small-town ethos:

Donald Brubaker, Penn Law grad turned organic lodge owner, hosted F1 teams and led the Chamber of Commerce.
Malcolm Curry, newspaper publisher and later Grand Prix executive director.
Henry Valent, Cornell-educated lawyer, radio station co-owner, and civic leader.
Liston Kuhn, rural-born judge and Air Force reservist.
Joe Franz, Italian-American innkeeper who taught F1 drivers golf and helped build the local course.

These men weren’t racers, but they were the backbone of the Glen’s motorsports miracle. Miller contrasts them with three “sporting gentlemen”:

Frank Griswold Jr., Harvard legacy and social register aristocrat, winner of the Glen’s first race.
William Milliken Jr., MIT-trained aeronautical engineer and racing innovator.
Cameron Argetsinger, Packard dealer, Cornell legacy, and visionary behind the Glen’s racing rise.

Their world was one of country clubs, European cars, and elite camaraderie. Their vision for racing clashed with the Glen’s grassroots stewardship.

After Argetsinger’s departure, the Grand Prix Corporation undertook costly upgrades – grandstands, barriers, buildings – funded by millions in bonds. Safety issues arose, lawsuits followed a chaotic rock concert, and Formula One’s globalizing pressures mounted. Bernie Ecclestone’s FOCA demanded more money and professionalism. Watkins Glen couldn’t keep up.

Alan Jones, 1980 champion, dismissed the Glen as “Stone Age.” The race failed to break even for four years. Two accountants found irregularities. Argetsinger lamented the lack of oversight. The circus had outgrown the county fair.

What Might Have Been

The fallout was personal. Valent and Curry mortgaged their homes. Valent died a year after the track’s sale. Curry passed at 67. Argetsinger returned to law, his racing career cut short. Argo Singer came home to watch the decline unfold.

Miller’s metaphors are poignant: to the sporting gentlemen, F1 was a traveling circus – exotic, thrilling, transient. To the villagers, it was a county fair – local, generational, deeply personal. Expecting one to be the other was a recipe for heartbreak.

Miller ends with counterfactuals: What if Argetsinger had bought the track? Could Watkins Glen have shaped F1’s American future? Might it have become a permanent fixture in a sport that wandered from venue to venue for decades?

Today, Formula One thrives in media-saturated cities like Austin, Miami, and Las Vegas. But the Glen remains a symbol of what happens when passion meets place – and when collaboration is both the engine and the Achilles’ heel of motorsports history.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.

The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:

Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post-war American Road Racing (2006)
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (2009)
Formula One at Watkins Glen: 20 Years of the United States Grand Prix, 1961-1980 (2011)
An American Racer: Bobby Marshman and the Indianapolis 500 (2019)

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Preserving the Soul of Vintage Automobilia

Don W

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October 30, 2025

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Preserving the Soul of Vintage Automobilia

Founder of Automobilia Vintage and a lifelong collector, Steve Contarino’s journey is a testament to the enduring spirit of automotive history – and the thrill of preserving it, one artifact at a time.

Adamson Industries home of “Checker Cabs”; photo courtesy Steve Contarino

Steve’s origin story begins not with a single car, but with a hundred. His early venture, Adamson Industries, specialized in restoring Checker automobiles, amassing a fleet that once rivaled small dealerships. But as the realities of space, labor, and weather set in, Steve pivoted after many dedicated years. “I could still do this,” he recalls, “but with items that don’t take up so much room.” Thus, Automobilia Vintage was born – a haven for quarter-scale models, clay prototypes, and rare design studies that capture the essence of automotive innovation.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

What drives a collector like Steve? It’s not just the object – it’s the story. “I love the things you’re not supposed to have,” he admits. Among his prized possessions are three clay dune buggy models from Mercedes-Benz, never meant to see the light of day. “They were smuggled out, somehow,” he says with a grin. These pieces, once destined for destruction, now live on as tangible whispers of what might have been.

Ford Concept; photo courtesy Automobilia Vintage; Steve Contarino

Another gem: a quarter-scale Ford model rescued from a shuttered office in Sterling Heights, Michigan. “Meet me at the corner,” the anonymous caller said. Steve dispatched a friend to retrieve the baby car, which was a piece of design history that nearly vanished into obscurity.

photo courtesy Automobilia Vintage; Steve Contarino

Steve’s collecting philosophy is part serendipity, part obsession. “The majority of it finds me,” he says. Whether it’s a mislabeled “toy car” at a major auction or a prototype Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament made of shatterable material to meet U.S. pedestrian safety standards, Steve’s eye for detail and relentless curiosity turn overlooked items into museum-worthy treasures.

One of his most surprising finds came from a train auction, of all places. Hidden among model locomotives were 20 lots of Gordon Buehrig automobilia (sampled above) – including clay models, fiberglass cars, and prospectuses for a mobile office concept. “It was out of place,” Steve says. “But I was successful on 20 of 20.”

Spotlight

Synopsis

This Break/Fix podcast episode features Steve Contarino, founder of Automobilia Vintage, as he delves into his journey of collecting automotive memorabilia. Steve discusses his passion for automotive history, rare artifacts, and vintage racing posters, and recounts his experiences with various car companies and collectible items. Alongside his stories, Steve shares insights into the collector market, the evolution of collecting trends, and offers advice for new collectors; highlighting the importance of preserving automotive history and the joy of collecting.

What inspired you to start Automobilia Vintage, and how did your passion for automotive history begin?
How do you go about finding rare automobilia, and what’s the thrill of discovering a hidden gem? Can you share the story behind one of your favorite or most unique items in the collection?
Are there any stories behind items in your collection that surprised or even shocked you?
What role do you think automobilia plays in preserving the history and culture of motorsports? How do you balance the historical significance of a piece with its aesthetic or display appeal?
How has the collector community evolved since you first started, and what trends are you seeing now?
What advice would you give to someone just starting their own automobilia collection?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight we’re thrilled to welcome Steve Contarino, founder of Automobilia Vintage, a one of a kind destination for collectors and enthusiasts. Passionate about automotive history and memorabilia

Don Weberg: from rare, classic car artifacts to vintage racing posters and historic automobilia. Steve has spent years curating a collection that captures the spirits of motorsports across generations.

We’ll dive into his journey building Automobilia Vintage. The stories behind some of the most remarkable pieces in his collection and what drives his passion for [00:01:00] preserving automotive history for fans old and new. Whether you’re a seasoned collector or just love the romance of classic cars, this episode is a pit stop you won’t wanna miss.

Crew Chief Eric: And joining us tonight is returning co-host Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motor Inc podcast network. So welcome back, Don.

Don Weberg: Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Good to be here. Thanks very much.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, let’s officially welcome Steve to break fix. Steve, welcome.

Steve Contarino: Thank you. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s rewind the clock a little bit and talk about your superhero origin story in the automotive world. What inspired you to start Automobilia Vintage and how did your passion for automotive history begin? So

Steve Contarino: the funny thing is, how did my automotive passion begin? You know, I’ve always been so interested in the automotive industry, how it began.

Boy, aren’t we back here again with the implementation of technology and what that electric car, so the horse and buggy, there was no way that [00:02:00] automobile was gonna make it because everybody’s gonna be riding horses forever and yeah, it’s just gonna be a flash in the pan and it’ll be gone. I like the little bits of history.

So I’ve loved all things mechanical and automobile related. I remember one time I ran up to a car that was at a high end auction and I said, why would there be a Model T here? And my friend said, bottle T. Well, where do you see what that goes for? Why? Why? What’s so special about a red bottle? TI said, because it’s red.

And he said, that’s not a model T, that’s a model K. And I said, okay, tell me. Well, Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before he was actually successful. And that may have been three years, I’m not sure. But just the history of that. Who knew?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you also have an interesting background, or we’ll call it career in the automotive industries.

Little Birdie told me you were involved not only with police cars, but with Checker cab.

Steve Contarino: Yeah. Both being involved with Ford, [00:03:00] Dodge, and Chevrolet, and then even a few of the companies who’ve actually come and gone in law enforcement, Tesla, they were in, they’re out, they’re back in again. Fisca actually dipped their foot in for a little while before the end, but there’s been a lot of companies that have come and gone.

You know, I’ve always followed automotive design and why do they do that? Why do they do that? Why do they make it this way? Why is it that way? You know, I’ve been to many automobile factories and I’ve always been so impressed by them taking pieces and parts. Driving it out the other end. I, I never knew that most of these manufacturers, they don’t even own what we call automobiles or if you’re from the New England area, cars, their assembly.

And I didn’t know that. I said, well, wait a minute. What’s an assembly? Well, assembly is an automobile, but it has not gone over that threshold to be [00:04:00] sold. So before it’s sold, it’s called an assembly. It’s been done for years, decades, forever, and ever. And a lot of your followers probably don’t even realize this.

One of America’s largest automobile manufacturers is located in Massachusetts, still to this day. It’s a company called Factory Five. They make a lot of different models. They’re incredible. They make automobiles, but they don’t put engines in, so they make assemblies. You know, I was so interested in that type of thing.

I said, I wanna do it. I wanna make an automobile. I like this checker automobile, but I, I just wanna own it. I don’t know why I restore them. I have them. I’m gonna own it. I got all the intellectual property and patents and anything that was available. Making an automobile was very, very difficult and expensive.

It’s billions, but legislation [00:05:00] passed that you could build what was called replica automobiles. Not knowing that this legislation was coming along and, and. Poof. You can make a small amount of automobiles and be successful just buying pieces and parts here and there, and body being the most difficult.

Everything besides the body is easy breezy, but the bodies were the most difficult thing. And we had found some companies that actually make Camaro Mustang Bronco bodies, and we just said, Hey, what about a checking body? And they were on board. So even the most difficult thing was not that difficult.

Putting it all together was not that difficult Meeting National highway transportation safety requirement, not that difficult. EPA came along. It wasn’t that difficult until EPA decided gasoline powered engines were gonna be something that would make impossible. But [00:06:00] anyway, that’s why it, it stopped where it did.

California Air Resources Bureau said, let us think about it. Came back with a roadblock. That roadblock essentially ended the legislation that allowed the ability to make a gasoline powered automobile. So it all went crashing to an end. And to this day, everything is still in neutral. There’s still some companies who were trying to t trudge forward, but right now there’s legislation, you can do it, but you can’t power it.

But putting an engine in the chassis in that vehicle is what creates what’s called the requirement to be EPA in California Air Resources Bureau. And that’s the stumbling point. So right now, it’s impossible to meet with any engine and transmission combination that’s available. So I shouldn’t say impossible, just extremely expensive.

It’s just not gonna happen.

Crew Chief Eric: During your career, during your journey, you collected an [00:07:00] entire car company, but then you’ve morphed this into collecting things from the automotive industry as well. So the birth of Automobilia vintage. Why don’t we switch gears and kind of talk about that. Where did that come from?

Steve Contarino: That’s elementary. If you have a hundred cars, which I did checkers, it was Restoration Park, whatever you needed, we had it ready to go. Took up a lot of space, took up a lot of labor, took up a huge amount of money, and I said, Hey, wait a second. I could still do this. And I could get items that are not so big and don’t take up so much room.

Boy, if I love them, somebody else loves them, so I can love ’em for a little while and turn them onto the next caretaker. So it’s like. Automobiles but smaller. I’ve got quarter scale models. I’ve got all different size clay models from all the manufacturers. So it’s just a way of being involved in the automotive industry, collecting automobiles, but in a smaller way.[00:08:00]

And it, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Don Weberg: Steve, I’m gonna guess you’ve been collecting for a lot longer than Automobile Vintage. Has been in business, been collecting since you were a kid, or how long have you been collecting?

Steve Contarino: I still have things from my young age. You know, I would say back to when I was teen 15, 14, I mean, I was working at 13.

The things I, I would always collect were kind of always automotive related. You know, I worked at a towing service. I worked in all kind of industries that brought me near something related to the auto industry. My wife and I started Adamson Industries. I was 23, you know, when she was 20. We were kids. The things that I saw throughout my career, I collected.

It wasn’t big, but it grew and grew, grew, grew and, and today, yeah, it’s a thing called automobile Vintage.

Don Weberg: Okay. So how do you go about finding rare automobilia? Is there something [00:09:00] you do specifically to find what you want, what you like? Is there something, is there some criterion that turns Steve on that says, oh, oh, I’ve gotta have that?

Or is it just you’re walking down an aisle at a swap meet, you see something, you think, oh man, I gotta have that. You don’t even know what it is. You never expected to find it. What is it? How do you go about finding rare stuff?

Steve Contarino: It’s like. A lot of car collectors will say, and it, you probably heard this before, the majority of it finds me the rest of it.

I’m always searching for, there’s shows and there’s books about finding that barn find, finding that hidden treasure.

Don Weberg: Mm-hmm.

Steve Contarino: I’m the same way, but I had to dial it back a little bit and automobiles were something that, it took up a lot of the space. I mean, the scope of Adamson Industries. Okay. Just for example, when I had 100 checkers.

It was taken the space of 100 cars. Adamson in his shoes on any given day [00:10:00] had 300 cars on the ground. Oh, wow. You can imagine what it’s like when you have 400 cars, but now you have 300 cars. It’s big. It’s a lot. Especially when you are in an area where December-ish things start changing quickly. When it snows, it’s tough.

So you think about, you know, that amount of vehicles and trying to keep it so that they’re not frozen in time. That’s a monumental task. Cutting down a hundred cars, it wasn’t such a hard decision. It hurt my heart. I know a lot of enthusiasts thought it wasn’t the right thing to do. You know, I, I did take a, a lot of negative publicity about how I had no care for these cars.

But I sit here today and I could have a hundred of these small cars and they don’t take up much room and I can keep ’em under a roof where it doesn’t snow on them, and I can manage that. It’s much easier [00:11:00] and much simpler, but it’s just as rewarding. It really is enjoyable.

Don Weberg: Alright, so tell us the story behind finding one of your favorite or your most unique items in your collection.

Steve Contarino: I’m passionate. I really, really am. I look for a lot of things. Some days there are days where I go, well, you know something that could be my favorite, or, no, that’s my favorite, or that’s my favorite. But I find these things that get closest to my heart just like anybody else. You’re not supposed to have that.

So I have a few Mercedes design studies, and those Mercedes design studies were of things like a doom buggy. Mercedes never wanted to get let out that they were even thinking about making a dune buggy. So I’ve got these dune buggies, clay models in three different versions of a beach type car. And that’s what [00:12:00] makes me passionate.

That’s what makes my blood boil, because they’re things you’re just not supposed to have. And why are you not supposed to have them? Well, back then, I mean, these aren’t 20, 25 models. These are clay models from the eighties vintage, so you know, it’s passed the bang on the door from the legal department.

But to think that somebody somehow carried them out of there, smuggled them out of there, who knows? Don’t know. It’s like a concept car. They’re all supposed to be crushed, but yet a lot seemed to appear. So that’s exactly the things I love the most are things that you’re not supposed to have that I have this quarter scale Ford model.

I got a phone call. Hey, I, I know you’re interested in these quarter scale models. I, I’m in a bind. I said, you are in a bind. What’s the bind? I need this gone within two days. My office has been closed down in Sterling Heights, Michigan. I worked for Ford. [00:13:00] Can’t tell you any more than that. You want picked up, meet me at the corner of such I, I said I, I’m in Massachusetts, I’m in New Hampshire.

I’m on East Coast. Well, that’s the only way you’re gonna get it. I had a call, a friend of mine meet this guy at the corner of such and such. He’s going to hand you this big quarter scale model. Don’t think I’m nuts. It’s a baby car that he’s like, what? I said a baby car. It’s a quarter scale model. It was just amazing that that thing existed.

It’s amazing that that thing made it past the security gates or however, and this is a little later model, this one’s probably from the, the later nineties. So it’s, it’s that stuff that’s just amazing that it exists and you know, every day. They’re thrown into crushers or dumpsters or however they destroy it.

And it happens. So it’s, it’s like anything. A few squeak out, but the majority

Crew Chief Eric: don’t. It’s [00:14:00] interesting, Steve, that you mention that, ’cause Don has exposed me to some really unique pieces over the years. Like, Hey, I met the designer of this thing and he had the prototype of this wheel, or this component or this thing, and those little nuggets, those little hidden gems are always fascinating.

Those lesser known histories of these objects and these things that later came to production that we take for granted. And so I wonder in your journey. In this case, you talked about going there and knowing exactly what you’re getting, right? This thing’s coming off the back of the truck. But was there ever an instance where in your journey and your collecting where somebody presented you with a box and until you actually went through it, maybe you put it to the side that something popped out and you’re like, oh my God, this was in the box.

Did they make a mistake? Is there anything that’s ever surprised or shocked you? Happens all the time,

Steve Contarino: especially when someone who’s passionate has a collection. Unfortunately, they don’t always make arrangements for what would happen if something happens, you know? And that’s something being either an [00:15:00] illness or a death or something.

I’ll give you an example. I, I’m always looking for something. I’m on this auction site, train auction, like toy trains. I look and I go, wait a minute. That’s not a toy train, that’s a real train. Real crossing gates. I couldn’t believe that there was such a, a following who would collect all this train stuff.

So I started looking at it and you know, I said, wow, okay. And then I kept checking back ’cause I was kind of interested. I said, you know, trains, planes, automobiles, right? So kept looking. All of a sudden this auction company pops up with 20 lots of Gordon Buring mobilia, including clay model of a concept.

He had to do a mobile office. When you wanna do something with a client, we don’t want the client to come to our office, we’re gonna bring our office to the client. He had the start process. He was gonna make [00:16:00] this mobile office. Now this is long after you know the Auburn and designing all the cars. And this was later in his career.

And that’s an idea he came up with. And when I found that stuff, I was like. How does that have anything to do with trade? Well, good. Buring liked trains. Okay. This widow sold everything with the trains and this auction company had the trains. It’s amazing, and not only does it then include that, it includes some fiberglass cars.

We make it based on Corvettes. He made like three or four of these neoclassic Corvettes, all kind of documents, pictures, literature, cases, and cases of these leather bound. He in made prospectus that you would hear into somebody if you wanted them to back you financially or a dealership or something.

That stuff is just amazing and that it [00:17:00] existed, that I found it at a training auction and that it’s available now because I’ve had it. Now I share it. So what I say is I love it. I love the fact of what it is, but there’s gonna be somebody who’s gonna love the Gordon Buring connection and it’s available.

So I have that. And then I have all kind of automotive related items that have a story. And remember, everybody always says it’s not about what it is, it’s the story. Where did it come from? Why is it unique? And almost to a negative, I list as much information as I can. And I talk about not only the item, but why, where it’s from, what it is, what it’s made of, why it was made.

And so much of it, it’s all rich with automotive history. It’s all very, very exciting to me. It just, I enjoy it very much.

Don Weberg: And Steve, you have all these items from that train auction.

Steve Contarino: I do. And I was [00:18:00] very successful. On 20 of 20. Wow. No, I mean it was out of place. It shouldn’t have been there. And I see that a lot.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a case of people not knowing what they have or is it just wanting to get rid of it quickly? What do you think the method is behind that?

Steve Contarino: All of the above. I think that auction companies, a lot of times, unless you hit the right one, they’re gonna look at the bulk of what you have. They don’t look at the individuals of it.

If you go to a specialized auction, they’ll do the the back work on it. You know, I bought things at auctions and even some of the most well-known automotive auctions, they’ll have something on a shelf and they’ll say, toy car. I’ll say, well, what kind of toy car? We don’t know. It’s a toy car. We give you some details.

It’s pretty big. How big? Well, three feet long. I’m like, okay. And in my mind, you know how that slot machine goes, ding, dinging, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, dinging. [00:19:00] So I’m like, there’s no three foot long toy cars that are made of clay that I know of, except for concept models. Right? And I’ve done it and I’ve seen it and it still happens.

All the time. It’s a toy car. I mean, I don’t know why they didn’t do the back work. They’re auctioning off a hundred cars and maybe 200 pieces of automobile and that thing just happened to be, I don’t know. It’s a toy car. It’s not a real car. What are we gonna say? Toy car.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, so you’ve mentioned a couple times auction companies and things of that where you’re going to select things from your own collection, or you’re maybe finding those hidden gems that we’ve been alluding to, but with the rise of popularity of shows, and some of them have been around for a long time, like the Wolf Brothers on History Channel with American Pickers and things like that.

Where do you go pick where are your best finds and what do you recommend for other people? I mean, outside of Automobilia Vintage, they should come to you first, but if they were going to pick, [00:20:00] you know, and go look for items, where should they be looking?

Steve Contarino: That’s a very difficult question. It doesn’t really have a go here answer.

You are always gonna have things on eBay that are listed. Toy car, you know, there’s a lot of cool stuff on eBay. Unfortunate, it’s like everything else. It’s like looking through the phone book and trying to find the, a’s you know, there’s a lot of, A’s in that phone book. What’s a phone book? Oh my god, I can’t believe I said that.

A big book dictionary there. There you go through that dictionary and you are looking for the letter as it’s just, there’s a lot of ’em and you’ve gotta look and they go, oh, wait a minute, I’m only looking for capital. As that narrows it down quite a lot. So yes, eBay, I mean all different place flea markets.

You can find automobilia. Everywhere you could find things related to the auto industry and clay models everywhere. It’s just a matter of having the diligence to keep [00:21:00] looking and looking and realizing, well wait a minute, this is a concept car one 43rd. Yes, this was, oh, they designed this car and I said, no, it’s kind of small.

I can’t see them bringing that up to the boss’s office and say, boss, listen, we designed this little car right here. This is gonna be the car. So you get the opposite too. You know you’ll get all these, well, this is a real rare Tesla concept car. So I guess Tesla had this event and you went to this event in exchange for going to this event.

They were 3D printing the next. Type of car they were gonna make. As you guys know, the models are S-E-E-X-Y. There are many versions. So the SEXY, they were handed out and they were 3D printed models. But what’s happened is they weren’t done well enough that somebody couldn’t copy ’em. So you gotta make sure you know what you’re looking [00:22:00] at.

And the real Tesla models all had numbers on the bottom of ’em. They were much better done than just somebody 3D printing one 24th or slightly larger model. That’s what you gotta do. You have to really look and out is like, know what you’re looking for. You’ve got these large auction companies and they’ve got what they call automobilia experts.

That is such a broad statement. I mean, automobilia can be assigned, it could be anything. Are they experts on automotive related collectibles? I get a lot of calls about that. Well, what do you think? And I, I try to help people out the best I can, and also to secure that item so that I can have a chance to own it for a little bit of time.

It’s really a, a learning experience. And I know there’s a lot of companies that sell automobilia and individuals who sell [00:23:00] automobilia, but they don’t specialize in that, right? From the factory stuff. That’s me. I’m I, I want a stuff that comes right out of the factory. I want the stuff that wasn’t supposed to leave.

Okay. Here’s a perfect example. I love hood ornaments. I love mascots. Okay? One day perusing on eBay in England, there’s this flying lady, the spirit of ny, the famous mascot that’s on a Rolls Royce. This one’s root beer, Cullen. And I said, why is there a root beer colored flying lady? So I asked the man about the flying lady, and he replied, he said, that’s a prototype.

And I said, what do you mean it’s a prototype? And he said, well, there was a problem. Rolls Royce couldn’t meet the USA pedestrian crash standards with that rigid hood ornament because if they hit a pedestrian, it was like a spear. And this was a prototype. And I said, well, what do you [00:24:00] mean it’ll shatter? I said, it’ll shatter.

They said, yep, it’s made of a special material and it’ll shatter. And I said, well, how do you know that? And he said, ’cause I made it. And I said, you made it? And he said, yes, I did. I was involved. And I said, okay. Would the purchase of that item include your statement? You know all about it. Absolutely. This guy went, nevermind the extra mile.

I got a CD of the testing. I got the drawings. I got the drawings of the real one that actually went on the American make How with the spring in it, and I got the whole story. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe that that had happened. All it was was a matter of doing a little bit of research, asking a bunch of questions, and seeing something that.

It didn’t quite look right in getting the right answer, getting the [00:25:00] right information that made that item legitimate.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s only one other place that comes to mind that has a collection of concepts and clay models and things like you’re mentioning. So I wonder, have you ever dealt with a National Museum of Automotive Design down in the Carolinas?

Steve Contarino: I have not. I’ve heard of it. It’s on my list, but I definitely want to get there and I do know of it. Yeah, I, I actually do, but I have no, I have not had any interaction with them.

Don Weberg: Can you tell us about a memorable interaction with a fellow collector or an enthusiast that maybe helped shape your journey?

Steve Contarino: You mean a lot of people, and I’m gonna say a name and, and you know him, Don, you know him very well, and his name is Gary Wales. Oh yes. So you know what he did before he was. A mad scientist of the creator of these monstrous automobiles. Right, right. That’s amazing. I spent a lot of time talking to him about his experiences and [00:26:00] whatnot.

And I’m gonna tell you, uh, I met Gary at one of the, uh, garage style garage tours.

Don Weberg: Now you understand why you use so many voices Because no matter where I turn, I’m getting blamed for everything. You know, here he is blaming me for meeting Barry Whale. It’s not my fault. He just happen to be at the same place and I’m getting blamed for it.

Mm-hmm.

Steve Contarino: Gary amazes me ’cause he just keeps going his mind. You ever say, boy, I’d love to see the window into that mind. And every time I see his, one of his creations, it’s just amazing. But Gary, he’s got a lot. Of that automobilia and all those kinds of cool things. But yeah, I, I, I gotta tell you, he’s one of the guys, you know, I met Bob Lutts and spent some time talking to him.

You bumped into a lot. Really, really do, there’s a lot of great automotive icons out there.

Don Weberg: Tell us a little bit about Jerry.

Steve Contarino: Oh, Jerry. So Jerry [00:27:00] was real dear friend Jerry and I met about, God, I wanna say 40 years ago, I had a passion for Rolls Royce’s. Jerry was the Rolls Royce aficionado, one of America’s top automotive appraisers, collector of all things automotive and encyclopedia of anything to do with automobiles.

He’s the one who said, that’s about okay. And I’m like, oh. It is these conversations that Jerry and I had, they were well into the night. After walking all day, it shows whether it be Hershey or Monterey or Seaman in Las Vegas, Scottsdale, or any of it. I mean, we talk about design. Did you see the, the rear end of that car?

Did you notice that way? They painted that so it looked like it was longer, all that type of thing. So Jerry and I, like I said, it was a 40 year run. [00:28:00] He was 30 years older than me. I was always accused of being a son, and Jerry would laugh. He was a big collector of, uh, automobile. He only had a few cars.

I’ve always had a few more than him. But Jerry was just a wealth of knowledge, a great cheerleader too. And that’s what everybody needs is a cheerleader and a friend to always keep them going. You know, that’s one of the things Jerry, he was my cheerleader.

Crew Chief Eric: As many of our listeners know, Don is the yin to my yang, right?

But we both cherish the collecting part of the automotive world, and as people see in the behind the scenes videos, the studio here, I’ve got racing memorabilia all over the place, but it’s very different than classic car memorabilia where people will outfit their garages like you would see on Garage Style Magazine, Hey, I’m a Hudson guy and I bought all the Hudson stuff I could possibly find.

Or you know, the Hemi Hideout or whatever it is when they focus in on the cars that they have in their garages. Whereas Motorsport, I think we’re more about the driver. It’s like, [00:29:00] if it’s got ton’s name on it, I’m probably gonna pick it up and buy it, or you know, have a copy of it or whatever it is. I noticed even behind you, you’ve got a vintage sign that says auto races today, you know, which was probably part of some dirt track in New England somewhere, you know, that kind of thing.

Pointing the spectators to where they needed to go. Let’s talk about the balance and the relationship of Automobilia and preserving the history of Motorsport.

Steve Contarino: I think it’s really important because, you know, again, being a New Englander, you know, I oftentimes get to go to Newport, and a matter of fact, the Newport Concourse is coming up and you go out to Monterey and it’s all about the races, the vintage races.

Well, that just happened to be a place where it landed. But you know, you think about going to Newport, Rhode Island, what does that have to do with the automobiles and automobile? Yeah. And all that. It was a stopping point before they created the Cape Cod Canal. You couldn’t go to Boston by ship from New York.

[00:30:00] You had to go to Newport and catch the train from Newport to Boston. Well, Newport became the playground of the rich and famous. That’s the Vanderbilt, the Rockefellers. You’ve heard ’em all. But remember they had to have the firsts, the first automobile, the first of all, and those automobiles in that richness of that area resonates.

And why? Well, it got competitive. It wasn’t competitive of just, I have a car. You have a car. Then it became racing. And what the Vanderbilt cup. So, you know, you talk about motor sports, it’s like. Always evolving. You’ve got this trend. People wanna follow nasfa, now it’s F1, and they do the, uh, the alternative fuels.

And then there’s vintage racing. It’s kind of the foam that comes out from the top of the auto automotive world. Racing and automobiles go side by side. [00:31:00] That’s just something you can’t look over. I mean, there’s so many levels of automobilia. You mentioned pickers, and you look at what they go after and they go after such a broad range of items.

It’s basically anything that’s old, don’t take that as a, okay. Anything that’s old is not exciting. It is. It’s just that it’s a lot. That now means old everything. Old furniture, old items. Well, the automotive industry. Although it’s old, it’s not really that old. You look at any of the, uh, the shows that follow early times Boardwalk Empire.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, the Gilded Age is the new one.

Steve Contarino: Yes, exactly. I was gonna say Gilded Age. But Gilded Age is a spinoff of Bridgeton. So here we are, Bridgeton, they’re riding horses and carriages, and then the Guild at age, what happened? They’re in New York City. What is that thing? Making all that noise? It’s the motor car.

There’s a lot of people who don’t even [00:32:00] realize car motor, car, motor, carriage, carriage. It’s the evolution. What came with that evolution, we call it motor sports. My horse is faster than your horse

Crew Chief Eric: goes back to the chariots.

Steve Contarino: Right. Well, okay, let’s go back that far. My chariots faster than your chariots, right?

Don Weberg: That’s right. Dave, you do know when the first race took place, right? You heard that story, how the very first motor car race took place. You heard when that happened, right? I did. Yes. Yes. It it happened when the second car was built. That’s right. A absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s something interesting that Don is foreshadowing.

My next question in the sense that I wanted to ask you about the historical significance of some of the pieces. ’cause we’ve been talking about that basically this entire time. And so what’s funny is when you’re looking at a piece and we’re talking about picking, we’re talking about, you know, building our collections and things like that.

If you and I went to a swap meet together and came across a Hain Valvoline, maybe a [00:33:00] Texaco sign, I don’t think we would have the same opinion of it because I’m thinking Texaco, Kmart, IndyCar, Mario Andretti, or I’m thinking Valvoline A or Junior. You know, something like that and you’re going, well, isn’t this a nice porcelain, you know, whatever sign, where is that intersection?

How do you create a balance between the stories? Or do you just self-identify with the piece and it means something to you? At the end of the day,

Steve Contarino: different people are gonna look at different items in a different way. You are gonna look at that Hal Lean sign, and you’re gonna think about racing and motor sports and what things that are your passionate, I’m gonna look at it and I’m gonna think about, wow, isn’t it amazing that they had to come up with a company to create this lubricant and fuel for automobiles.

Someone else was gonna look at it and go, wow, I remember seeing that sign when I was a little kid going to fill up my bicycle, you know, the air and the tire. So everybody’s gonna see something from a different point [00:34:00] of view, and that’s what makes us all different. That’s what makes us all unique and that’s what makes us all able to see things from a different angle.

And that’s what it comes down to. You know, it’s human trait to be able to see things differently and you’re exactly right.

Crew Chief Eric: The reason I brought that up is because I think it changes our perspective on the value of the item. And so when I look at that sign, maybe I’m going, well, it wasn’t signed by Andretti, but if it was, it’d be worth more.

And you’re looking at it going, no, you don’t understand. It was made in 1963 and it was done this way and using this paint, and it is worth what they want for it. And so how do we settle those arguments about what something is worth? You know, the memories of the memorabilia versus the aesthetics of the memorabilia.

How do you draw a balance when you acquire something, what you should be paying for that item?

Steve Contarino: I gotta go back to what my friend Jerry used to say. You can do an appraisal and you could do an appraisal for value and you could [00:35:00] do an appraisal for worth. Although both words sound the same, they’re very far from the same.

What the value of something could be. One thing, what something’s worth is a lot different. That could be anything for any reason. It could be a connection, it could be a family connection, it could be, uh, an automotive type connection. That’s something that I’ve seen happen with everything I’ve ever done related to the automobile.

Different feelings from different people because. What it’s worth is different. What it’s valued at may not be because a value is something that you compare other things, okay? Let’s say a Volkswagen Box. Volkswagen Box is very, very valuable. Okay? What’s it worth? Well, it’s worth what this other Volkswagen bug is worth 25,000.

Why does one sell for 125,000 then [00:36:00] because somebody had more worth to that vehicle than value. Same with automobile, same with all of the different things that I have. If somebody’s got a personal connection to it, that worth could be anything that price paid could be satisfaction. One of the particular categories I wanna say that I have is a category called Fisher Craftsman’s Guild Cars.

You will very rarely see me sell those. The reason I very rarely sell those is because not only are they part of General Motors history, because General Motors creates this contest where young adults are gonna create these automobiles. They have no computers, they have no TVs. They have. Time to put a thousand hours here in carving or creating this futuristic [00:37:00] type automobile that’s easy.

Kids got nothing to do. So they did it and what were they doing it for? Grand Prize, a college scholarship, second prize, a trip out to General Motors headquarters and a tour of the plant and a trophy. And you know, third Pro. So they had all these levels and these cars are all works of art. Even the ones that you look at and go, that was made by a kid, but some kid took the time to be able to put it into that.

Item, and those items are really, really worth a lot to me, and they’re worth a lot to me because, A, they’re related to the automotive industry, but B, some persons did that work. It wasn’t a designer who was getting paid to do it. It wasn’t somebody who expected to win. They hoped they win. They didn’t expect to win.

Those Fisher [00:38:00] cars are worth a lot more to me. Are they valued a lot more? Probably not, because it’s very hard to value the Fisher cars because some of the more higher value ones are more intricate and more complex, but yet the ones with the history from A to Z. And I mean the person’s name, the awards they won, where they placed, written dossier, or how the whole thing was done and why, and maybe the son wrote it because their father told them.

How about if it was somebody whose grandfather told the father and the father passed the item down to the son, the grandson? I mean, that’s different. Those particular cards are worth a lot to me.

Crew Chief Eric: I think there also becomes a point at which there’s maybe a little bit of guilt when you’re collecting, and I know I’ve had this conversation with [00:39:00] Don before where it’s like, well, I could spend 200 bucks for the real thing, or 20 bucks for the repop.

But it depends on how you’re trying to outfit your collection, right? So there’s a difference between like what you’re doing, you’re amassing these very unique, very particular things. But if I’m trying to outfit, you know, a shrin or a garage Mahal, sometimes I have to compromise on the quality versus the quantity of things that I wanna put up on the wall.

Steve Contarino: Well, yeah, but I always just recently at a location, they had a very big auction and it was a combination of all different types. And what I mean by types meaning originals. Asterisk, which means maybe, and then what they call decorative, and those decorative items sold at a different price than original.

They really did sell differently, but collections are made up of what makes people happy, right? If you wanted something and you like it. That’s part of your collection. Doesn’t all have to be topnotch [00:40:00] grade A, and that’s why going back to pickers, one of the greatest things I like about the show, besides, I like the way they do what they do, is they’re saving things that may not be number one condition and may not be of value to somebody.

They just feel that it’s worth saving. You know, that’s a whole different way to look at it. Different collections are of different types of, uh, levels of quality.

Don Weberg: I want to get your take on how you’ve seen the collector community evolve over the years from, say, when you first started, you know, what trends are you seeing now?

What trends did you see back then?

Steve Contarino: There are sign collectors and then there are car collectors that collect signs. And there are a rad of things between them, and what I mean by that is some will not allow something that’s not original to be part of their car sign collection. Sometimes the cars are more important than [00:41:00] the signs.

Sometimes the signs are as important as the cars. And I’ve seen that at all. Different public museums, private collections, auctions. You always see that, and that’s kind of what makes the world go round. Some people are very finicky about, it’s not real, and others are fine with that. Others understand that, you know, the automobiles are the basis of this, and these collectibles is decoration, so they look at it differently.

I try to stay away from things that aren’t historically tied to something. I do have some things that are in the category of. Gotta find out because I just don’t know. And that could be something simple as a little whittled out a piece of wood car and I say, well, I gotta find out about this. Is it something that just looks old but is really not that old?

It’s a thing of doing the research to find that out. But how [00:42:00] has it changed? One of the things I needed to see that the automotive collective car industry was alive at, well, we went through COVID, we came back and it’s different. Nobody knows if it’ll ever be the same, and your idea of different might be different from my idea of different, but one of the things that I noticed is that.

A lot of car collectors started saying, well, I, I’m, I’m dialing in the back. I’m gonna reserve my money now. Geez, you know, this whole way, the whole world was that time. I don’t ever wanna be nervous. I want to have a, a lot more money in the bank, less money in the garage. I want to collect less. And what that did was it really started to make the collective car industry and signs and mobilia and everything changed because the demand also changed.

Because here we were with a culture of older [00:43:00] generation doing the buying. And after COVID a younger generation coming in, and the younger generation happened to appreciate different things. What was appreciated wasn’t necessarily historic. Things that were valuable. Before COVID became not quite as valuable after COVID, so the values definitely changed.

The worth is still all over the place, but the values changed this past weekend with that Mecca Auction summary. The collect the car industry is alive and well. The numbers were back to where it should be if it’s got the story. They were willing to pay some of the numbers that were always really low.

The automobile was selling well, the automobiles were selling well. The crowds that was there. Was different. It wasn’t like it used to be. A lot of internet, a lot of [00:44:00] phone, a lot of absentee. That’s never gonna change. It’s not gonna come back. It’s always gonna change. So that whole, what was it and what is it?

What’s the future gonna be? It’s still up in the air, but it was really, really a special moment to see that things are back to where, at least somewhat normal. Somewhat.

Don Weberg: I mean, let’s face it, COVID was what, five years ago you had older collectors buying, selling, et cetera, COVID shakes everything up. Do we have a larger glut of younger, new collectors in the market now, or is it still the same old guard, or is there a merger going on?

What do you see?

Steve Contarino: That’s a whole big question, and my opinion of that is the workplace changed and the workplace changed from the Bob LUTs and the Lee Cocas, you know, the automotive icons. They were there and they weren’t going anywhere in their thirties and forties, [00:45:00] and they weren’t going anywhere in their fifties and they weren’t going anywhere, even into their sixties.

Those days are gone. A lot of the, what they call legacy costs are gone. Most of the high paying jobs, the younger people, they’re not as driven by history. They’re not as excited by why is it like that? It’s more to them, well why isn’t it this way? And that whole working from home thing and that whole being a president of a company a lot younger of an age and the way the whole workforce is now, where people just, they’re hanging onto their money because they feel that, you know, they can’t be frivolous.

Yeah, it’s definitely different.

Crew Chief Eric: There is definitely some truth to everything you just said there, Steve, but I also think there’s a slightly different dynamic that’s occurring in the collector space. And I can only speak for my generation ’cause I’m a generation behind you guys. And then I can look down the generations behind me.

And if you think [00:46:00] about it, it has a lot also to do with. What you imprinted on when you were young. And so when I look around my office, I look at things and I’m very grounded in the eighties and the nineties, and even in Motorsport, it’s like, come talk to me about Sena and Schumacher. I don’t wanna really talk about Vel and Hamilton, and that’s past my generation.

You know what I mean? I didn’t grow up with that. But the thing is, I don’t identify as much with the op era of the 1950s and the Dolce Vita era of the early sixties. Right? For me, that’s not my time period. Just in the same way I appreciate a Packard, am I gonna go buy one or stuff related to it? Probably not.

I mean, that’s my grandfather’s generation, you know, of kind of car that they aspire to. What I’m getting at though is right now though, the people that are in charge of creating new petroliana and new Automobilia are in my age demographic, and you’re seeing a lot of things that are leaning back into the eighties.

And it’s in markets where you didn’t expect them to be. Prime example, I keep making the joke, the people in charge at Lego [00:47:00] right now must be kids of the eighties because everything that’s coming out is Nintendo and Nigel Mantle and this and that. And it’s all of that era. They’re not doing a 1953 Corvette, they’re doing a 1984 C four Corvette.

So they’re catering to the market that has the money, which is gonna be the kids that are now in their forties and in their fifties. So I think you’re seeing that shift. Now, beyond my generation, and I don’t wanna make a gross generalization here, there is a minimalist movement where collecting is not that important anymore.

And so I grew up in an era where we were the last of the analog kids, but the first to adopt digital. So we’re in this weird gray space where we appreciate both, but the further you get into the digital generations, the less material things. Are important to collect ’cause they’re not bits and bytes. So you have that working against the collector market.

Steve Contarino: Well, that’s absolutely true. But you know something, there were three guys, I think it was [00:48:00] 1934, and they had pencils and they had paper and they said, well, let’s write down our thoughts here. Let’s talk. And they said, well what about horses? What about buggies? What about this? And one of ’em said, it’s never gonna be like that.

Nobody keeps horses as pets anymore. You know, horses were work animals. What you’re gonna see is you’re gonna see people with yards, with bushes and no more horse pastures and all that stuff. And the, the one guy who was really, really smart said. You know what? Someday I’m gonna have a great grandson and he’s gonna have a thing called a podcast, and his name is Eric.

They said, how do you know all that? I don’t know. It’s a guess. Yeah, right. That story, it’s just, it’s gonna keep changing because that’s what history does. So yeah, you look back and well, they were talking about different things than we are talking about here today, and I do, I absolutely agree with you a hundred percent.

But is some part of collecting, [00:49:00] preserving history. Or some part of collecting just, well, if it makes me feel good again, it’s like, okay, what drives you? How do you see it? And I see it as I collect, but I also like to have the history. I like the history, but there’s other people who say, no, I, I want to have this.

I want to have all blue cars. I wanna have all this, or I wanna have all that. And so there’s different reasons. It’s like everything else. But yeah, I agree with you, Eric. You’re absolutely right. Times change. Nobody’s collected typewriters anymore. They don’t understand why you would wanna collect a typewriter.

Right.

Don Weberg: You know? I’m glad you said that. Clarification. There are people, you know, I collect this because it’s blue. I collect this because the history, I’m not gonna go too far down the trough, but I, I think. A lot of collecting in recent years. It’s almost like you have to qualify it. Why do you, oh, [00:50:00] well, I, I collect this because William Sykes III designed it in 1712, and William Sykes, his father was the architect who this building in Brussels and this building fell on a million people.

I mean, who cares? Okay, really? Who cares? Do you like it? Do you like that weird thing hanging on your wall? And if it doesn’t bring you joy, it’s an investment. So we’re gonna go invest in this stuff. I think that was a problem with the eighties, and you remember the eighties all too well, Steve. Everybody’s running around buying Mustangs and Thunderbirds.

Why? Holy cow. They were worth a fortune. And then what happened in the nineties? Oh, oh.

Steve Contarino: They leveled out. The smart guy in the eighties would’ve bought as many DeLorean as he could have. Right?

Don Weberg: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And Chrysler, TCS by Maserati.

Steve Contarino: Oh my God. So there you go. You You know what?

You’re exactly right. It’s what drives you and Yeah, it does get old Sometimes somebody will talk the [00:51:00] ears off you about something, you know? And, and do you really need to know all that backstory and Yeah, you’re right. It’s absolutely true. And, and they go, oh, well why does Roll Royce have that lady on the front?

It’s like, that’s weird. She looks like, she’s like, cut these wings. That’s not real. They don’t wanna know that whole backstory and all that stuff. And that’s perfectly fine.

Crew Chief Eric: Then there’s some 17-year-old on YouTube presenting it as if it’s new information all over again. Right,

Don Weberg: right, right. And that’s just it.

There’s a, there’s an amazing story. You’re right. And I know you know it, Steve. There’s an amazing story behind the spirit of ecstasy. I mean, it’s the stuff that movies are made of really is, and when you learn it, I think that adds to the allure. Look, when I was a little kid, one of my very first cars, aside from DeLorean, was Rolls Royce and I, I just thought they were fascinating.

I thought it was amazing that somebody would take eight to nine months. To build a car. I mean, that, that just blew my mind. The paint was five feet thick. The car weighed over [00:52:00] 5,000 pounds. It was honestly just astonishing to me. This car, the real wood inside, are you kidding me? I grew up in LTDs. We had nothing but fake stick together, wood in our interiors.

It was, it was something else, but these rolls had real wood. That really impressed me. It amazed me. As time rolled on, I learned more and more about the company. It made me like it more. It made me like the car more. It made me like the hood ornament made me like everything about the company more.

Crew Chief Eric: Something dawned on me while you guys were talking about the trends in the collector market and things like that, and I think the point at which everything shifted, sort of that event horizon, and we’ve talked about this on break fix before we actually have episodes dedicated to the linkage and the crossover between the music industry.

In the automotive world and how one influences the other. And if you think about it collecting changed for everybody almost everywhere simultaneously, when you could no longer really buy an album, when music went digital and you [00:53:00] were paying 99 cents a song from Apple or Spotify or whoever it was, you’re no longer rushing off to Tower Records or Waxy Maxis or whatever it was to buy that new CD where only two out of 14 songs were any good on that album.

That’s when collecting change. ’cause if you think about what you talked about, Steve, with all the history and the minutiae, people knew that stuff about record albums and the vinyl pressings and where the album was recorded and when it was recorded, and what John Lennon was thinking when they wrote the song.

Like all this immense detail. And you saw that in other forms of collecting. And once music changed, I think the rest of collecting changed along with it.

Steve Contarino: You are right. It’s definitely trends. Think about this, how many people still collect stamps? I remember when I was young, that’s a big thing, collecting stamps, you don’t really hear much about that, but yet there’s a whole other arena of stamp collectors, stamp collector shows.

It’s nowhere [00:54:00] near what it used to be, but yet it still exists. It’s just on a smaller scale. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. Popularity definitely changes as time goes on. The automobile, I think, is with us to stay for a a while. I mean, I, I don’t quite see the flying car taken off literally yet. Here we are stuck with technology and well, yeah, we do it differently today, but it’s the same, but it’s trends and it’s always gonna be that way.

Collecting will always be a trend. And, and you know, one of the things that I was surprised that crossed over this particular year was a whole group of collectors of travel agent Mobilia, not Expedia, that’s not a travel agent. So all these travel agents, okay, they got all these like promotional items from the airlines, planes and little statues and all kind of goodies.

There’s a whole different [00:55:00] arena of collectors that. That’s what they collect is old travel agent stuff and all Pan Am signs and the Pan Am plane and it changes. It’s always changing. What do you collect from Expedia? You know, I don’t know. Who knows? But yes, you’re absolutely right. It is gonna change.

Who’s to say the future of automobile seems to be like it’s gonna travel with the, uh, automobile. Then maybe it’ll go up when there are no automobiles anymore, whatever that thing might be. The Jetsons, we all watch the Jetsons, but yet you never saw a Texaco gas pump in the little car landing area. And you never saw George show you his collection of famous SNH Green stamp things.

They forgot all that. Right? Well, what happened to all the cars? You know, where did they all go? Where’s all that Mobile and Exxon and all those [00:56:00] gas pumps and where? Where’d all that stuff go? Oh, the car’s gone. Did we get the Jetson mobile? There’s no history. Where did it all go? Could that be a future? We sure thought so.

We were little kids, didn’t we?

Don Weberg: For sure. Which for me, I started collecting very, very early. ’cause I was just psychotic. Basically. Let’s say somebody’s getting into the Automobilia thing. They’ve been lightly interested in it. They don’t know where to start. They don’t know what to do. Aside from telling them, you know, Hey, check out Automobilia Vintage to see what we’ve got.

What advice would you give them? I mean, how would they start? Where would you tell ’em to start?

Steve Contarino: You buy what you like.

Don Weberg: Mm-hmm.

Steve Contarino: What I like might not be what you like. That’s why if you take a look at the things that I offer for sale, they’re all over the place. I have different things. I don’t specialize in one particular thing.

It’s all over the place. So I always say it and you know, and that’s like right back to the, the story of what we were talking about. What’s worth, what’s value. So buy [00:57:00] what you like. That’s the advice I give somebody. You know what, if you like it. It’s always gonna be worth more, right? If you really like something and you say, oh, I like that because whatever the reason, you could have a reason.

And that reason is what this is all about. Why do I come down here in my garage every day? Why do I do this? ’cause it makes me happy. You know? Why do you wanna drive around in an old car that’s gonna break down on the side of the road? Well, because when it’s not broke down, it makes me happy. So that’s what it’s all about.

It’s our happiness. And there’s some people who are perfectly fine sitting in front of a keyboard all day and going, I like watching the stock. So that makes them happy. And there’s other people who say, I like look on my bank book and that makes me happy. It’s all about that. It’s that happiness and it’s about, okay, what does it take to say.

I really like that. And that’s what I say, don’t buy something [00:58:00] because I say it’s valuable. Don’t buy something because you saw it on this podcast and I say, well, over the next 10 years you are gonna appreciate it 50% per year and I guarantee that all your money back. It’s not about that. It’s, that’s why they sell gold and silver in places and it’s overpriced.

That’s in the back of magazines. So people buy things sometime because of that. But no, don’t do that. Buy what you like. And I know plenty of people who’ve bought those gold things and Sova, Don likes those

Crew Chief Eric: Franklin

Steve Contarino: mint cars. Well, guess what? If you bought ’em a little while ago, probably really happy right now.

Right? So, I mean, you know, it, it’s just what makes you happy and different people. We’ll see something through their own eyes. Could there be five people that see that? Yeah. Most auctions involve two. Sometimes it involves more than two. Sometimes it could be 10. That’s when you’ll [00:59:00] see the crowd going wild.

When 10 people really see the worth in something, not the value. And that’s conversations that you’ll always have with somebody who shares the passion that you have, like all three of us do. In fact, you share that passion. It’s a common ground. It makes us as humans compatible because we could talk about something that we all like.

So you know, you do what you like, buy what you like, look at something and say, you know, I like that. And when it becomes worth 10 times the amount of money that could make you very, very happy. But it also could be something that never is worth more than the day you bought it. But it still will make you very happy.

And I’ve seen that a lot. I’ve seen it a lot with the things I sell. I see it a lot with the cars I’ve sold. I saw it a lot, especially with checker. Owning Checker brought a lot of people to me, [01:00:00] people who said, I remember on the way to the hospital in the back of a checker, my son was born in a snow storm.

And, and I’d be like, oh, okay, that’s great. But see, that’s something they relate to. I have people call me up and they go, well, my father, he had a Fisher Craftsman’s car, and I wish I could find that it really meant a lot when I was young. So there’s different stories you’re gonna hear and different reasons why different people will do different things.

But you know what it’s like they say different strokes are different folks. So buy what you like. If you feel like you like that. That’s how you do it. Don’t go to a book and go, oh, wait a minute, that’s $25. And I only see it in the book at 20. If you really like it, pay the 25. You’ll be happy.

Crew Chief Eric: See, Steve, you remind me of that, that lady that was on Netflix, Marie Kondo.

If it brings you joy, keep it. It’s the same idea, right? At the end of the day,

Steve Contarino: not everybody’s always [01:01:00] happy. Just having a bunch of happy things doesn’t make a happy person, and that’s what life’s all about. You know, learning what things make you happy, and sometimes saying, I don’t think I’m ever gonna be happy again, but then maybe sometimes some of this stuff just does help, doesn’t it?

Don Weberg: All this Automobilia philosophizing brings us to Steve. Where do you see Automobilia Vintage going, your new company? What projects are exciting about it? What’s next for Steve? What’s up for Automobilia Vintage?

Steve Contarino: You know, it’s like with any startup of any company. Not necessarily bigger, but definitely better.

Definitely a more easier and a more streamlined approach to this whole thing. You live and you learn, and you learn. You make your mistakes and don’t we learn by them, so, you know, I wanna make it better. I want to make it easier for our clients to deal with. I want to be able [01:02:00] to offer a service instead of putting that stuff with the trains.

I’m not famous enough yet to help with that. I would like to be able to help with that so that those automobile related items, that automobile gets into the right channel to go to the right place. Because I, I don’t know what would’ve happened, 20 outta 20. It’s a good batting average, but it also makes me think, well, what if I was the only, I believe I was.

And when I went to pick it all up and, um, the auctioneer said, I’m so glad it’s all gonna stay together. And, and I thought. Oh my God, that’s quite an honor. But you were running an auction. You could have put this as one lot. Well, no, we, we thought it would be better if somebody wanted this or somebody wanted that.

And I said, well, I, I’m gonna keep it together. If it’s available, it will be together so that if somebody has, you know, a reason to want it all, they will have the [01:03:00] opportunity to purchase it all. That’s what it comes down to. Right? Making it better, making it be better known. However that becomes, can go as fast as possible and get up higher faster.

So that’s what it’s all about. Right? We give a better experience and that’s one of the things, all of my seven businesses that I’ve ever had. I always want to offer a better experience. Everybody can do what you do, but you could give them a better experience and is that not something that’s lost today?

Try to call somebody at eBay. Try to call somebody at Expedia. Try to call somebody at UPS. I can give a better experience. You call it goes to my cell phone. You can contact me

Don Weberg: and Steve, to be clear, automobilia Vintage is not an auction. It’s a place to go to purchase direct. Is that right?

Steve Contarino: It is. I really feel like an auction is a place where you can go and you, you have to control [01:04:00] your emotions, right?

You have to. It’s like anything else. If you are there and you, there’s no sky, you could be pretty high without a parachute. So what I try to do is I try to offer the unique items. You know, one of the things that I don’t do is say I’m firm, I put a price on something. But if somebody calls and says, you know, I, I, I am very reasonable.

Most of the time it ends up being the freight. You know, sometimes it could be less. But I, I try to give everybody that same opportunity I got. And unfortunately I feel like, you know, an auction, it doesn’t give everybody a fair shot. I mean, somebody’s gotta be a winner. Well, what’s that? Make the guy who wasn’t a winner,

Crew Chief Eric: first runner up.

Steve Contarino: Okay. And we also give everybody a star for effort.

Crew Chief Eric: Ricky Bobby said, if you ain’t first, your last.

Steve Contarino: Right. So that’s what I’m trying to say. I like the auction, but I, I, I’m not crazy about, I’m not sold on [01:05:00] that idea quite yet because I just don’t like that fact of putting someone who wants something in that position.

I mean, if it’s a disposal situation, which a lot of auctions are, they just gotta get rid of this stuff. That’s different. But to say, oh, well, hey, look, today we’re gonna offer something as buyers, we don’t like that, right? What if you went in the grocery store and said, Hey, here’s your steak. Oh, wait a minute, $5, $6, seven.

Do I hear 8, 9, 10, 12? Oh, Don, you’re not eating tonight. Eric, you are the winner of this steak. Don hit the road. So, I mean, we don’t like being put in that position, and I don’t wanna put my clients in that position. You know, I’m trying to make it just what it is. Fun, happy part of an experience.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, Steve, well we’ve reached that part of the episode where I’d like to invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything else we haven’t covered thus far.

Steve Contarino: Well, how can I not? Thank you, Eric. You gave me an opportunity to tell all of your wonderful [01:06:00] listeners exactly how. I see things, it’s all opinion. It’s all based upon things that I’ve had in my 62 years of experience. And that’s it, right? I mean, I can’t tell you that I went to the School of Automobilia ’cause I didn’t.

And I can’t tell you that I graduated with a degree in Automobilia because I didn’t. And again, I can never forget my friends. So I can’t forget Dawn. And, you know, I can’t forget the first time I picked up this WOW magazine called Garage Style and met the man behind it. I, I just thought it was so fabulous.

And you know, I, I have to tell you all the years of knowing Dawn, Dawn’s been there for me. So I have to say thank you to Dawn. I, I’ll never forget it. And there’s just so many other people I’ve met through Dawn as well, you know, that are just fantastic car guys. Car girls. It’s wonderful. And that’s one of the things I enjoy the most.

[01:07:00] That’s why I say. Thank you for coming to Automobile Your Vintage. We’ve hoped you had a great experience, and that’s what it’s all about. You’re too kind, Steve. Thank you. Well, thank you Don, and thank you Eric, both really. It does mean a lot to me

Don Weberg: from uncovering rare treasures to preserving the rich history of Motorsport.

Steve gave us a look into the passion, the dedication, and the stories behind every collectible in his extraordinary collection. So be sure to check out Automobilia Vintage online@automobiliavintage.com for more insights, rare finds, and ways to connect with Steve’s world of automotive history. You can also follow him on social media for updates and highlights from the collection via Instagram and Facebook at Automobilia Vintage.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right Don and Steve, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your story, your passion, and your incredible insights into the world of [01:08:00] collecting with us. And we wish you the best of luck on your new startup, your new adventure that you’re going on with Automobile Vintage. So good luck and Godspeed.

Steve Contarino: Thank you both. You know, it’s, it’s wonderful to be here with both of you. Besides all of the love for cars and the love for automobile and the love for history and all that, it’s about the friends too. Dawn and I have been friends and, um, you know, I, I could never forget my friends and not that I ever would, but I just wanna say that’s a big part and I want to thank both of you guys.

And now, Eric, guess what? Welcome to a long friendship.

Don Weberg: Oh, thank you very much. Thank you for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time for more stories to celebrate the spirit of cars racing and the people who make it all happen.

Since 2007, garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors, continually delivering information about Automobilia Petroliana [01:09:00] events and more. To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be sure to follow them on social media at. Garage Style magazine or log onto www.garagestylemagazine.com because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage?

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.

We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop Minisodes [01:10:00] and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, Gumby Bears, and Monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you. None of this would be possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00:00 Meet Steve Contarino: Founder of Automobilia Vintage
00:01:26 Steve’s Passion for Automotive History
00:02:56 Owning Checker Cab, The Company
00:06:56 The Birth of Automobilia Vintage
00:08:55 Collecting Rare Automobilia
00:29:16 The Intersection of Automobilia and Motorsport
00:34:37 Understanding Value vs. Worth in Collecting
00:36:19 The Significance of Fisher Craftsman’s Guild Cars
00:38:52 Balancing Quality and Quantity in Collections
00:40:27 Evolution of the Collector Community; Generational Shifts in Collecting Trends
00:56:18 Advice for New Collectors
01:01:22 Future of Automobilia Vintage
01:05:44 Closing Remarks and Gratitude

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

The Collector’s Code: Know What You’re Looking At

Steve emphasizes the importance of research and discernment. “You’ve got to make sure you know what you’re looking at,” he warns. With the rise of 3D printing and replica models, authenticity is everything. He’s become a resource for auction houses and fellow collectors alike, helping identify factory prototypes and concept pieces that others might overlook.

Clay Concept RV; photo courtesy Automobilia Vintage; Steve Contarino

For Steve, collecting isn’t just about ownership- it’s about stewardship. “I love it for a little while, then turn it over to the next caretaker,” he says. His passion is rooted in preserving the stories behind the objects, whether it’s a vintage racing poster or a clay model (seen above) that escaped the crusher.

He’s quick to credit mentors and friends like Jerry, a Rolls-Royce aficionado and appraiser, and Gary Wales, the mad scientist of custom builds. “Everybody needs a cheerleader,” Steve says. “Jerry was mine.”

Where to Pick, What to Watch?

So where should collectors look? Steve’s advice is simple: everywhere. From eBay to flea markets, from Hershey to Monterey, the gems are out there. But diligence is key. “It’s like looking through a dictionary for capital A’s,” he jokes. “You’ve got to keep flipping pages.”

Steve also sees a deep connection between automobilia and motorsport. “Racing and automobiles go side by side,” he says. Whether it’s a dirt track sign from New England or a driver’s helmet from a bygone era, these artifacts capture the evolution of speed, design, and human ambition.

The Mattel “Dream Car” Model; photo courtesy Automobilia Vintage; Steve Contarino

Steve Contarino’s story is more than a collector’s tale – it’s a roadmap for anyone who believes that the soul of the automobile lives not just in engines and sheet metal, but in the objects that surround them. From clay models to hood ornaments, from concept sketches to forgotten prototypes, Automobilia Vintage is a celebration of the stories that make our automotive past unforgettable.

So be sure to check out Automobilia Vintage online at automobiliavintage.com for more insights, rare finds, and ways to connect with Steve’s world of automotive history. You can also follow him on social media for updates and highlights from the collection via Instagram and Facebook at @AutomobiliaVintage.

Guest Co-Host: Don Weberg

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

B/F: The Drive Thru #61

Drive Thru News

Tania M

-

October 28, 2025

0

In episode #61 of The Drive Thru we kick off with Halloween costumes related to car themes, automotive mishaps, and repair stories involving various vehicles like Volkswagens and Jeeps. We touch on the rising prices of new cars, advocating for keeping older cars on the road. Additionally, the discussion includes Volkswagen’s shift away from EVs, Porsche’s exit from racing programs, and a test drive review of the Cayman GT4. There’s also news from Stellantis, a humorous segment on odd car commercials, and updates from the world of motorsports with a particular focus on Formula One and Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The episode wraps up with a behind-the-scenes look at SIM racing, the closure of the Pittsburgh International Raceway (PittRace), and upcoming automotive events.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Showcase: The DIY Dilemma!

A dreadful Sunday Drive

Just when you think everything is going right, it suddenly goes completely wrong. ... [READ MORE]

Pumpkin Spice Rides Again!

"Ran When Parked" ... in the woods 6 years ago, Unbelievable! ... [READ MORE]

Going Rippin' in a Cayman GT4

William and David go for a little test drive... ... [READ MORE]

The Dodge Dart Has Been Dead Since 2016, But Six 'New' Ones Just Sold

Stellantis might be the king of selling dead cars, as it also sold a 'new' Dodge Grand Caravan, Dodge Journey, and Fiat 500L. ... [READ MORE]

Say it ain’t so… Pitt Race is closing?

So long, Farewell, Aufwiedersehn, Adeiu, Au 'voire ... Goodbye ... [READ MORE]

Domestics

C7 Corvette ZR1 Averages 173 MPH in Texas Road Race but Melts Its Butt

Japanese & JDM

Lost & Found

Nebraska Unearths 1975 Chevy Vega From World’s Largest Time Capsule

Nigel Mansell comercial Canon Pixel Jet

Lowered Expectations

MUSIC VIDEO: Die Woodys - Fichtl's Lied

Motorsports

Assetto Corsa RALLY - Coming November 13th

Stellantis

VAG & Porsche

TRANSCRIPT

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] Welcome to Break Fixes, drive-through News, your monthly recap for everything fast, fascinating, and usually four wheeled. We’re serving up a fresh batch of automotive headlines, motorsports madness, and car adjacent curiosities, all with zero wait time and maximum flavor from Formula One. Drama to concept car debuts with garage built legends to the quirkiest stories rolling out of the state of Florida.

We’ve got your fix. So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let’s cruise through the latest in the world of wheels with a side of entertainment and just a dash of tire smoke.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to drive through episode number 61. What do we have guys? What do we wanna talk about this time?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, Halloween is right around the corner.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah. Are you gonna dress up as the scariest thing ever? A Nissan Ultima?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know if I would do that. If I acted my age. That’d be pretty scary. That’s what my daughters keep telling me all the time.

Crew Chief Brad: They keep telling you to act your age.

Executive Producer Tania: 85.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, exactly. It’s true, true, true.

Executive Producer Tania: Do they have those Spirit Halloween costume packs?

That’s for Nissan Ultima [00:01:00] drivers?

Crew Chief Brad: I think it comes with a restraining order.

Executive Producer Tania: That was

Crew Chief Eric: a thing a couple of years ago, right? You could dress up as Porsche Club members and then they’d be, they had BMW Club members.

Crew Chief Brad: You could always dress up as Corvette owners too. You got the new balance. The White Sox, the Jorts.

Crew Chief Eric: Halloween is right around the corner. Have you picked your costume? Are you gonna resurrect one of your previous costumes? Do you still have the unicorn onesie?

Crew Chief Brad: I do, but I upgraded.

Crew Chief Eric: Aren’t you cookie that stuff? She’s

Crew Chief Brad: for cookie. Yeah. I’m pulling to see Tanya’s Tomb Raider again. ’cause I thought that was pretty snappy.

You

Crew Chief Eric: know, it’s funny you bring that up because October seems to be the month where stuff has just broken or gone wrong. We have some issues on the clubhouse side of our website where we have to rebuild the vault because it’s gotten a little too big. And I was going through some photos and I just happened to hit upon our road Atlanta trip where we dressed up for Halloween for that Chin Track day.

It’s amazing. You look back at some of the stuff we did pre COVID, it’s really crazy. The antics that we got up to just almost week after week, not just month [00:02:00] after month. It was absolutely bonkers.

Executive Producer Tania: We tried to be pre COVID recently, and then the, the universe worked against us. I, I’m getting to that. You know, I, I wrote an article about it too.

I read it. There’s some typos. Of course there are.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s okay. Eric and Tanya, given the recent news that just came out that, you know, the average new car price has crept up to $50,000. Let’s talk about, do you want to spend $50,000 on a brand new car or nickel and dimming to keep your old car alive? Eric, what’s going on in your world? What would you do

Crew Chief Eric: When it rains, it pours, right?

So it’s like. Brad, your car, why is it what your stuff’s always super easy where you show up with a car that hasn’t run in six years. I throw a fuel pump in it and it runs no problem, no issues, no check engine lights, no nothing.

Crew Chief Brad: Wait. There’s no check engine lights

Crew Chief Eric: that I can tell at the moment.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s fantastic

breaking news. Pumpkin spice lives.

Crew Chief Eric: It does. That is, it was a miracle. We have video [00:03:00] proof that it lives.

Crew Chief Brad: Video proof. It’ll be on the website. No, it won’t.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m amazed. It runs on that turpentine That’s in the tank too. That tank is full, by the way,

Crew Chief Brad: the gas tank is full.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, so we need to drain it

Crew Chief Eric: nearly full, right?

Yeah, just burn it off. Just run it for a while. It’ll be fine. We’ll do the Ferris Bueller thing and put it up on stands in reverse and it’ll be perfect.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, we gotta run them clock back.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe it’s like a communicative disease. You know, you bring another Volkswagen into the equation. So your car gave my car COVID, I think is what it did.

Another 14 day quarantine. Uh, now I’m plagued with all these issues. I had a radiator that started leaking. I had all this other stuff and then it just bad to worse throughout the entire weekend, just absolutely drove me nuts.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you ever get it figured out

Crew Chief Eric: where I stand at the moment? I got the Jeep situation figured out, which was also part of this mess.

Crew Chief Brad: The Jeep and the Volkswagen are different species. How did they contract the same diseases?

Crew Chief Eric: Avian, flu, all the birds can get it right. That’s what it is. [00:04:00] There’s so many moving parts to this equation. The Volkswagen I knew had a radiator problem, and I thought it was one of the fixtures on the radiator.

Either the sensor for the fans or the spigot at the bottom or whatever. Something was leaking because it’s a 20-year-old radiator, whatever. Turns out the radiator end caps were leaking on the driver’s side, and it literally dumped all its fluid in my driveway very slowly. So I ordered a new one. I was like, ah, it’s not a big deal.

Rip the front end of the car apart, change the radiator out, you know, da da da. Half a day’s work. Okay, fine. So while I’m doing all that, I run out of antifreeze. When I go to go refill it, it’s like I run into town. It’s like, oh. And then I get in the Jeep and the freaking service engine lights come on, oil change due, blah.

I was like, all right, well I’m headed to AutoZone anyway. I might as well get oil while I’m at it. You know, come back engine’s hot, drain the oil, do the fuel filters. I’m working on two cars simultaneously, right? There were a couple other things I needed to do to the Volkswagen a BS sensors, which as we know as Volkswagen owners, they [00:05:00] don’t come out unless you have a hammer and chisel.

So I beat all of them out. E even though they all didn’t need to be changed, they only needed to do two of them. I figured I’ll just do all four of them and they’re fresh. ‘

Crew Chief Brad: cause the, the other, the other two would’ve gone bad like a month later,

Crew Chief Eric: thousand percent because that’s just the way it works. Got rid of my a BS light and my brake light.

That would come on randomly because I had two a BS sensors that were bad, so, okay, fine. Took care of that. ’cause I did a system scan and it’s like, oh, you have a bad cam sensor on cam two. I’m like, okay, cool. I’ll order those too. They’re actually super easy to change. You know, you can actually get to them.

There’s not a ton of stuff in the way. This is where things started to get slightly pear shaped. So I put two new cam sensors in again, figuring, well if one’s gonna go, might as well do the other one too. And then the car did nothing but throw check engine lights constantly. Cam one was bad, cam one was bad, cam one was bad.

I’m like, it’s a brand new sensor. So unless I misordered them and they’re not the same, I ended up putting the [00:06:00] factory Bosch one back in that’s literally 20 years old and it runs fine. And so I’m like, okay, cool. I drove it around, ran grape, blah, blah, blah. So the next day, Tanya and I, we get a call from Porsche Al, we go over to his house ’cause he’s having a problem with his V.

It was like VW weekend. Everybody’s having an issue. Right? Get over to Porsche, Al’s house. He’s got this old Jetta. He’s complaining that fifth gear disappeared. Well, turns out the bushings inside the car, another known fail point on all Mark. Four Volkswagens. He never changed the bushings. He apparently ordered them and then lost them, and he’s gonna order them again.

It’s a whole kerfuffle. I told him, I said, there’s no amount adjusting on this planet that I can do to this shift. Linkage fifth is never gonna be found. ’cause there’s literally not enough material to get the cables over there. Like you need to replace all that.

Crew Chief Brad: Could you find

Crew Chief Eric: parts from Home Depot? I could have, but it wasn’t worth it.

There’s a kit from Diesel Geek in Texas for 50 bucks. Takes care of the problem for the rest of your life. Not Kerm and TDI? No, no, no, no. Diesel geek. Got it. Driving back with the Jeep, we [00:07:00] go to go merge on the highway. I made it, I don’t know, 25 yards. Down the off ramp and we heard this pop whoosh sound come from somewhere in the engine compartment.

And I’m like, man, we just totally lost all boost. And then big red lights on the center dash and it’s like service throttle control module. And I’m like, oh no. I went through this once before when the Jeep was newer and the, it was covered under warranty. It’s like a $4,000 replacement to do this thing.

’cause it’s a module on the transmission, it connects to the throttle position sensor and you can do all this stuff and it, it’s a nightmare. It was in, it was in the shop for like a week, right? For them to do this. And I’m like, I am not looking forward to this one bit. Luckily the Jeep has torques. It has a lot of torques.

SOUND FX: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: mind you, Sunday morning people are going to church, going to brunch, wherever they’re going. We’ve managed to keep up with traffic with no boost. I’m like fooling the transmission. I’m playing with the throttle to get it to shift and get it to downshift and like [00:08:00] all this kinda stuff. It locks out the manual controls.

So you can’t use the flappy paddles, you can’t put it in sport mode and God forbid you turn it off. So it’s like, let’s just get home. We limp all the way home and then I just park it. And we were supposed to go to a trunk or treat at the Carlisle Fairgrounds where they hold, you know, Corvettes of Carlisle and the GM Nationals and the Ford Nationals and all these big shows.

And we even did a swap meet there many, many years ago. Again, going through all these pictures in the fall. Do you remember when we did the Euro show and sold off all that stuff?

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: So same place, right? Pack up the fam, we’re gonna go to the trunk or treat. I decided to take the Volkswagen because it’s ready to go.

Everything’s fixed. You know, the doctor cleared it for service. I make it, I don’t know, five, six miles from the house, not even. And we’re in a line of cars going up north towards Pennsylvania and suddenly it just starts bucking and lurching. And the EPC light on the dashboard is flashing, which is the equivalent to the service throttle control module that was on the Jeep.

[00:09:00] And I’m like, it’s been two hours. Did the cars talk to each other? Are they in cahoots? What the hell’s going on here?

Crew Chief Brad: Delusion.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re on the side of the road. I pull off into this like little farm at, I don’t even know what to call it. Like dude shows up with a tractor. He is like, y’all all right, you need anything?

And I’m like, if you don’t have an OBD scanner, no. Uh, you know I can’t do anything for you. You wanna keep one in the car? I should. At this point I should. I’ve got like 12 different kinds too, which is the ironic part, realizing that it was the EPC and thinking back to last year, I had an issue where I was driving to meet up with Mountain Mandan and the car started doing some weird stuff on the highway, like bucking and lurching and whatever, but I was able to reset it by, you know, doing the old key trick.

You’re like 60 miles an hour, kill the ignition, pop the clutch, turn it back on, and just keep going. Right? And it, it cleared itself out and showed itself every now and again, just a weird hesitation when you’re going down the highway. Everything I read online, it’s like throttle body, throttle position sensor.

It’s all together, right? It’s all [00:10:00] electronic. It’s all also, again, 20 plus years old. So I’m like, oh man. It finally kicked the bucket. I popped the hood. I get out. I pulled both connectors from the cam sensors just in case something was weird with those because they were giving me issues before. And I also popped the connector to the throttle body and we let it sit for a minute.

Plugged everything back in. Bra fires up and we’re like, cool. We’re gonna get the heck outta here. Make it 50 yards. Buck, buck, buck. Car’s running like crap. Pull into the air park and then my wife has to come, bring me the scanner and you know, kind of help bail me out and all those kind of things. So to make a long story short, we kept doing this every couple miles and then the car would fail and I was trying to get it home in limp mode.

The Volkswagen though, it has torque two, the computer will not let it go above 20 mile an hour. It’s pathetic, right? At least the Jeep, I mean, we could get it up to 70. As long as you played with the transmission and you kept it within the power band where it would make torque, it was fine. You could keep up with traffic.

The Volkswagen was impossible. Finally, it just died right in [00:11:00] front of a restaurant. So we pulled in. We found an open parking spot, and then this other VW owner comes running over. He’s got an eos, you know, just starts helping us push the car. So we backed it into a spot. I called aaa, they towed me home.

Crew Chief Brad: What did you get to eat at the restaurant while you were waiting for aaa?

Crew Chief Eric: Nothing. Nothing.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that sounds like a bad time then. You should have said, went inside and sat and ate. What was it? At least a good restaurant like what was it? Was it Denny’s? No, it was a diner. Perfect. You should have went in and got some pie.

I feel like you did yourself a disservice.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re not wrong about that. If AAA had done what they normally do, which is we’ll be there in 20 minutes and three hours later they show up instead. This guy, he was there, had us hooked up and delivered in less than an hour. Domino’s isn’t even that fast, right?

It’s like, boom, done. There was no time to get pie because we were in and out.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s always time for pie.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m tired, I’m defeated, I’m deflated. Both cars are down. I’m just like, you gotta be kidding me. To make matters worse than we decided to watch the Formula One race, which we’ll get [00:12:00] to. So jump ahead to Monday.

The Jeep’s fixed with a bunch of MacGyvering, a bunch of mistakes. I was able to come up with a solution and where the problem came from, I was right. What I heard was not incorrect. It was a boost leak, like something in the system blew apart. It’s not where I expected it to blow apart. And so, you know, the ECU says under boost, and I’m like, okay, it’s all turbo related.

Either I blew up the turbo or it’s something in the intercooler system broke. Not a problem. What was going on is it was separating mind you. After almost five years of being on the car, the silicone adapter for my inner cooler kit kept coming off the throttle body, and so it was just venting to atmosphere.

So the, the motor was literally pulling no air filter, no nothing. It was just pulling whatever air it could from under the hood.

Crew Chief Brad: Can you reenact that motion again for our viewers? What was that motion?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: For those that don’t have that can’t see. It’s the shake weight motion.[00:13:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So anyway. Some MacGyvering, some trial and error, some test driving and whatnot. What I ended up doing was I went back to the factory part, cut it and made a hybrid solution. I basically forced their silicone to work with the metal and I made a piece that actually holds on, like you can put full Brad strength on it.

It’s not coming off of the throttle body now, which is nice. When I drove it, it feels peppier because now there’s not boost leak at the throttle body.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like you did yourself a disservice. Again, not fixing it with Volkswagen parts ’cause that’s what we tend to do.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I used the Volkswagen Band clamp because I needed something bigger.

Crew Chief Brad: That counts. Okay. Counts. That counts.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. That that works. You know, I’m waiting on a throttle body for the Volkswagen, but that’ll get fixed soon enough, so that should be pretty easy. My only fear is that these days, the quality of the parts is what scares me. The 20-year-old part lasted 20 years.

The new parts that are coming from [00:14:00] city of industry, China, if they last 20 minutes, I’ll be happy. You know, and it is sort of like Harbor Freight, you know what I mean? If it lasts 30 days. You’re doing pretty good.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they’re like single use tools.

Executive Producer Tania: I have a similar problem experience, the similar Poltergeist on the beetle right now that I can’t get it to not have a check engine light or not have a failed readiness state.

And one of my codes was CAM position sensor. So I changed the cam position sensor. Still have the code, find out that maybe it’s the crankshaft position sensor change, crankshaft position sensor. Still have the code, wait, put the original 20 some odd year old camshaft position or sensor back on, oh, I don’t have a code anymore regarding.

I got a different code now for something else, but I don’t have that code anymore. But I bought a German part.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I was gonna say Eric, how come you’re buying parts from China? Can you still get a OEM?

Executive Producer Tania: Well you can still buy, so like I could have bought Bosch OEM or genuine VW Audi [00:15:00] cam shop sensor for like $300, right?

Or then you look at the made in Germany, blah, blah, blah, one for 30.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. How do you know what the difference is and how do you know that that other company didn’t make it for Bosch and they put, you know, I don’t know. So to your point, the throttle bodies for the 24 valve VR sixes, they are no longer available.

Nobody has them unless you buy them Chinese made or whatever it is, like finding a genuine Bosch or a genuine Volkswagen. One’s gonna come from a third party reseller from basically a salvage yard. Or you know, somebody like a, like a strip search or a Ola or one of those companies that just takes those cars apart and they got parts on the shelf.

You know, that kind of thing. New is not always the option. And I mean, I looked everywhere, whether it was ECS or FCP or Euro tuning or Rock Auto or O 34 Motorsport. I mean, you just go down the list of German man, the, even the obscure ones, Blauer, Newgen, and two Bennett, like, does anybody have this part from 20 years ago?

And the answer is no. You just kind of get what you get and you’re not gonna be [00:16:00] upset. Now the question is, do I need to buy another one? To have it on the shelf if and when this one fails. Right. That becomes the bigger problem.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Or keep an eye out for one on eBay, which is where I also started looking and I have bought some parts and oddly enough parts from Eastern block countries like Latvia and whatnot.

It’s actually been really good quality stuff. I’ve ordered things for the Volkswagens and for the Jeep from that part of the world, and I’ve had zero issues even coming from like record yards and stuff out there where it’s like euro only parts kind of thing. No issues. Now granted, we’re in a new world now with tariffs and shipping and UPS throwing packages away because they don’t know how to charge you for the tariffs and all that kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, I, I’m in a position of if I wanna drive the car, I’m gonna have to get what I can get. And irony of ironies the place, I found parts that have actually been rather decent, I’m gonna use that word. I don’t wanna say they’re good, but they’re decent. So far I haven’t had a failure rate on anything I’ve ordered from Amazon.

Interesting. So I [00:17:00] ordered my throttle body from Amazon.

Crew Chief Brad: On the blue car before I sold it, I ordered an AC compressor from, it wasn’t Amazon, it was Walmart.

Crew Chief Eric: Really?

Crew Chief Brad: You got the AC compressor from Walmart? Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: I would’ve never thought to look there.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I didn’t. I did a Google search and Walmart came up and they had had it in stock and that was why I bought it from them.

It didn’t work, but I bought one from Walmart. It, it may have worked. I never got a chance to test it. Oh. Because I didn’t, I didn’t recharge the system or anything like that. So maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. Uh, well, in my world, so you all have issues with your cars. Let me talk about the issues I’ve got with my, with my truck

Executive Producer Tania: please.

I hear silence.

Crew Chief Brad: What, what

Executive Producer Tania: issues do you, oh,

Crew Chief Brad: none. Ah.

Executive Producer Tania: Must be

Crew Chief Eric: nice. Must be nice.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, granted karma, I’m probably gonna go out and it’s not gonna start, and I’m gonna have four flat tires and whatever. No, you should have bought a Toyota. That’s, that’s all I’m gonna say.

Executive Producer Tania: How many miles does your truck have on it these days?

Uh,

Crew Chief Brad: [00:18:00] 86,000.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a baby. It’s just a baby.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s just a baby, but it’s eight years old. And the only issues I’ve had outside of normal maintenance is the first week I had it. There was a transmission sensor that was faulty from the factory. Yeah, they replaced it like immediately and then I had a battery die prematurely.

I put a new battery in and I haven’t had to do anything to it since regarding repairs,

Crew Chief Eric: so I have to kind of separate the thoughts. Right. The Volkswagen is old. It’s 23 years old this year. Yeah, yeah, of course. And stuff’s gonna go bad, right? Yes. It just is. Especially old electronics things with servos and gears and stuff gets gummed up.

You know, I was reading online, there’s guys that will take throttle bodies and those electronic throttle position sensors, you can send ’em off and have ’em rebuilt. There’s companies that do that might be worth it. Yeah, exactly. There’s companies that do that with dashboards and stuff from like the old days.

That I’m not, I’m not too worried about because I kind of feel like I got my money’s worth outta my throttle body, right? It is what it is. I am [00:19:00] curious to open it, see what’s wrong with it. Maybe it’s shear a tooth or or something like that. But the Jeep, as you know, 156,000 miles now 11 years old, it’s been knock on wood, reliable.

I’ve really had no issues with it. So my thing is the issue I had, which suddenly reared its ugly head after five years of having this intercooler kit on the car, it’s

Executive Producer Tania: old silicone. The silicone goes bad. I had the same problem with the factory charge hose or whatever the hose is called, into the throttle body on the TDI.

Something happens to the rubber and it just didn’t matter how tight you squeeze the band clamp on. It would pop off. It would pop off, and it would pop off, and it ended up buying a new one. And you could actually see when you put them side by side, it had like shrank slightly. So like with age and time, it just, and the same thing would happen.

You were driving down the road and it would go p and then suddenly you couldn’t get out of your own way. And I, there’s so many times like, let me pull over and I’m on the highway, pull over on the side of the road, tighten it back up, and then you’d go 10 minutes down the road and p and then [00:20:00] you weren’t accelerating anymore.

So there’s something with. The rubber and the silicone that Yeah, it ages out.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m not blaming one side or the other with the Jeep. If you look at how that throttle body is designed, it’s dumb. Oh yeah. The way it’s made is specific to the connector that they developed. Yeah. Which is like nothing else had they made it, you know, like a standard rib slip a hose over in a turbo clamp, you could put anything you wanted on there, but it’s specifically designed for that piece.

Executive Producer Tania: But they all do it. ’cause even the Volkswagen was specifically designed with the, what do you call it? Not a pin, but it’s got the collar, yeah. Bracket that slips around it. And even that, like there’s play in it. So Kma sells kits or whatever, where basically they create a collar on it to clamp it and like force it that it, it can’t

SOUND FX: wear it over time where it wears

Executive Producer Tania: out their proprietary BS thing.

Keeps it all nice and tight so you’re not losing boost. But I don’t know why they all do that. Like what’s the reason? Proprietary, it’s like overcomplicating something.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:21:00] Exactly. And in my case people are probably going Well why did you even change those pipes to begin with? Well first of all, the inner cooler kit is metal and it doesn’t expand or contract, which is a problem with the factory one because they would swell and then the pipes would burst because they were thin.

The one in particular at the top, at the throttle body, the way they designed it, it sits up next to the fan housing and by engine vibration you could, I showed Tanya a picture of it. It starts to wear into the pipe. So it’s gonna end up eventually cutting it. Now the section that I salvaged to make my adapter piece is nowhere near that.

It’s up at the throttle body, so I only needed a couple of inches and I discarded the rest of it. Horror design or otherwise, whatever. I mean, it’s gone this long without an issue and hopefully it goes another 10, 20 years without an issue. Which circles back to your original point, Brad. I still think it’s cheaper to keep her.

Crew Chief Brad: Now I’ve got a question for you, you and me to an extent, and certainly Tanya are. More mechanically inclined than your average auto buyer.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:22:00] Well, and that’s the thing,

Crew Chief Brad: given the repairs that you just had to do and not knowing about Amazon Auto, right, and ECS or Euro tuning or whatever, your car breaks, AAA tos you to a shop In your estimation.

I know you don’t know for certain. Let’s start with the Volkswagen. How much would it have cost, labor and parts. To fix the Volkswagen at any reasonably priced independent shop?

Executive Producer Tania: $800. $800 to tell me they couldn’t find the parts for it. Let’s start there. Yeah. There’s that. Assuming the part was available.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Assuming they got the part, they got it at whatever their cost is and they charge you 10% markup.

Executive Producer Tania: If they bought an OEM part, easily 300 bucks Probably for the part, yeah. Three, 400.

Crew Chief Brad: There are some shops that exclusively deal in OEM parts, right? They won buy aftermarket, so

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: What would you say it would cost you and then we’ll, we’ll turn to the Jeep.

Crew Chief Eric: The Jeep, because [00:23:00] the piping had been changed. If you took it to a shop. Like a regular shop, not like an auto fab or a machine shop or you know, any fabricator or whatever.

Crew Chief Brad: I would’ve told you to put the factory parts back on it.

Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly. And then you’re gonna buy them new. And at that point I’m like, well, I have ’em in a box, I’ll just put ’em back on myself. It is not an easy job because you got, again, you gotta take the front end to part to get to all that stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. But Susie May with her, her own Jeep that. Takes it to the dealership for service and stuff.

She decides to go to an independent place, you know, to get it fixed.

Executive Producer Tania: We probably, for that issue that he had, you’re probably talking 200 bucks for the upper pipe and then the labor, how was it made stock? Because like that same elbow pipe, well, it’s not an elbow on the Jeep, but the elbow pipe and the Volkswagen, I think was like $75 or something.

It’s really

Crew Chief Eric: big. It’s like two and a half feet long.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. So maybe one 50. And then even though it’s five minutes to change an hour of labor, so 300. Three 50.

Crew Chief Brad: Most shops charge what? A hundred? A [00:24:00] hundred? 125. Closer to one 50. Yeah. Okay. So, so one 50 labor. Let, let’s be on the, the, the high side, be a little more conservative.

So one 50 labor, you know, an hour to do it. And then an hour, 150, $200 in parts. So, okay, so three 50 like Tanya was saying, and then Tanya with your issue, and then the troubleshooting. ’cause you had to do some troubleshooting too, even when you got the parts.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my God. With my issues and what they’re probably gonna end up being.

Well, if they were gonna buy me OEM parts, I’d have to go back and look. But I think it was a couple hundred dollars for a crankshaft position sensor and even that camshaft position sensor. So since the codes were confusing to me ’cause it threw different codes and probably there’s nothing actually wrong with the CAM and it’s actually is the crank one.

If they did change both, you’re already banging on $400 or $500 just in parts. Right. It’s not hard to change. ’cause the cam is very easy. You gotta charge you minimum of an an hour. Yeah. The crankshafts a little more tricky to get to easily another hour there. So you’re knocking on, what do we add up to [00:25:00] four or five?

You’re like 600 bucks maybe. And don’t forget markup on parts

Crew Chief Eric: and then all the shop fees because the environmental, this and the Yeah, we

Crew Chief Brad: used the fingers worth of grease. The previous part disposal fee to Right. All

Crew Chief Eric: the BS that is just cash in their pocket. I mean, I get it. They gotta pay the bills and they gotta keep the lights on.

Executive Producer Tania: So to the original question. If these parts go another 20 years, that’s $600 divided out. Over 20 cost of ownership there is still

Crew Chief Brad: low. To pull that thread a little further, you’ve got a car that you own outright. It’s completely paid off. So you’re not putting seven, eight, $900 a month into a car payment.

You’re putting that into a savings account to absorb issues like this. Right. So to Eric’s point, you know, as we come full circle, I’m gonna say something that they say about marriages and stuff, it’s just a joke, but it’s, it’s cheaper to keep her, it’s cheaper to keep your old car on the road. Yeah.

Running always a hundred percent. Unless you’re driving something that just [00:26:00] like is super niche, like a, an old Maserati or something that just

Crew Chief Eric: by turbo is immediately a money fit. Exactly. You

Crew Chief Brad: just run it off a cliff. You put the track insurance on it. Then you take it to the track and you purposefully run it into the wall and total it so you get your money back.

It

Crew Chief Eric: declared value

Crew Chief Brad: anyway, the point is it’s still cheaper to keep your old car on the road than it is to go buy, especially if your car’s only like 10 years old. Yeah. It’s already got the updated safety stuff that the old, old cars don’t have. So you’re, it’s still safer and cheaper.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of points here that you guys have made.

Tanya’s talking about amortizing, the total cost of ownership and all that kind of stuff. And I think Brad, you hit on something without saying something, which was, there’s also hidden costs when you go buy a new car because the insurance on your old car is probably cheaper than the insurance on your new car.

You know, things like that. And

Crew Chief Brad: just because you buy a new car, just like if you buy a new construction house, for example, doesn’t mean it’s not gonna have its own problems and it’s program. Right. Right. And so now on top of that, you’ve got your $900 car payment [00:27:00] plus. The service cost and the maintenance and stuff like that.

Executive Producer Tania: Let’s talk about something there, because this is something we talked about in the last, I don’t know if it was the last episode or one of the last episodes. The question was, in 20 years, what will my kids be driving kind of thing. What car am I holding onto given the maybe possible electronics gremlins We’re seeing in cars we already own 20, 25 years old, that we could arguably say maybe build quality was better 25 years ago.

Where do we think a car with 10,000 times more electronics? In them. Do we really think in 20 years, how do you fix them at that point? When all of the gremlins start going bad,

Crew Chief Brad: I think my kids and Eric’s kids are probably gonna end up driving Mark four Volkswagens. We just need to resurrect them all now and save them and just park them somewhere and then fix them.

Crew Chief Eric: But I think Tanya’s steering this conversation in, in a really interesting direction because the cars of today that I deem in a similar category to the [00:28:00] cars of yesteryear, of our yesteryear. I’m not talking about Grand Pappy’s Packard and you know, the 1957 Chevy Bel Air, and yeah, those things, you could fix ’em with the screwdriver and a dull knife,

Crew Chief Brad: the hammer of the Clarks.

Crew Chief Eric: The cars of today that my kids will be driving 20 years from now. ’cause I did think about this after we talked about that on that last episode, is you have to lean Japanese because the Japanese have brought creature comforts into their vehicles, but they didn’t overcomplicate them the way the Germans did.

Right. I don’t wanna talk about the Italians. I don’t wanna talk about the rest of whatever. The Americans are still sort of experimenting, like they’re trying to be cool and we’re gonna put gadgets and gizmos and it’s all kind of half baked at the end of the day. But the Germans went full space programs, star Wars, everything has its own processor, its own module, its own subdivided, subprocesses.

It’s like Tron inside of every car. Absolutely bonkers. And you need a degree in not being a mechanic, being a computer [00:29:00] scientist to work on a Mercedes or an Audi, or even the lowliest of lowly Volkswagens these days. And so I think the Japanese, when you open the hood of a Mazda, or you look at the Koreans and you open the hood of a Hyundai, like I’ve said, you still look at it and go, Hey, there’s a motor.

You open the hood of A BMW, or you open the hood of an Audi and you’re like, um, where’s the engine? Like everything’s covered. Everything’s shrouded. Everything’s shielded. You gotta spend half a day just to get to a coil pack, let alone to anything major. And that’s where I’m starting to lose my loyalty.

Unfortunately, I’ve been exiting this stage for quite a long time. I’ve said it before, but it’s been a long, very slow and painful road to say goodbye to Volkswagen just because it’s what you know, what you imprinted on, what you grew up with. Now, I’m still a huge fan of the old cars, but the new ones, you look at the price tag of a brand new GTI today, I’ve said it before, you guys scoffed at me.

If you go price out the cars that we want as an enthusiast,

Executive Producer Tania: the auto bond top edition, [00:30:00] it starts at like 41. It’s insane. It’s insane. So by the time you’re out tags, title insurance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you’re, you’re banging on fifties door on a

Crew Chief Eric: front wheel drive, no manual transmission.

GTI called it. It only gets worse from there. So my point is, if you’re thinking about the car of tomorrow for your kid that you can help them work on, the list is gonna be really short. I still think the Jeeps, even though I gotta talk about a Wrangler experience I had here in a little bit.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, wranglers are terrible for kids.

Crew Chief Eric: They are, but from a workability perspective, they’re still kind of dirt simple, right? Like any pickup truck is kind of dirt simple from a certain age. And again, I think the Japanese cars are on the simpler side and the cor, some of the Korean cars. But German cars, I would not recommend them for first time drivers.

Crew Chief Brad: It was funny you said Italian. Anybody that buys their kid like a, a Maserati, even like the, the, the Ghibli Ghibli the giblets, anybody buys their kid one of those, or [00:31:00] the, the Alpha Romeos.

Crew Chief Eric: I was thinking the 500. They’re not worried about the maintenance cost. No, not at all.

Crew Chief Brad: True, true, true. Yeah. You shouldn’t be driving.

Crew Chief Eric: No. I mean I think our showcase kind of went everywhere or nowhere at the same time.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, no, I mean it started with a good point with the car prices. Consistently going up given what’s going on in your neck of the woods. With the government shutdown? Yeah. And the reduction in federal workforce. Lots of people looking for jobs.

Lots of people. Penny pinching now yet still like something’s gotta give. ’cause people are losing their jobs. Their incomes are shrinking. But car prices and prices in general for everything are going up. But people are still buying cars. Why? I don’t know. Look at your 2005 Honda Accord that’s sitting in your driveway.

Ask yourself, do I really need a new car or can I just put a new alternator in it and just drive it for another 50 years? ’cause I guarantee you that car you’ll get another 50 years out of it.

Crew Chief Eric: I think that’s just it too. Like you have to ask yourself. I know the bills can be shocking sometimes, especially if you’re not doing the work yourself.

[00:32:00] To Tanya’s point earlier, how long did you go, unless this is like a recurring problem. Did you go before that alternator quit? Yeah, well you went 20 years before it quit, so put another one in it. Cross your fingers. It goes another at least 10. Yeah, and I will say a lot of people did shy away from turning their own wrenches for quite a long time, but I am still amazed by the number of YouTube videos.

Where you can get help and people will walk you through step-by-step how to change even the most complicated things. And I, myself sometimes are like, man, how do I do that again? And I don’t wanna go to the Bentley manual because that drives me crazy. It’s written by, I don’t know who writes those.

They’re insane. They’re not written well and the, and they’re not documented. Well, it’s like 5,000 pages of nonsense. And so I go to YouTube and then five minutes later I’m like, oh yeah, that’s how you do it. That’s right. Turn it this way. And spin on your head and tap your belly three times. And that’s how you do the shift linkage, right?

I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: and to your point, here’s where I gotta give major props. To, at least in the Volkswagen community, and I’m [00:33:00] sure there are others in the, the other manufacturer communities, uh, but I gotta give major props to ECS tuning and FCP Euro, mainly FCP Euro because they have YouTube tutorial videos. Yeah.

For many, many jobs. When I had to do the PCV valve and the intake, uh, manifold gasket on my, my R 32, there was a step-by-step video how to take it apart, how to do it, all the pitfalls, all the advice and everything the tools needed. FCP Euro put it out and it a job that I never in a million years would’ve attempted myself.

I tried it and I was able to do it, and I did it successfully. It was because of that YouTube video that I was able to do so,

Crew Chief Eric: and you brought up two companies that are at the forefront in the German space, right. They carry parts for BMWs and Audis and Porsches and Mercedes, and you name it. Interestingly enough, because they’re at each other’s throats from a competition perspective, both now have that lifetime warranty.

So it’s like if you buy the part and it [00:34:00] fails, they’ll send you another one. And if you buy the part and it wears out in five years and they send you another one, as long as you send the original one back. I don’t understand how they make any money off of that or how it works. I mean, you could do used motor oil.

We’ve done brake pads for the race cars using their lifetime warranty, stuff like that. It works. I’m not gonna question it. As long as they keep doing it, I’m happy. But that also factors in if you are a German car owner, a German car enthusiast, to do the work yourself, it gets a lot cheaper. When you have companies providing those types of warranties long term, ’cause Tanya, that cam sensor, she’s gonna send it back or they’ll send her another one and she only paid for the one the first time and then that’s it.

Right? She can replace it as many times as she needs to. And that’s actually pretty cool. You don’t see that anymore. I’m sure there’s other companies, but at least in, in the German car space, those two are the ones that are gonna do it.

Crew Chief Brad: If you’ve got a Japanese car, an Italian car, or God forbid, like a Swedish car, which FCP Euro covers Swedish cars too, they, well, they check with whatever aftermarket sites you’re using and see if [00:35:00] they offer something like that because that could definitely help you limit your costs.

The independent shops you go to, you know, as we’re giving advice now, before you go in there and have them do work for you, make sure if you want to supply your own parts, that they allow you to do that. Some shops do not allow you to bring your own parts, right? So I think Tanya ran into that in Texas.

The shop I use here in, in Virginia, the one shop will not let me bring my own parts. That’s the one that only uses OEM parts. Mm-hmm. Uh, I did find another shop that will, if I need to go there, but. It’s cheaper to keep your old car on the road, stop buying new cars. It’s not doing anybody any good except for the car makers and the dealers.

So keep your old cars on the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s probably a good segue to talk about the craziness happening in the new car world. So maybe we’ll switch back to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving, shall we? Sure. And since we tend to lean a little bit heavy in the world of Volkswagen, we’ll just continue in pulling that thread.

To your point, Brad, times are tough decisions were made, the people have spoken. We don’t want your stinking EVs. So [00:36:00] facilities that are home to cars like the Q4 E tron and the ID four and the ID seven are seeing reduced output and are in the brink of closure.

SOUND FX: Mm

Crew Chief Eric: mm What a shame. I think it is a reminder that the industry giants need to adjust their strategy and listen to what people actually want.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Toyota, we weren’t sure what they were doing, but when Toyota does something, people should pay attention. Toyota said, we’re sticking with hybrid. Hybrid is the answer, and everybody else should have been, you know, maybe we shouldn’t follow Tesla down this path.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m just gonna leave that where it is. Toyota’s not without their own issues. I mean the, all the recalls and stuff on the new Tundra with the twin Turbo V six and everything, I mean, they make missteps, but they make good decisions much more often than they do the missteps. And they correct the missteps very quickly.

Crew Chief Eric: I bet if that same truck had not had a twin turbo V [00:37:00] six and had a V eight normally aspirated like has been around for a million years, thanks to Toyota’s debut into nascar, they probably have no issues.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a reason, there’s all kinds of memes about the people and the owners of the truck with the motor that I have and how they look down on all other Toyota owners.

Uh, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent. It might not be the fastest V eight in the world, but it is reliable, that’s for sure.

Crew Chief Brad: It, it scoots. Um, okay. So yeah, they’re shutting down. I guess. Are they gonna re, can they repurpose those facilities to make things that people might actually wanna buy? See, I think it’s all about.

Crew Chief Eric: Reducing their loss leaders. See, it’s all about the bean counters because they gotta pay for Formula One. I just keep bringing this up. Volkswagen has to figure out how to pay for Audi to go to Formula One next year. So anywhere they can cut the fat, they’re gonna cut it.

Crew Chief Brad: So Volkswagen obviously hasn’t heard the saying, how do you make a small fortune in racing?

Start with a large fortune? They haven’t heard that before because now they’ve got a small fortune and they’re going racing

Crew Chief Eric: at Dieselgate too. Right? [00:38:00] So we talked last month about how Volkswagen pulled the plug on the Lambo program in Hypercar, right? For Weck and for imsa. You said yourself, Brad, you were like, I didn’t even know they had a Lambo running in the upper classes in endurance racing.

Fine. Fine. Well, we pulled the plug on that. Well, guess what? Surprise, but maybe not a surprise. ’cause I said it from the beginning and people are like, no, you’ll see. It’s gonna be the greatest comeback since the 9 62 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is Porsche’s new halo car and yada yada. The 9 63. The 9 63, the 9 63 is gonna win.

Lama four years later, still hasn’t won anything. Uh, yes. Okay. It got constructor championship or whatever it is in fine. Great. But it didn’t win Lama. It didn’t win anything of significance. So the factory, again, because I think they need to put their money to Formula One, is pulling the plug on the Porsche 9 63 Hypercar.

It is done as of Petite Lama. That’s it. That was its final race. Do you think [00:39:00] they would’ve continued on with it had it been more successful? I think Porsche’s got this three strike strategy. They either win three times and stop, or they lose three times and stop. I think that’s what it is. But the 9 63 was kind of a loser from the beginning, right?

I mean, you could argue, oh, well balance of powers in the favor, Ferrari, blah, blah, but Ferrari doesn’t compete stateside. They compete at Lama and then they go home, or they do some other big race. They go back to Ello and they ignore everybody for another year. The 9 63 comes over here and competes against Cadillac in Acura, or Aston in the Valkyrie, you know, or whatever it is, and gets its butt handed to it.

It’s just been hit or miss. And granted, yeah, you got the power of Penske and all these other independent privateers and all this kinda stuff. It hasn’t come together for this car. And so I said after the first year, I’ll be amazed if the 9 63 makes it three years. And here we are at the end of the third year going into the fourth season and they said, no, that’s it.

It’s done. Sad, but not sad. I don’t care about that car. [00:40:00] To round up this conversation. I got two Porsche tests while I was at Petite Lama this month. Do tell, I forgot you went to that. I can’t wait to talk about that. Yeah, yeah, we’ll talk about that a little bit too. So I got to ride in a Macan GTS, and as I sat in it and I looked around, I said, is it more than just a Tiguan?

Is it, I don’t wanna offend the owner because let’s face it, with the new unified universal platform, mq, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s a lot of shared DNA between tiguans tox and all this kind of stuff. It’s a very nice car. It’s a very quick car. I don’t like the interior. The center console looks like something out of the Starship Enterprise.

It has literally like 50 buttons because it has no multifunction interface. So things that should be soft buttons are hard buttons on either side of the console, like down the passenger side, up the driver’s side. It’s craziness. So I, I was sort of not a fan. There’s all these design cues, the nine, you know, the clock in the center.

Could you guys have [00:41:00] just done your own thing and not made it all look the same?

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like the little clock in the center, like the ones Infinity used to have, and, and the, the Volkswagen Fayton, I think had one. It’s so bougie, right? It is bougie. Look, I’ve got a Rolex on my dash. It’s not a Rolex, whatever, but it’s a jox.

It’s just like, look, look at what time it is. Can you read that? Only the sophisticated eye can read what that says, Uhhuh. So, okay, so you drove a expensive take one. No,

Crew Chief Eric: no, no. I got, I got the ride in the T one. So it was not the turbo more closely related to its cousin Volkswagen. This was actually the six cylinder God knew who makes the six cylinders probably punched out Audi six cylinder or something like that, right?

So, I mean, it, it sounded good. It, it boogied. You know, all that kind of stuff. It felt very planted on the road, but I was just kind of kept looking at it going, I like it. I do like the way the Macan looks. I like the way it looks over the Cayenne, but I’m like, mm-hmm could I own one of these? You know? And that’s where I kind of went.

Uh, and if it was [00:42:00] just me driving every day, I wouldn’t want a Macon. Right. I would want something else.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s interesting to hear you say that. ’cause when I was up there, you know, I was talking to Tanya and we were talking, I was like, every once in a while I think about getting rid of the truck and on the short list of things that I would potentially replace the truck with.

It’s a Macon or a Cayenne, you know, something stupid like that. Or even a Volvo vaccine 90 or whatever. But then I, I think. The problem with the truck is it’s never, I can’t say never, but it’s more than likely never going to give me a reason to need to sell it. Right. And it’s been dead reliable. It hopefully will continue to be dead reliable if I got rid of it and got something like this.

I’m just asking for trouble.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. So I did get to test drive a Porsche while I was in Atlanta.

Crew Chief Brad: Let me guess you test drove a. Boxter s

Crew Chief Eric: Boxter,

Crew Chief Brad: a 9 44 turbo.

Crew Chief Eric: I think I threw up in the back of my throat a little bit to know how to fend the car that I drove.

This is the [00:43:00] pinnacle of Pinnacles. It wasn’t a GT 3, 9 11 or anything, but it was a 2023 Cayman GT four.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, those are very nice.

Crew Chief Eric: It is vetted. Nice. This is, the price tag is not very nice, but they’re very nice. No, no,

Crew Chief Brad: no. So did it live up to the hype?

Crew Chief Eric: So it wasn’t an rs, it was just a regular GT four. I didn’t know they had an RS version of the Oh, the GT four Rs now.

Right. You know how Porsche is, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. They took parts off of it. It made it more expensive.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they put the ugliest wing you could find from JC Whitney on the rs. It looks horrendous. I don’t like it at all. It just looks like a bolt on you would put on an E 36. It’s just, ugh, horrible. Sort of like that goofy wing that’s on the, the Mustang GTD, like it literally looked like they glued it in the middle of the witch.

It’s awful. Anyway, the Cayman. Is a car that’s always been on my radar. You can kind of almost pick just about any year of Cayman, you know, starting from the very first ones to the very current ones. Looks aside. Uh, well, the.one and the dot two I, I hate that, by [00:44:00] the way. And the, the whole community of, we refer to them as like software packages, service pack one and service back two.

Ugh. It’s just a Cayman like get over it. Right? This one had been massaged a little bit, it had an exhaust, some other stuff, whatever. I don’t, it’s cool. Like I liked it. I did, you know, but again, it’s, you sit there and you ask yourself, am I that kind of poser? Would I drive one every day? I don’t think I could do either.

I’d love to have one.

Crew Chief Brad: My problem with the Cayman is the same problem I have with the boxer is at the end of the day, it’s not a nine 11.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s all the reason I need to like it more. Having driven nine elevens, I don’t like the nine 11. I don’t like the way it handles, I don’t like the way it feels. I don’t like that constant sense of

Crew Chief Brad: it’s gonna kill you

Crew Chief Eric: of nervousness that it has.

Like the Cayman super planted. You could throw it in a turn and it could care less. It’s like driving anything else. Now I prefer mid-engine cars. You know, I’ve driven a a million of them. So for me it’s like, okay, great, but the nine 11, ugh. I don’t know. That’s a whole nother [00:45:00] culture that I’m sort of over it because I, I’d rather be with the air cooled guys, you know?

But even there, I gotta be careful ’cause it’s like I’m old school eighties where I’m like, Alala, yeah, let’s go. Like, I don’t, I’m not a purist.

Crew Chief Brad: This is just me being bougie as someone who’s never technically owned a nine 11 or, or, or a Porsche. Period. I see it from the outside and I’m like, well, oh, I gotta have the top of the line model.

Oh well you gotta have the nine 11 like it, it ain’t cool if it ain’t a nine 11 kind of thing. And that’s just me. I need to get over myself and like say, yes horse makes other cool cars. It doesn’t have to be a nine 11

Crew Chief Eric: came in GT four. I didn’t get to drive it on track. That’d be a lot of fun too. I mean, you could definitely tell it’s very well sorted.

It’s fast, it’s everything you want. It checks all the boxes. I mean, it’s the only box that doesn’t check is anything practical because it’s not, it’s very small inside and it’s like a little jet fighter and you know, it’s a modern nine 14 really what it is at the end of the day. So it’s really cool.

Crew Chief Brad: So let’s play a little game.

How much is a [00:46:00] 2023 Cayman GT? Four. Rough ballpark. I know it’s six figures.

Crew Chief Eric: I know what was paid for the one I drove

Crew Chief Brad: to protect the innocent. Just throw a number out, but not the exact number that that person paid. One 30. One 30, okay. What else would you get for one 30? I’d get a lot of things for one 30. I know what Tanya would get at least.

I think I know what Tanya would get. I think she would get an A-M-G-G-T.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, for sure. The she

Crew Chief Brad: and judging by her smile, I think I’m right. Can

Executive Producer Tania: I get one for one 30?

Crew Chief Brad: I’m sure you could find a used one for one 30. Eric, you would probably get a newer R eight. That’s my guess.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. An R eight and I’d have money left over R eight versus Cayman R eight all day long.

And I’m not even talking V 10, I’m talking V eight with the six speed. Right. Like why wouldn’t I do that? It’s, it’s better looking, it’s more interesting. It’s still mid-engine. It handles really awesome, all that kind of stuff. The Porsches are nice, but I feel like I’ve outgrown them actually. Oh, well you’ve matured.

If I was going to [00:47:00] buy a Porsche and if I had 130 grand to spend, I actually really like the 89 speedster, the nine 11 Cabrio le with that hard clamshell thing in the little short windshield. I’ve always loved those. That’s a car. Okay. If I have 130 grand to piss away, that’s what I’m buying in the Porsche catalog.

I’m not buying anything new. I want something vintage. Now I, I’m a hypocrite ’cause I just said, oh nine 11, blah, blah, blah. But that’s always been like my nine 11. Right. That’s the one I I love. I mean, I would take a Cabrio and not the speedster. It’s the same. Same but different, but you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. Moving on. We have a little bit of St News headlines today. Reed, the former CEO of Stellantis is saying things like, stellantis is gonna break up and all this. I’m like, whatever. We’ll wait and see when, when that happens. And they just get together. Feels like just yesterday

Crew Chief Brad: they merged.

They talked about it for a while and it took them forever to come up with that stupid name. They were together for a [00:48:00] while.

Crew Chief Eric: And if you think about it, the most profitable part of Stellantis stateside is Jeep ’cause do they make anything else anymore? That electric charger is a failure. There’s no more muscle cars.

Chrysler makes the Pacifica sort of, maybe not because they’re built in Canada and all that stuff is still happening. That isn’t in the news anymore. So what’s left? That’s it. Beats me. Right? But I did find this interesting ’cause Brad, you know more about this stuff than I do. Oh, you, you’re crazy. The hurricane inline six.

Mm-hmm. Got dropped into a Viper and it makes 400 more horsepower than the V 10 did

Crew Chief Brad: guessing the original V 10 blue, and that’s why they needed to put a new motor in it.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, why would you do that to a Viper other than that reason?

Crew Chief Brad: Why would you put a VR six in the back of a nine 11 that we saw at H2O that one time?

I never understood that swap. I think this is just as weird. WI don’t understand. Unless they, one, maybe they just couldn’t [00:49:00] source another V 10 or it was gonna take too long, or were these YouTubers that were just looking for something to do something different. They look

Crew Chief Eric: like drag racers looking to go fast.

Going to go real fast. Oh, so

Crew Chief Brad: it’s a roadkill build. So they’re doing it for views. That’s why. What about the Hellcat Prowler though? Yes. So Casey, now you got my attention. That has been one of the prowler biggest criticisms ever since it came out is the motor was anemic. Why did they do that?

Crew Chief Eric: Should have been a six cylinder.

Crew Chief Brad: Why not a hurricane in the prowler? That makes a ton of sense.

Crew Chief Eric: Actually. As an inline six, it would’ve fit better in the front of the prowler than the

Crew Chief Brad: B eight. Yeah. 850 horsepower prowler. Now you’re cooking with gas.

Crew Chief Eric: But does it make it any less weird when it has more power?

Crew Chief Brad: No. See, my problem with this whole situation, if we talk about the Viper, is like I’m all for like doing engine swaps and stuff like that, but not too iconic cars, right?

Like the Viper has the V 10. It should always have the V 10. The nine 11 should always have Porsche six in the back. Like the people like Renegade Motor Sports that does the LS [00:50:00] swap nine elevens and stuff. The boxers, yeah, I can see it like the Caymans boxers, sure, but not the nine 11 for whatever reason.

In my little mind, I feel like it’s just, it doesn’t work. I wouldn’t do it. Doesn’t make sense to me. Does not compute

Crew Chief Eric: well. All of this STIs talk is really. Just bluff and bluster to cover the fact that I wanna talk about the rental car I had at Road Atlanta,

Crew Chief Brad: the four xe? Yes. Let’s talk about the four xe.

I’ve been very curious about these.

Crew Chief Eric: We had a bunch of other options, so I went with William from the Ferrari marketplace and so I met him in Atlanta. We go down the aisle and they said, pick whatever you want out of this row. And so it’s, you know, the typical fair Nissan Murano,

Crew Chief Brad: cross Cale,

Crew Chief Eric: no cross cabs, you know, Impala, garbage can.

What ended up happening was there were two Jeeps. As we walked down this aisle, the one I wanted to rent was the new Grand Cherokee. ’cause I was thinking, oh, I get a, basically a, a short term test drive to compare it to my Grand Cherokee. But he spotted the Wrangler and said, yeah, yeah, let’s take the [00:51:00] Jeep.

And I’m like, uh, no.

Crew Chief Brad: Two guys in our Jeep. Did you put the top down? No, it was a hard top. Oh. So you can take the hard top off. Did it have the soft center to where you could, the soft center where you could fold it back?

Crew Chief Eric: No, it had everything hard.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, two guys in a hard Jeep. Got it. Okay. Good. Understood.

Crew Chief Eric: The only saving grace that it had, it was like, Ooh, it’s a hybrid.

Problem is they didn’t plug it in and charge it. Oh, great. Yeah. So it was basically flat. It’s okay, fine. Everything you know, to be true about a wrangler is still true to this day. They’re noisy. They ride rough. The doors don’t close properly. They have a lot of wind noise. They have a lot of road noise.

They meander around the road. They tram line going down the highway. They’re a little bit sketch above 65. It’s like a broken oxcart. I don’t know why people drive them, and the worst part is the hybrid has a four cylinder turbo attached to it. So you got this [00:52:00] big, heavy 5,200 pound Jeep. We looked up the weight of the thing with a four cylinder turbo.

Now it’ll scoot. What reserve electricity has, it uses like an additional buy turbo. One of them’s electric and one of them’s air. The gas mileage was horrendous. 17 miles to the gallon, that’s what it was getting. I’m sure with the hybrid working, maybe 30. But if it’s anything like my wife Pacifica, you get 30 miles or 40 miles out of the battery and then is depleted and you’re back to making 17 miles to the gallon again.

So what good is that? You can’t put anything in it. You definitely can’t haul any mulch with it. It’s got a ton of ground clearance. I’m sure it’s great off road. The interior is pretty spartan for what it is. It’s not bad, but it’s not luxurious. It’s comparing a grand and a wrangler’s like apples and chainsaws.

I mean, they have nothing to do with one another. All in all, it was an epic fail and I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.

Crew Chief Brad: Not surprised by any of your points.

Crew Chief Eric: No. And I remember when you had your orange one,

Crew Chief Brad: it was red,

Crew Chief Eric: it was orangey red.

Crew Chief Brad: It was like pumpkin spice. It was maroon or like a dark, [00:53:00] dark road. Hey, you’re right.

It wasn’t

Crew Chief Eric: maroon. That’s right. But you had the stick shift in that.

Crew Chief Brad: I had the six speed in that, and I had the five speed in my. Tj

Crew Chief Eric: the Wrangler is off my list. I would not wish that upon my enemy.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. The people that go out and buy a Wrangler as a family vehicle are absolutely insane.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Crew Chief Brad: mean, I was hoping

Crew Chief Eric: that I would get a duck.

I was thinking maybe in the next two days I’ll get a duck so I can get something positive outta the experience. Nobody would’ve known it was a rental. There can have been like, oh, look at you, you get a duck. You don’t have a duck on your dashboard. Here, here have a duck. You own a

Crew Chief Brad: Jeep. You, you can still get a duck.

You get a

Crew Chief Eric: Duckie and you get a duckie. I was thinking parked at Road Atlanta with all those hundreds of thousands of people, I would’ve gotten at least one duck. I got nothing.

Crew Chief Brad: The, the, the whole duck thing like skipped me, like I missed that part. Uh, I guess that was after my time.

Crew Chief Eric: Part of the ethos. Now

Crew Chief Brad: do Jeep people walk around with ducks in their pocket and then just randomly placing them on people’s Jeeps?

Crew Chief Eric: I wonder that. What do the Bronco people give each other?[00:54:00]

Executive Producer Tania: They give them each other oranges. Oh, nice. Very nice. Very nice.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, well speaking of infinite new car wisdom, just the other day my inbox was exploding with emails from all over, from LinkedIn, from here, from everywhere. I’m gonna summarize it. The headline reads, GM takes 1.6 billion with the B billion dollar hit on EVs.

And I said to myself, is anybody surprised? Reminds me of that drive-through. We did a while back, Brad. Remember we showcased General Motors if you were like yesterday’s technology tomorrow, there it is. There it is.

Crew Chief Brad: The ongoing joke in that episode was what moves faster? GM or anything else? Very slow moving object.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and it’s hilarious because we reported for months and months and months now companies are getting out. Trying to ramp back up production of petrol engines or hybrids or whatever. And here’s gm, the caboose of the train. Did you guys [00:55:00] not see the warning signs? Did you not learn anything from your acquisition of Nicola?

Hello? Do what Toyota does? At least look over their shoulder. I mean, try to get ahead of everybody.

Crew Chief Brad: Once unrelated, they’ve got those apps that are advertised all over Instagram about we follow and make the stock market trades that the, the politicians make. Like I, I feel like GM needs something like that, but they need to follow Toyota and whatever things Toyota does.

Like your, to your point, GM needs to just start doing. Yeah. They’ll be a much better company.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of General Motors products, this isn’t a recall, but this is really funny, so I’ll just read the headline. C seven Corvette ZR one averages 173 miles an hour in a Texas road race, but melts its butt.

Mm-hmm. Oh, look at this thing.

Executive Producer Tania: How’s that happen? I mean, that’s a lot of heat, right? No wonder they were lighting on fire. When the fuel spills and you’re filling it,

Crew Chief Eric: this is the [00:56:00] previous generation.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, that’s true. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. The engine’s in the front. That’s right. That’s right. The fuel thing’s, the new ones.

That also shows you the aerodynamics of the back of that car being flat. Heat gets trapped there because you would think moving at 170 miles an hour that that heat would escape just by sheer force of the air flowing over the car. But it gets trapped there and it melted the back end of it, vortex or something.

It also doesn’t help that the exhaust is all right there in the center too. But still, I mean, it melted the taillights too. It’s. Just nuts. That’s hot.

Crew Chief Brad: Speaking of expensive repairs, true. What is a shop gonna charge to fix that?

Executive Producer Tania: Aren’t the rear these like all one piece? Not like there’s a bumper you actually pull off, isn’t it All part of the back end.

Yikes.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. That is terrible design.

Executive Producer Tania: But Jake from State Farm will take

Crew Chief Eric: care of it, so it’s all good. Don’t worry about it.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. And then our rates will go up.

Crew Chief Eric: Asian and domestic news. I have a note here that says Toyota and Mazda teaming up for the next Miata and GR 86. Who put that in there? I

Executive Producer Tania: did.

What’s that all

Crew Chief Eric: [00:57:00] about?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, apparently, which we already knew. They’re ditching BMW as a partner and now they’re teaming up with Mazda and they’re going to make the next great. Miata. The NE Miata, right? The next generation Miata.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you want a Miata? Yeah, I want a Miata. What Miata do you want? Uh, any Miata,

Executive Producer Tania: I guess I will tell.

It’s all

Crew Chief Eric: pretty new reporting. We did some independent researching that Toyota owns 10% of Mazda and Mazda owns like 0.0001% of Toyota or something. Like there’s a weird partnership

Crew Chief Brad: there between the two. That just means Toyota owns 0.0001% of themself.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yes. If they own

Crew Chief Brad: Mazda

Crew Chief Eric: self-fulfilling prophecy, you know what I mean?

But I, I’d rather see them get together than the Mazda Ford thing from, you know, 15, 20 years ago. That made no sense to me whatsoever. But I’m sure there was a reason at the time. But as a, as an outsider, it didn’t seem clear as to why those two would team up. We’ve wondered for a while, what’s the next generation Miata gonna look like, or what’s it gonna be?

Here’s the [00:58:00] question. Is the Miata

Crew Chief Brad: going

Crew Chief Eric: to get bigger or is the GR 86 gonna get smaller? The GR 86 doesn’t need to get any

Crew Chief Brad: smaller, so the Miata is probably gonna get a little bit bigger then.

Crew Chief Eric: I hope so, because I personally like the NC for the fact that it is a little bit bigger. The third generation Miata was more comfortable to drive.

Yes, it didn’t perform as well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get it. But as a driver it was more comfortable. Right. We mentioned last time the A 86, not the GR 86. The 80 86, you could get new crate motors from Toyota. Right. Have you guys seen the video going around Instagram of a guy that built the 80 86.

With the electric motor and the six speed manual, it is bonkers. Awesome. That’s the kind of stuff we need now. Apparently that build was partially done by Toyota because they supplied the battery pack from Lexus and like a bunch of other stuff to make it work. It’s super clean, it’s really neat. And then he’s got this awesome setup where we joked about this before, but he pipes the sound of an [00:59:00] original 80, 86 twin cam into the car.

So it sort of fools you while you’re driving it. And I was like, okay, I get it now because it all makes sense. It all works together as a system and it’s actually pretty cool.

Crew Chief Brad: It sounds like something to compete with that Hyundai concept that they’re going to make, that’s gonna be six figures and no one can afford,

Crew Chief Eric: or no, no.

You mean the N 74, whatever that thing is.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, the N 70, whatever it was, the N 70, the Normandy, something. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I was told at the track, ’cause I kept saying ion when we were at the Hyundai booth.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not pronouncing it correctly.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah. Why do you call? It’s the ion. No. Well, how come Cadillac calls it the, the Celeste

Crew Chief Brad: de derelict Dele.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. So I’m like, well then it’s ion, you have to say it, right? Yes. I, I am I all Brad. Well, we’re gonna move on to lost and found your favorite section of the drive through where we find out what Chuck led Duck and Gray Chevrolet have to offer us this month. And this next one just melts my brain

Crew Chief Brad: like that Corvets rear end.

Crew Chief Eric: I can’t believe [01:00:00] there’s still more of these out there. You can’t

Executive Producer Tania: believe it’s Solanis. Third quarter sales result included six Dodge Darts. How is this possible not only six Dodge Darts, but also Dodge Grand Caravan and a Dodge Journey? This

Crew Chief Eric: car has been out of production for almost 10 years.

Crew Chief Brad: 10 years.

This is so fascinating.

Executive Producer Tania: Long game, baby.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. They’re playing the long game. Exactly. They make such terrible cars now that they have to go back and drum up all these old cars that they couldn’t sell before because what’s old is new again. Clearly what’s old is new. You didn’t wanna buy those cars then.

Maybe you wanna buy ’em now, but sure enough, six new 2016 Dodge Darts were sold nine years later.

Crew Chief Eric: See, this answers your question from before. What do you buy your kid today that’s gonna last them 20 years? You buy ’em a Dodge Dart, you can get ’em in a manual transmission. You get brand new today at your local Dodge dealer because they’re still out there.

Where do they keep finding them though? They gotta be in like a [01:01:00] subterranean warehouse in Detroit somewhere that people just forgot that they’ve got 30,000 Dodge Darts sitting there.

Crew Chief Brad: You think Dodge just kind of pulls ’em out every once in a while. Is this kind of like a trickle.

Crew Chief Eric: If they were smart, they would package ’em as some heritage model or some special paint jobs or something, or wrap ’em, you know, Shelby additions or something, I don’t know.

Whatever you wanna call it.

Crew Chief Brad: So my kids are four and two, so I’ve got 12 years and 14 years respectfully before I need to buy a car. At that point, I’m guessing I’ll be able to go to a dealer and buy a brand new 2025 Dodge Hornet, because that’s the new Dodge Dart. Right? So it

Crew Chief Eric: is. Ah, well, this next one was brought to us by Mr.

Mark Hewitt. Mark Hewitt. He’s still alive. He still listens. Every month we still get comments back. Thank you, mark, for being a loyal drive-through Listener 61 episodes later. Headline reads, Nebraska on Earth’s 1975 Chevy Vega from World’s [01:02:00] largest time capsule. Can we put it back, come again? Yeah. They put a Vega.

Underground 50 years ago. Did you notice the plate on it?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, there it is. 25 vanity

Crew Chief Eric: plate. Nebraska reads 2025. Almost like they planned ahead. They were thinking

Executive Producer Tania: it’s in good condition. It’s in good condition. They put it underground, brand new, but still whatever. They put it underground in.

Crew Chief Brad: Is this the same place they get the Dodge Darts?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s good. It didn’t like a bunker. It was in a bunker underground. Well, that bunker had very good

Crew Chief Eric: climate control. Uh, it doesn’t look like it from the pictures. Did you see the pictures of the bunker? It looks like literally just a hole in the ground. Yeah, it looks like where that guy built that Lamborghini in, like Slovenia or something.

Wherever that was. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: once it’s underground there’s pretty much Okay. And they had it in plastic wrap. Wait, why does it look like there’s rust off the hood?

Crew Chief Brad: This is an advertisement for plastic wrap. That’s what it’s,

Executive Producer Tania: they put it brand new and it already has scratches on the hood. Well, they probably had crap on top of it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it looks like it rusted.

Executive Producer Tania: It was [01:03:00] underground in a bunker. Of course, it wasn’t climate controlled, so it

Crew Chief Eric: rusted

Executive Producer Tania: sitting there. What is all this other trash they threw in this time capsule? Like,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, I wanna hear more about that.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sure it’s everything they could find from 1975 newspapers and magazines and baseball cards, or a little

Executive Producer Tania: vega all alone in the dark hole.

This whole time, nobody was missing it. Okay. I’m just gonna point

Crew Chief Eric: that out.

Crew Chief Brad: This is its villain origin story. You

Crew Chief Eric: know what’s gonna happen to it? Somebody’s gonna buy it, strip it, and turn it into a dragster. ’cause that’s what happened with Las Vegas. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: exactly what’s gonna happen in this car. The race number will be 1975.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think we’re gonna try to start something new here. And it’s Tanya’s goal as a result of last month’s mental gymnastics, trying to figure out Jonathan Price and the Infinity commercials and whoever this British guy is that eats the apple that we still don’t. It’s like the sin bad movie. We tried, oh, you should have gone through the exercise with us.

We were asking like chat GPT and we asked Steven, Izzy and all these other people, do you [01:04:00] know about the British guy eating the apple and the white suit and the commercial, blah blah. I know

Executive Producer Tania: he was somewhere, there’s some sitcom where he’s gonna show up one day, some old TV show where he was in an episode.

Also, one day this mystery will be solved probably on Fraser. Oh.

SOUND FX: It

Executive Producer Tania: was he. I gotta go back and watch Frazier.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m just giving her an excuse to watch Frazier at this point. I don’t think you need to give her an excuse to watch Frazier. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: I mean it’s been like five minutes since I’ve watched the whole thing, so I gotta start again.

Crew Chief Eric: So

Executive Producer Tania: this

Crew Chief Eric: little gem that Tanya found, I think we’re gonna try to do this every month. It’s fine. Wacky car commercials that maybe have like celebrities in them. Brad, have you seen this one yet?

Crew Chief Brad: I think I saw it when, when Tanya posted it. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: I would also just like to say that this gem is in the vein of the mystery British guy biting the apple at the end commercial.

And what is this commercial for? God knows Canon Pixel jet printers starring Don’t Ansel this [01:05:00] commercial. It’s like a Japanese commercial only aired in Japan.

Crew Chief Eric: Good. But the ending is what gets me, what is with

Executive Producer Tania: the strawberry, what I don’t know in his creepy face, what is happening. Yummy.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s a very Japanese thing to do, I think.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Did you also notice that his eyebrows are his bushy as his mustache?

Crew Chief Brad: Wonder what else is,

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I could just watch those last five seconds on repeat where he’s like, Hmm.

Good. Yeah, and eating the summer, it’s, it’s very creepy, but very satisfying at the same time, like I have a whole new respect for Nagel mantle as a result of this commercial. This is amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Good. Unbelievable. So, Tanya, I’m looking forward to your collection. I wanna see what you come up with next.

[01:06:00] For Lost and Found car commercials. That’d be a good one. I mean, we’ve already done the Ridley Scott. You remember that one where it’s like, and then the turbo kicks in, like there’s some

Crew Chief Brad: terrible car commercials. One of my favorite ones that I’ll, I’ll give you guys when I can find it, but it was the, the Pontiac Firebird, the Trans Am, the fourth gen from the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands.

It was sitting behind a car at a traffic light. It’s like pitch black or whatever. It’s revving, its motor. The car won’t move, so it swallows the car.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like the Ford car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Like the sport car. The evil car that kills the cats.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you guys remember the Trunk Monkey?

SOUND FX: Mm,

Crew Chief Eric: vaguely. Go search the Trunk Monkey commercials.

Those are definitely not PC anymore. Perfect. Right up my alley. Definitely not kosher. Alright. We said we weren’t gonna talk about them, but they just seemed to never leave the news and that’s Tesla. But now

Crew Chief Brad: what those [01:07:00] idiots do this time,

Crew Chief Eric: headline reads, Tesla is urging drowsy drivers to use full self-driving.

We know how this ends, folks

Crew Chief Brad: with a lawsuit,

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, what could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? How many countless floor demand stories suspect pulled over sleeping while Tesla drives itself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everywhere around the world, right? I mean, come on.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry. I thought the rules of even the full self-driving was you still had to maintain awareness and whatnot and.

It’s not really full self-driving.

Crew Chief Eric: Continue. Maybe it’s like initial D. You remember when he taped his hand to the steering wheel? That’s how you defeat that part so you can fall asleep and still be connected. Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: this is like when cell phones were becoming more popular and it was decided that, you know, rightfully you should be hands free.

And so people were taping the cell phone to their head.

Crew Chief Eric: I am still baffled by the amount of people that go [01:08:00] down the road holding the phone to their chin and I look at their car and go, it’s like two years old. It’s not that hard to figure out how to make the Bluetooth work. Hello?

Crew Chief Brad: When I see that, I think one or two things. One, they’re either borrowing a car from a friend or two, it’s a rental, or three, they’re just an idiot.

That’s probably the more likely one.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s number

Crew Chief Brad: three.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Ah, well, speaking of what could go wrong, let’s switch over to lowered expectations.

What is

Executive Producer Tania: this? Oh, of course. You know, there’s the annual pumpkin regatta. This is racing. This is racing in pumpkins. We’ve covered this before. Well, they do it every year I guess, in Oregon and this year’s Pumpkin regatta winner was this dude in a 936 pound pumpkin dressed like elf.

Crew Chief Brad: And the winner of this year’s trip is this guy.

Executive Producer Tania: Look how happy he was. Look at that face. Victory. Winning winner.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna quote Mark Shank from like the last, what should [01:09:00] I buy? This is so Oregon and I love it. And second Brad, speaking of commercials, does this remind you of those cuckoo bird German dudes, cuckoo bird, German dudes?

Crew Chief Brad: Remember those guys?

That’s not a commercial though. That was a live performance. Yes, that’s exactly. Oh my God. Now I gotta watch that again. Why did you do that to me? It’s like carbon income sale away. Now I gotta go watch it. So funny. When are we going to commission a pumpkin? For this.

Executive Producer Tania: How do you grow a 900 plus pound pumpkin?

You mean how do you row a boat? No, I said, how do you grow? Oh, how do you get, how do you obtain a 900 pound pumpkin to begin with? A lot of miracle grow. I think this guy’s been competing in the regattas since 2013 with the same pumpkin,

SOUND FX: the same pumpkin.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s just gotten bigger over time. It started out as like a 300 pound pumpkin,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, like genetics, right?

If you [01:10:00] take the seeds from your first big pumpkin and replant them, does that mean you will get big pumpkins again? I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: He bio-engineered a 900 pound pumpkin. I mean, that’s the only way, right? It’s a clone of the smaller of the other pumpkins.

Crew Chief Eric: What, what? What is this Florida man doing in lowered expectations?

What’s this all about?

Executive Producer Tania: The moral of this story is the next time you’re pulled over because you’re speeding, and this guy was doing 73 in 55, he is response to the police officers, was his driving at DSP was a FU. To the other drivers that were going slow.

Wow. Wow. I don’t think that went well. His mugshot, my

SOUND FX: goodness. Looks like

Executive Producer Tania: he was on something.

Crew Chief Eric: Also, I didn’t know a Kia Soul could do 73 miles an hour. Was it being pushed by a Silverado? Like it was downhill? Oh, there it goes. Well, Florida, there are no hills, so. Mm. I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. Flat line [01:11:00] speed of a Kia soul.

You’re asking a lot. Those hamsters were Were rolling.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they were.

Executive Producer Tania: And how fitting. We had this Florida man with a Kia Soul and the Kia Soul is no longer going to be produced, end of an era.

Crew Chief Brad: Unlike the Dodge Dart, which you can still buy new,

Crew Chief Eric: you know the only thing people are gonna miss about the Kia Soul.

Are those hamster commercials from the Super Bowl? That is

Crew Chief Brad: it. They’ll have to come up in Tanya’s research. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We didn’t hear if Tanya watched the F1 movie yet. I have not. WW There’s your update everybody. Tanya has not watched the F1 movie. Okay, moving on Book club.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, sticking with Formula One.

I finished another one this month by our friend of the show. Was she been on twice now? Multi-time guest, Elizabeth Blackstock finally got around to reading Racing With Rich Energy. This has to be one of the most incredible Ponzi schemes of the modern era. This story literally unfolds like something out of Hollywood.

It is definitely a catch me if you can [01:12:00] scenario. It’s a definite read for any Formula One fan out there,

Crew Chief Brad: or anybody that’s spanning a Ponzi schemes.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that too. This might be the manifesto for a lot of ’em out there. The one thing that’s interesting is. There’s a lot of excerpts from like Twitter posts.

It’s kind of strange. The first book I’ve ever read, hashtags. But it’s part of the story, right? Is, is those hashtags and all this other kind of stuff. And so you’re reading these, these little experts and these Twitter posts and there’s a lot of like bullet pointed lists and this and that. I mean, it’s much more journalism than it is a novel, but it’s still captivating and some of the stuff that they report on just absolutely bonkers and like how it all came together.

And I was left with the same question I started with, which I think we all said when we tried Rich Energy, which Brad, you still have a case of rich energy. And I took photographs of it with the book to prove that hey, you know, it’s sort of like a newspaper, you know, ransom. Like this is the date, here we go.

So we still have this case of rich energy after all these [01:13:00] years. It tastes like Red Bull. It smells like Red Bull. It looks like Red Bull. It’s made in Austria where Red Bull is made. How do we know it wasn’t just Red Bull at the end of the day and this guy was their patsy. They were adding another team without adding another team, or they were secretly funding Gene Haas without telling everybody that they were funding Gene.

You know what I mean? How do we know? Like that’s the part of the story. I was still left at the end going, well, how do we know it’s not Red Bull?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s an interesting tinfoil hat theory you have there, bud. I mean, what else could it be? I mean, energy drink Tastes like energy drink. Tastes like energy drink.

I mean they’re all made from pretty much the same formulas of gross. Yeah. Except for White Monster. Yeah, white Monster is quite good. Bigger free Monster with Yeager is Deliso.

Crew Chief Eric: The Yeager monster is quite good. Yeah. Rich energy, I mean, I don’t know. Whatever. I mean, it’s a good book. I mean, don’t get me wrong, kudos to Elizabeth and Alanis King.

They did a great job. The book is available through the McFarland Press. It is now [01:14:00] available also as an audio book. You can get that on Spotify and through your library through Hoopla. So you can listen to racing with Rich Energy that way if you don’t wanna read it. But it’s always nice to have the analog version and it makes a good stocking stuffer too.

It’s not a very long book. It’s 200 and if you take away all the citations, it’s maybe 250 pages or so, maybe less, you know, support independent writers and pick up a cool book about Formula One.

Crew Chief Brad: To be fully transparent, I bought the book, but I did not actually read it. But next time we go to a professional race, I need to make sure I take it with me.

’cause we may run into Elizabeth, she goes to a ton of races so I can get it autographed. But I’ll probably do the audio book now that I know that it’s available via audio book. ’cause that’s how I like to digest your

Crew Chief Eric: literature.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s time we switch to fan favorite. Are you faster than an interceptor?[01:15:00]

I found this one this month. I found one Florida man story and this to me took the cake. So somebody, please explain this to me. Woman sues Volvo claims hands-free tailgate caused brain injury. Her, your expressions say it all. She whacked her head when the tailgate opened. No, apparently, and this is where it becomes Florida, man.

The tailgates closed on her head.

Executive Producer Tania: But those, those kind of tailgates have like a safety feature in them, so they. This was a Volvo. This was a Volvo.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently she was in the trunk. I don’t know if she was resting her head on the sill. Is she being kidnapped? Her dog ran under the sensor. Volvo must have the fastest closing hatch in all of the automotive industry.

And then it repeatedly like, like a cartoon, like the more I read this, the [01:16:00] more confused I was and the more I started laughing and I’m like, this has gotta be nap April Fool’s joke. Because there’s, there’s no way, oh,

Executive Producer Tania: the light bulb just went off. No, I’m still confused because tailgates don’t close that violently or that quickly.

So the first time it happens,

Crew Chief Brad: you move your head. They usually stop whenever they feel some sort of resistance.

Crew Chief Eric: The court filing summarizes that a malfunction in the defendant’s automated tailgate system caused serious injuries when it struck the plaintiff in the head.

Crew Chief Brad: My question is, can they replicate the incident?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. On

Crew Chief Brad: Loony Tunes.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: I would love to see this on the next Law and order.

Crew Chief Eric: This baffles me like I just don’t understand. Do you not hear the hatch cl Normally mine beeps. Mine’s 11 years old. It goes beep, beep, beep, beep to get your attention that it’s closing. It’s also not that fast. If you hit it, it usually stops or goes back up.

It’s not like a guillotine, like, I don’t understand what’s

Executive Producer Tania: going on

Crew Chief Eric: here.

Executive Producer Tania: I could see like not realizing it was [01:17:00] closing and you got up and you banged your head real hard. But like if your head was laying there, head was out of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: If you watch the YouTube video that accompanies this, they literally show you the demo of the person using the foot thing and like how fast or slow it opens.

It’s not that fast.

Crew Chief Brad: So not only is Volvo apparently liable based on this court filing, they’re trying to find the. Quote unquote acquaintance. ’cause she’s no longer a friend. The acquaintance is liable because of her dog activating. Uh,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Something tells me there’s gonna be a movie about this.

Jennifer Henry attempted to kill her friend Megan Kur using the Volvo’s door. I’m telling you, this is like, oh yeah, I hate that bitch. Tries to trigger it. This is like, oh, we’re gonna, we’re gonna blame Volvo. We’re gonna blame Volvo, but I’m gonna get that

Executive Producer Tania: woman

Crew Chief Brad: outta here.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, there’s a Volvo. They’re known for [01:18:00] safety.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes,

Executive Producer Tania: exactly. I don’t know. I mean, it’s unfortunate if she has a brain injury, but it’s hard to believe anything these days.

Crew Chief Brad: Judging by the court case. I think she had the brain injury before the incident.

Executive Producer Tania: I was thinking that you said it. Somebody

Crew Chief Brad: had to,

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know that it’s clickbait, but I don’t know that she’s maybe being.

Truthful with the circumstances that actually took

Crew Chief Eric: place. I think Brad’s right attempted murder is probably closer to what was really going on here. This is a little less Jersey shore and a little bit more law and order. Boom. Boom. Exactly. Well, it’s time we quickly go behind the fit wall and talk about murder sports news.

So you guys asked me how petite was. Petite was awesome. It was wonderful. The weather was great. Wish I could have been there. Friday practice in qualifying. I spent a lot of time running around talking to people, networking, going to booths, you know, hi to former guests. I stopped by the A CO booth for a while.

There’s test driving Caymans, you know, stuff like that. Just a lot of stuff going on. Race day Saturday, [01:19:00] it took forever to get to the track. We got there in time for the race to start the wreck that happened literally 30 seconds into the race, which caused a yellow forever. The original obligations that I had on Saturday sort of changed on me, sort of vaporized so that it freed up my whole day.

And I was able to take William around the track to every corner of the track. We spectated from literally everywhere. ’cause he wanted to take pictures and he wanted to see and experience and all that. And it is a long race, right? It’s 10 hours and change or whatever. So petite was great at the end. The only thing I cared about was how Aston finished, which they finished an overall second, which was absolutely incredible in the Valkyrie.

I mean, they pulled it off at the last minute. The heart of racing team, I mean, they just did a fantastic job. I was super stoked for that. By the way, the Valkyrie sounds amazing.

The only V 12 in the field. You can hear it everywhere. Sort of like the Garage [01:20:00] 56 car. Like you could tell it from the rest of the pack and you could hear it from far away and it’s just absolutely awesome. So looking forward to more Aston Martin racing next year, but I felt like it was sort of anticlimactic except for the race at the beginning.

Nothing really sort of happened of any, you know, any real note or any real significance. It was just a nice weekend. It was nice to be at the track and it was nice to be amongst the Seppa yet again. Especially the race where the LMP cars are versus VIR where, you know, they unfortunately run the smaller cars.

Right. You know, petite’s not the important bit of news. We need to catch up and find out about Franz Herman and how he did at the Berg. He did

Executive Producer Tania: fantastic. Oh yeah. He has a racing team for staffing.com racing, and so his co-driver is a sim racer and verse Tappen did a ver stoppen and he was so far ahead of everybody else.

The gap was ridiculous. And when his co-driver came in for his stint, that gap closed down so much that he’s lucky that Max was his [01:21:00] teammate or he wouldn’t have, uh, finished in anything. So Max is gonna max and he debuts on the Nors life and dominates. ‘

Crew Chief Eric: cause he’s one of the best apparently. So Franz Herman we’re, we’re gonna watch out for more Franz Herman action.

Didn’t he also exit stage? Right? Like he did his stint and then he pieced out. So he left his teammate there to like sort of finish the race and he didn’t care how it ended.

Executive Producer Tania: So it looked like that. But in the end, no. He actually was, I think on the podium with him, but it definitely looked like he might, he was gonna just leave.

That’s awesome. Which is also Max maxing.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that sort of leads us into a conversation about Formula One.

We have what, five, six more races to go. It seems like it’s unending. I mean, we still have Mexico and we’ve got Las Vegas and we got this and we got that. We got so many races to watch before the end of the season. That comes to its crescendo at Yas Marina in [01:22:00] Abu Dhabi, which I’m super looking forward to that race ’cause I really do enjoy that track on the Sims.

So let’s just talk about Coda,

Executive Producer Tania: shall we?

Crew Chief Eric: The US Grand Prix one of three. ’cause we got Miami, we’ve got Texas, and we’ve got Las Vegas. But Coda’s the most interesting of the three. I don’t know about you, Tanya, but I think the sprint race was more exciting than the actual race.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, the sprint race was Forza turn one chaos, absolute

Crew Chief Eric: chaos.

I love the whole Zack Brown blames hulking berg, and then he retracts it, and then everybody’s blaming Kinberg. But it’s not Hulk Berg’s fault. Is it really Land’s fault or is it Oscar’s fault? Nobody knew whose fault it was, but all I know there was a pile of rubble in that turn and it was exciting.

Which Gold’s fault. It’s always strolls. No, no. Stroll had his own moment, which was absolutely hilarious. Who did he wipe out? Ocon. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he did a hit and run. He tried to drive off. His front wheel is like [01:23:00] bouncing, barely connected and he’s driving as he goes around Ocon, he waves at him like, oh, so sorry.

And he tries to drive away. Like, what? Dude, I was dying. It was the funniest thing I’d seen in Formula One all year. I was like, stroll, what is going on, bro? Wow. Unreal. No, the sprint race was absolutely amazing, but it was good for stopping. Right. He took an extra eight points home, which leans into his first place win.

So it’s 25 points for the win. Yep. So now he’s got 31 extra points towards the championship. And I, I turned to Tanya and I said, is he going to make the ultimate comeback in Formula one? ’cause nobody’s ever done this before. Even in the, the modern times and the old times, the Senate days Schumacher before, nobody’s done over a hundred point swing to come back and win the championship, but I think he can pull it off.

He can’t do it alone, though.

Executive Producer Tania: There is a chance mathematically he can do this as [01:24:00] long as the Oscar screws

Crew Chief Eric: up and he wins everything, including the sprint

Executive Producer Tania: races, max wins everything. So just running some simple scenarios. If he wins the last two remaining sprint races and the last five races, Oscar can come in second every time except one time.

And Max will win. But if Oscar comes in second every time in the races and the sprint races and Max comes in first, there’s a three point difference.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I’m gonna tell you that’s gonna make sure that Oscar doesn’t achieve that. Okay? It’s two things. Stroll. The first one is Lando, and the second one is Norris.

Okay? Lando is not gonna let it happen, right? He’s either gonna take him out or he is gonna call up Big Papa Papaya, Zach Brown. He is gonna say, team orders. You need to put Oscar behind me because I’m the primary driver this week. Remember, that’s what’s gonna happen

Executive Producer Tania: mathematically. If Max wins the next five races and the next two Sprint races, even if Lando comes in second in all those races, he cannot beat Max.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:25:00] Oscar can’t beat Max. Lando

Executive Producer Tania: can’t beat Max. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: what I’m saying. Burins got it in the bag because McLaren’s gonna take themselves out

Executive Producer Tania: if that happens. If they are not podium or they take each other out completely. If Max can win, every is done. He’s, he is a five time champion

Crew Chief Eric: telling you it’s gonna happen.

The crystal ball, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. We’re not gonna see the stupidity that we saw earlier this year where Max is taking people out and coming in like 13th and like whatever he was doing in the middle of the year.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, he was doing that for Christian Horner.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, yeah. Yeah. Right. But I’m also wondering if some of that was like, to get to this point, right?

Like, all right Max, you gotta throw these races away because then

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no. Max max. In the little that he lets you know about himself. ’cause he is a very private person and although he is having his own documentary coming out, I forget on what service

Crew Chief Eric: would be as exciting as that Scott Dixon thing we reviewed.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Because he’s that kind of [01:26:00] person. But to my point, he is not the kind of person he would give a big middle finger to you. If someone came to him and said throw a race. He is never going to do that. He is always going to want to win. Just like how can he race at Nors life in the middle of his F1 season?

How can he go do GT three racing and all this other stuff? Has any other driver ever gone and done another series? Usually it’s like, oh my god, you can’t even go fart in the corner. ’cause God forbid you get injured and you can’t race. Right. And yet he’s out here doing whatever the f he wants because he can and he will.

He doesn’t care, so I, no way. I believe that he was throwing anything. His car was crap and he dealt with it the best way he could.

Crew Chief Brad: Eric just wrote the next script for Drive to Survive that he’s not gonna watch.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m

Crew Chief Eric: never gonna watch.

Crew Chief Brad: I think also like Max didn’t start racing in in GT three, you know, sport car racing until Christian Horner left.

Am I correct in saying that

Crew Chief Eric: it all happened last time? I don’t know. I thought

Crew Chief Brad: he was doing a ton of sim racing, but he never actually competed in a rule. I thought he did

Crew Chief Eric: that test with [01:27:00] the Acura like last year and some other stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, was it an

Crew Chief Eric: actual official race? The Franz Herman is new for this year.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, even the sim racing, he’s been told not to do it, and he’s basically said. F you because he’ll do sim racing where he is racing all through the night, right. Especially like these endurance sim racings. And then the next day, you know, he is getting a couple hours of sleep next day getting the Formula One car to race.

And basically his answer was, I just won the race. What’s the problem? Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: And I think that is a valid answer.

Executive Producer Tania: Touche like yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: where’s my number two?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I stayed up all night playing my sim racing, but I just came out here qualified on pole and then won the race. So

Crew Chief Eric: because he downs like a six pack of Red Bull, I mean, come on, it’s gotta be in his veins.

He’s racing with rich energy. Oh man. That’s the secret formula right there. I didn’t realize until I was going through all this stuff with the clubhouse and going through the vault and the pictures. When we went to Coda in 2018, been a minute pre COVID, max was already running at Red Bull. I mean, he’s been in Formula One for quite a long time.

To, [01:28:00] to your point, Tanya, he doesn’t care anymore. He was basically

Executive Producer Tania: one of the youngest people. He was like 17 or something. He was like controversial too of him getting his license. Like at the age that he did.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m telling you, he’s gonna be up there. People are gonna be talking about him like Schumacher and Fangio and Senna.

He’s gonna be the next one. Crystal Ball says so. Well, since you brought up SIM racing this weekend, EA Sports gave F1 2025 a way for free through Steam from Friday night through Monday afternoon, and we got our hands on it. What do we think? What do we think about the Formula One simulator? It was a lot better than I was expecting

Executive Producer Tania: it to be ’cause I still remember, I haven’t played a Formula One race game since, I don’t know, formula one, 2002 or something.

I don’t know, like 1998.

Crew Chief Brad: The last time it was free

Executive Producer Tania: and it was horrible. They were like unplayable. As soon as you try to accelerate, you know, spin like a top. And it’s like every time you try to accelerate out of a corner, they’re sideways and spinning and they were unbearable, but I was expecting [01:29:00] something similar to this and instead it was not at all like that and it felt very smooth.

And I mean you could tell it was different than like a Forza or you know, some other, if you wanna call it sim, some other racing game, if you will. But I was pleased with it,

Crew Chief Eric: man. You played a lot newer Formula one game than I did. The last Formula One game I played was the Nigel Mantle World Championship on Super Nintendo.

That’s like a step above pole position.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I’m sorry. It was the, the last formula one game I played was the Tiger handheld. Oh man, you’re going way back.

SOUND FX: That was the

Crew Chief Eric: only sound effect. Yeah, no, to your point, I tried it out too, and. I liked it. Now the question is, do I wanna spend the 80 or a hundred dollars or whatever it costs? Yeah, that’s the problem, the buy-in. And the problem is here we are at the tail end of the formula one season and EA iss like, oh, we’ll give it to you for free because 2026 is coming out.

And [01:30:00] unlike EAs, other products where like WRC, they just keep adding to it. All you had to do was buy it in 2023, and they’ve continued to just add onto it and add onto it and add onto it. Formula One is like Madden, it was like, oh, Madden 22 and 23 and 24 and 25. So they’re following that model and that’s what sucks.

It’s like, well, I’m gonna pay full price, or maybe the discounted price because of this promotional weekend. But it’s like the new ones around the corner again. Do you wait for 2026 to come out? But you’re gonna pay a hundred bucks or do you buy 2025 and look at Dohan, you know, and other drivers that aren’t in the field anymore, you know, on the 2025 roster.

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: My problem with those games is like how much improvement is actually made other than the roster changes, how much do they improve the game itself, the gameplay, the graphics and everything year over year? Like you

Crew Chief Eric: probably played Madden or NBA back in the day, so you know, a lot of the times it was like reskinning, new boxing.

Crew Chief Brad: It never really felt any different.

Crew Chief Eric: And every so [01:31:00] many years they would change the mechanics or they would change the ui or technology would advance and it would force them to change and they couldn’t just kind of lather, rinse, repeat. And I think the same is a Formula One. It’s like, okay, well we use the ego engine and it’s tuned for Formula One and blah, blah, blah.

And so none of that stuff really changes because if you think about it, the way the cars are shaped don’t mean a hill of beans. In the digital world because there’s no airflow, so the cars run at a prescribed speed and all those kinds of things. To your point, I think there’s a little bit more of that regurgitation going on on the formula one side than there would be maybe in any other game or franchise, you know?

Yeah. Now, I will say, just to add that it is, and it’s unrelated to Formula One, but related to what we’re talking about with this Sim Aceto, Corsa, you know, they came out with Evo and Evos been sort of ah, because they released it pre-Alpha and every month you get an update and all this kind of thing behind the scenes.

And unbeknownst to a lot of people, probably one of the best kept secrets in gaming right now is Aceto Corsa [01:32:00] Rally, which has been under development for the last not one. But four years and they have their own skunkworks division specifically dedicated to it, and it is coming out mid-November. And I am so stoked.

And if you haven’t seen the previews for it, where it’s absolutely gorgeous, they are not releasing the full game on day one, which is a little bit disappointing, but there’s gonna be some cool stuff. Come day one in November. Super excited for that. And there is one more racing game on the radar and that is Project Motor Racing, which looks like it might be some of the guys from Bin slash Slightly Mad Studios, all those guys that used to do project cars.

’cause you know the name project, they didn’t fall too far from the oak tree. It looks really good. They’ve got licensing from Porsche, which means there’s some money behind that. ’cause you can’t just willy-nilly throw the Porsche Crest and the cars around without getting into some serious trouble.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they’re gonna have IMSA GTO racing in that game.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And that is super exciting. [01:33:00] So that’s another one that’s on my radar here for the fall winter, whenever they finally release it. November 25th, two weeks after a Seto rally. So there we go, Brad, spend your money on Formula 1 20 25 or buy two games for the same price.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what’s kind of hard to get into with the Formula One game, which I found a little bit of a struggle as I sat there, you know, playing it is. I enjoyed going to Coda. Because I know Coda from literal firsthand experience. And then you look at the rest of the roster and you’re like, oh, well I don’t know any of these tracks.

Like other than a Yeah, spa. No spa. ’cause you’ve played spa on other racing games. But then it’s like Miami. What a trash heap. That’s a terrible track. Horrible, terrible course, right? Like at least. You go to something like Forza or whatever and it’s like Watkins Glen and VIR, and you have these other tracks that maybe a little bit more familiar, which makes it fun as well, right?

Because there’s a little bit of attachment there. I don’t know, go into some of the tracks that are in the [01:34:00] Formula One rock. It’s like this track sucks. Like I don’t even like watching it, let alone

Crew Chief Eric: playing it. Fictitiously definitely got a bunch of those on my list too. So those are all in the negative column in the con column of why I don’t wanna spend the $80 on, you know, the next title of Formula one.

I’d rather have something with a little bit more diversity, right?

Well, our Motor Sports News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center, so the sweepstakes is over. So congratulations to whoever won that nine 11 T. It has not been announced yet, but we’ll be keeping track of that. But I do wanna point out that the Argo Singer Symposium on Motorsports history is coming up in the month of November.

It is the Thursday, Friday, Saturday before Thanksgiving. So that’s the week of the 21st, 22nd. And so if you’re in the Watkins Glen area, you can come and [01:35:00] check it out, or you can stream it live on our Twitch. We’ll be carrying it directly from Watkins Glen to your screen, tv, laptop, whatever it is. So you can check out the Argo Singer Symposium for yourself for free.

Well, guys, I guess that sort of wraps things up. So let’s take it home with a Trackside report sponsored by the Northeast Region at the Audi Club of America.

Executive Producer Tania: Some sad news in the HPDE world. Let’s take a moment of silence here. For some very upsetting news to hear that pit race. Is closing. Ah, and there’s confirmation from various sources that this is indeed true, including directly from pit race’s own site.

That 2025 is the last season for any racing at the facility. They are going to be permanently shutting down.

Crew Chief Eric: I plan to include some of our highlights from Fit Race for those that have never seen a lap at Pittsburgh International Raceway. Check out the videos that we include with the show notes. I mean, one of the most [01:36:00] fun smiles per mile lap on the East Coast.

A heck of a lot of fun. And it’s, I’m just bummed. I don’t know what else to say. Yeah, it doesn’t have the same character. As Road Atlanta or Wacked Glen, but it was miles above a lot of other tracks. And it’s just a shame to see places like this close and there’s nothing near it. It’s in the middle of nowhere.

There’s no developments. There’s, they claim it’s gonna be turned into a data center or something like that. You know, there’s a lot of speculation, but the land has been sold and it’s just like, it’s really, really sad. And, and I put a, a slight article together about this too. Where are events like the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix gonna go and all the, the carting tournaments and all the other stuff that was happening at pit raise.

It wasn’t like, it wasn’t busy, but it just got sold out from underneath everybody. And that’s. Sad and kind of tragic.

Executive Producer Tania: Everybody’s got a price,

Crew Chief Eric: money talks and you know what happens to the rest of it.

Executive Producer Tania: But just because pit race is closing doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of laughs out there for you to enjoy.

Clubs like H-O-D-S-C-D-A and Chin Track Days are running events through the fall [01:37:00] and winter months at tracks like Lyme Rock, Watkins Glen, Sebring, Daytona Coda, VIR, and many others. Check out club.gt motorsports.org for details

Crew Chief Brad: and if you’re not quite ready to hit the track, don’t forget that you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts.

Collector car guide.net.

Executive Producer Tania: Be sure to jump back into our podcast catalog and check out other programs we offer like screen to speed the Ferrari Marketplace, the Motoring historian Evening with a legend. The log book, break Fix, and of course the drive-through. Tune in starting this month for our newest program, the Racers round table.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Tanya, that is sponsored by the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing, and it’s gonna focus on short track and dirt track racing. And so that’s gonna be like World of Outlaws, sprint cars, uh, late models, all that kinda stuff. Really interesting. We released our first episode this month, which coincides with our Sunday Niagara Re-released from Watkins Glen about the history of Niagara Dragway.

[01:38:00] This actually had to do with the Golden Age of Gassers, which is another class of drag racing. So we kind of kicked it off with something a little bit outside of their wheelhouse, but it was a really interesting conversation with both amateur and pro drag racers. So check those out. The Sunday Niagara and the Racers Roundtable, golden Age of Gassers.

And I do wanna mention, since we’re talking about podcast episodes, stay tuned for next month where we have our holiday shopping special. Then December. Normally we would do a best of, but since we’re not doing Tesla this year, as our New Year’s resolution continues, we’re going to do December as a Formula One recap and close out the year with whether or not Oscar’s the champion or max or what the heck happened.

So look forward to December as we look back over the year and see if our predictions were true by the very, very end.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you enjoy our various podcasts, there’s a great way for you to support our creators on the MPN. There’s tons of extras and bonuses [01:39:00] to explore on our updated Patreon page. Learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content.

Get early access to upcoming episodes and consider becoming a break fix VIP when you visit patreon.com/gt Motorsports. And as always, thank you to our co-hosts and executive producer Tanya, and to all the fans, the friends and family who support Grand Touring motor sports, as well as the Motoring Podcast network.

Without you, none of this would be possible. You ready? You go ahead. Tro. Did we do it?

Crew Chief Eric: I think we did it. Did we miss anything? I don’t think so. Our regularly scheduled service returns in January.

Executive Producer Tania: The Drive-thru is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in [01:40:00] part by organizations like Collector Car guide.net Project, motoring Garage Style Magazine, the Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-thru, look no further than www.motoringpodcast.net.

Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports the Motoring Podcast Network, grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Halloween Humor and Costume Talk
02:16 Car Troubles and Repairs Discussion
25:43 The Cost of Car Repairs vs. Buying New
27:03 Future of Car Ownership and Maintenance
33:46 Lifetime Warranties on Car Parts
35:03 Independent Shops and DIY Repairs
37:32 Volkswagen’s Racing Investments
50:14 Jeep Wrangler Hybrid Review
54:06 GM’s Struggles with EVs
59:45 Lost and Found: Dodge Darts and Time Capsules
01:03:38 The Mystery of the British Guy in the White Suit
01:06:50 Tesla’s Latest Controversy
01:08:31 Pumpkin Regatta and Florida Man
01:11:36 Book Club – Racing With Rich Energy
01:14:45 Are You Faster Than an Interceptor?
01:18:34 Motorsports News and Petite Le Mans
01:21:33 Formula One Season Finale Predictions
01:28:18 Sim Racing and Upcoming Games
01:35:16 Trackside Report and Pit Race Closure

Track Side Report

Are you ready to discover the exhilarating world of track driving? This season step into your driver’s seat and experience the thrill of pushing your car to its limits in a safe, controlled environment. Perfect for those who have always dreamt of getting on track … here are some upcoming ACNA events you might want to check out:

Just because Pitt Race is closing doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of laps out there for you to enjoy, clubs like HOD, SCDA and CHIN Track Days are running events through the fall and winter months at tracks like Lime Rock, Watkins Glen, Sebring, Daytona, COTA, VIR and many others, check out club.gtmotorsports.org for details.

MORE DETAILS ON OUR MOTORSPORT CALENDAR

For experienced track enthusiasts, these events offer a fantastic opportunity to refine your techniques and challenge your precision on the track. Reconnect with the vibrant community of drivers and instructors who share your passion, and enjoy the friendly and supportive atmosphere. Push your limits, improve your handling skills, and take the opportunity to make every second on the track count. For more Audi Club events outside of just track time, please visit https://www.neqclub.org

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The Golden Age of Gassers

Daniel S

-

October 23, 2025

0

This episode of The Racers Roundtable continues where our Sunday Niagara! Center Conversation left off, and kicked things off with a panel of familiar faces, each with stories that stretch across decades and asphalt. From Thelma Hall’s recollections of the “good old days” to Fred Bear’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Gasser class, the room was thick with laughter, gratitude, and the unmistakable hum of shared legacy.

Photo courtesy EMMR; Photo by Mike Winslow

The panel hosted by Jeff Golden, included local racers Greg (and his twin brother Gary) Swenson, Ken Bingham and was rounded out by Ken Hall, son of legendary racer Harry Hall, who shared the bittersweet memory of his father’s crash at Englishtown when Ken was just two years old.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

But this wasn’t just your ordinary panel, it was a celebration of the people who built the sport, preserved its stories, and still show up with cars, memories, and heart. Honoring legends like Harry Hall, Jack Culp, K.S. Pittman, and the unsung heroes who tuned engines, hauled trailers, and painted dreams in tangerine.

Fred Bear
Thelma Hall
Professional Drag Racer, Ken Hall
Ken Bingham
Jeff Golden
Greg Swenson

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00:00 Meet the Panelists & Introductions
00:07:13 Ken Hall’s Racing Legacy
00:20:21 Greg Swenson’s Bracket Racing & Gasser History
00:36:26 Racing Adventures at Beaver Springs
00:39:26 The SNS Team and The Five Rings Story
00:43:52 Memories of Malcolm Durham
00:52:29 The Evolution of Safety in Racing
01:00:51 The Return of the Door
01:07:12 Building Race Cars from Orphaned Foreign Cars
01:14:04 The Surf Brothers’ Racing Journey
01:14:46 The Importance of Friendships in Racing
01:21:12 Bracket Racing and Its Challenges
01:26:32 Pork’s IRS Career and Musical Sons
01:31:14 The Bad News Car and Its Legacy
01:35:55 Closing Remarks and Thanks

Transcript

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 racer’s 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.

Jeff Golden: I wanna introduce our panel here. I guess I’ll start to the right here. Thelma Hall, and she’s gonna tell us stories about the good old days. Then we got Fred Baird. Now everybody knows Freddy because he’s old as dirt, and next to next to him [00:01:00] is Thelma’s son Ken. Now Ken is a twin, the Michael and Ken. But Michael couldn’t come today because of work issues next to me is none other than Greg Swenson.

He’s a local guy. He’s got the car out there, and on the end is another old guy like me. That’s Ken Bingham. We’re gonna start this way and then I’m gonna have the guys talk about the cars where they got ’em and the history album. I just want you to all know I talked to Fred at Bruce Larson’s drag Fest.

He said, you ought to have Gene Ty’s car up in the museum. I said, yeah, ought to. And he said, well, I have it. He said, so over the course of the end of the year and the beginning, we talked back and forth. And decide. We had room for it. We wanted to do it. We were gonna go with this theme or topic, and I want you to all know that Fred brought the car from Florida.

Give him a hand. He hauled it up. And when we originally made the, made the arrangements, he was gonna bring [00:02:00] it up last week and then light come on. I said, well, why don’t you bring it up like the Friday before our open house and then you can hang around and talk on the panel. So that’s what we did. So we got Fred to thank for that car being here, which was a very, very famous car in the East Coast and I’m just so tickled to have it.

In the meantime, I wanna thank you all for coming out and sticking around. This is gonna be exciting. Fred, tell us about the origin of the Gasser class.

Fred Bear: It kind of evolved as the sport evolved in the early fifties, and it became obvious that some cars. We’re completely stuck. Some of us weren’t, so it really wasn’t fair as everything was heads up.

A Christmas tree was something that showed up in your house once a year. So they started a modified class, which suddenly [00:03:00] people like, what’s that guy from Florida

Doug Wood: Garbage.

Fred Bear: He started, couldn’t afford a whole car, so he started building little teeny things then that wasn’t fair to run against him. So they started classes and they got refined.

When did we start modified production? I think early sixties. Early sixties? Yeah, early sixties. I

Jeff Golden: still miss it

Fred Bear: because now the Gassers were race cars. They’d started out to be pass their

Jeff Golden: own

Fred Bear: modified street cars. Now they weren’t. So there was a void now between Gassers, which were really race cars and strictly stocks.

So they did in modified production and depending on the track, but it was limited to one four barrel battery ignition engine make for the body style. And it was fair rules. Boy, there was some badass cars at York in the highway [00:04:00] classes back then.

Jeff Golden: I always came on, I’m a little younger than you. I came on Honda, little behind.

But of course I looked at my hot rod magazine. To me, if you took the front bumper off, it became a guesser. Is that that Pretty true?

Fred Bear: And a threequarter cam, whatever a threequarter cam is, means nobody

Jeff Golden: had, nobody ever

Fred Bear: explained that because it seems like in a V eight, only 12 valves would open and close if you had a three quarter cam anyway.

Yeah, you. Did that and it just evolved, you know? Yeah. Something about drag rushes have always wanted to go faster. It’s part of the sport and you take weight off the front end, it puts more traction on the rear tires and, and then somebody figured out, well, let’s move the engine back a little bit. Yeah. So that for the wait over that came to a new rule called 10%.

So it all evolved. Thank God for gentleman named Wiley Parks. It [00:05:00] had the foresight to organize it. If

Jeff Golden: you only be there now, I don’t know

Fred Bear: where it would’ve gone. I don’t know where. NASCAR would never probably existed if it hadn’t have been for Mr. Bill France. I have the most respect in the world for those two gentlemen.

Jeff Golden: Gene Ty’s car that Fred hauled up from Florida. It’s down in our drag racing area. Behind it is a showcase with some of gene’s, race pictures and some of things. The intake down there, he was the first one to divine that and figure it out and everybody copied it because he didn’t have time to patent it, so everybody else copied him.

But it’s, it was a one off deal down there, so it’s in the showcase behind, so when you get done, you get intermission or something, be sure to go down and check that stuff because it’s really neat and I’m just so proud to have it and have the car here. I wish we could have Gene here, but he has health problems and he couldn’t make the drip.

Bill Klein brought us the archive stuff down there. He, uh, from his [00:06:00] collection, which I didn’t know, Fred actually owns the car and maintains the car for Gene, so

Fred Bear: the car wouldn’t be here without Judy’s help. She is. The best help that I’ve ever had and works for less pay than anybody I’ve ever had. And he needs a lot of help and puts up with me.

The only person that’s put up with me more than she has with my mother. May she rest in peace and I think she died to get some rest. So thank you all for the applause for Judy. And if the car sparkles, you have to thank her because I don’t clean cars, I paint ’em. She does a beautiful job. She spent two days cleaning jean’s car inside, underneath in the trunk.

She cleaned everything in that car [00:07:00] because it’s going to the museum. I want it to look nice. And

Jeff Golden: when it arrived, we were down there trying to get his position and set the stanchions up and she was still polishing.

Sitting next to me is Ken Hall. He’s one of the twins maybe

Fred Bear: on my phone.

Jeff Golden: I can’t tell him, but he said he’s Ken. The only way I know is I called Ken’s phone number. So I think I got Ken. I’m gonna let him talk a little bit. His mother’s sitting down here, they weren’t involved with the Ks Pittman card and I’m gonna let let him tell the whole story in the background and include

Ken Hall: your mother.

My father was Harry Hall. I was too young to be a part of that car. I was only two years old when he crashed that car in Englishtown. So it really doesn’t have many memories in my mind except probably my dad cursing that, you know, he crashed his car. My father started out, well, he had his own cars. He was through Pontiac, worked for a dealership, and they gave him a car to race.

Then he bought a 41 Willies and had a blown Oldsmobile in it. And he had help from a gentleman, uh, [00:08:00] Bristol area named Jack Culp. I’m sure maybe Bruce had heard of him. I remember Jack, yeah. You remember Jack? Well, Jack was very famous with, with engines very good with Chryslers and Oldsmobiles. In fact, Ks would credit Jack Culp for teaching him how to tune those engines because Jack was a master with those engines.

So my father started hanging around Culp’s garage and then started driving Jack’s. He had a Willy’s also and then the bread truck that had a 3 92 in it. Yeah. Or Oldsmobile. Then it went to 92. So my father had his start through Jack Culp when he got put into the, uh, hall of Fame down in Carolina. He credited Jack Col to a lot of it.

I wish my dad was still here to see this and be a part of this. It was a big part of his life growing up. Then he became, he met Ks. Ks came east, had his opal? No, that was op opiate. He sold a 33. The steel one.

Fred Bear: Steel 33. The steel 33 64.

Ken Hall: Yeah. And my father met Ks then and started hanging out with ’em, helping him.

And they ran their cars together, a lot of races. And then Ks was selling the 33 Willies that the doors off of down here. And my [00:09:00] father bought the Ks car from him. And I, I still don’t know the year I, I asked my mom and she didn’t remember, we’re guessing around 68, somewhere in there. Maybe Fred seven

Fred Bear: or, well, the car was new in seven.

Yeah, I think that was 68. 68 that Y all bought it. Okay.

Ken Hall: And then Ks built the Opal. Right. And then he had also the Austin, which was the

Fred Bear: football

Ken Hall: car. Yeah, the football, which was Mazmanian car.

Fred Bear: Mazmanian bought it.

Ken Hall: Yep. So Ks bought that. So they had a couple cars there floating around, driving. But my dad primarily drove the Ks car, which was.

So the day he died said it was his favorite car. He loved that car. It was beautiful. And the gentleman who painted that car was a great story. He told me that, which I laughed at every time he told me. Him and Ks, when the car was brand new, brought out to Molly.

Fred Bear: Yeah,

Ken Hall: Molly was in Los Angeles and Molly used to paint all the Hell’s Angels motorcycle.

So my dad said, him and Ks brought the car there. It’s in gel coat. And they said, you know, Molly came out and he was just hippie, like long hair, crazy looking, you know, since the sixties. And this was just him painted Hell’s Angels bike. So he looked like a Hell’s Angel. So he said, what do you want K? I said, I want it [00:10:00] orange tangerine after that and my name on it.

You do what you want. So he said, come back in a week. They told me he was, Molly would push the car in his little garage. He had this one car garage and he would get stoned out of his mind smoking pot. And he would paint these cars and they looked incredible. So they said they went to his house. A week later they opened the garage door.

This smoke rolled outta the door. Out comes Molly. He could hardly even see straight. And dad said it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. But that was Anita story. I thought, man, it’s so well I have the nose piece of the car. I couldn’t bring it. Today. It looks like a caveman coming at you. And it says Paint by Molly.

And that’s how they got the car. But my dad drove the car for four years or so. He crashed it in Englishtown in 72 at the Summer Nationals. And I learned this after Doug Wood. There’s a old story behind that as well. But Doug is the reason why I have this. My family has a door today, but Brian was there at the track and was one of the first guys to my father when the car crashed at the end of the track, which I didn’t know, I just learned last year.

Fred Bear: I bet he can’t run that fast.

Ken Hall: I said, well, [00:11:00] what happened when? When he got to my dad and he says, I’ve never heard such foul language in my life. And he says, not ’cause he was hurt, because the battery behind the seat was dripping ass asshole over. And he was telling me, just get me the hell out of this car.

So I thought it was on fire. He said, no, it was no fire. Just your dad. And there cursing up a storm trying to get outta that car. Anyway, the front wheel broke off. He crashed the car. The door had gone out in the weeds. We got the door back a couple years ago. Doug was a big ambassador. Getting that back for is a big story.

But dad ran the 33, he ran against Ks for years and he was his teammate Up until he crashed that car, he built a Vega and that was blown 3 92 on gasoline. And to this day my dad ran, I, I think it was Georgia, he ran and set the national record in blown gas and funny car and a week later they switched into alcohol.

So in my mind, my dad still has the record.

Fred Bear: That makes sense.

Ken Hall: You know, I, that’s just how I look at it. Then he had the vaga and we bought brand Anderson’s Dodge Dart and Cup of cars from there. But just growing up, I know this car is, the pictures you can see of my dad in the [00:12:00] car and driving it and getting into her back in Englishtown back in around 82.

That car was his pride and joy. And to be a teammate with Ks meant the world to him. Ks was just one of the most flamboyant, fun, seemed calm, but Dad said he was just a piece of work. Ks was hell with fireworks. He’d throw mates at everything. Didn’t matter where you’re at, going through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, he still throw a handful out the window at one time.

Or Dad told me, throw one time, he says, Ks had a real southern draw. He was from Texas. And he said to my dad, they were walking through India at the Nationals in like 68, 69. They run the cars there and he walked by my dad. He says, Harry, how fast can you run? Dad said, I okay. That’s how fast you know. I wanna test you now.

Dad says, all right, well let’s go. He’s, there was a guy that Ks hated. And he walked into one of the porta johns there at the racetrack. So Ks takes up two amens outta his pocket, twists the fuse together, lights him in the cigar, and drops in the vent tube. My dad said I couldn’t run any fats than I was.

Get the hell outta there. He says, all I hear is this fud. This guy come outta his sink, cover head to toe toilet paper, and he says [00:13:00] Ks. He says, I don’t know who’s gonna kill your worst, me or him. Let’s get the hell outta here. But he says, we laughed so hard, but my mom could tell you stories too about his daughter and she’s gone up, oh yeah, we’re gonna pass the mom now, because she was there more than I was, you know?

But the stories that I got from my dad were just awesome with Ks. And like I said, that car was his favorite. He loved it. Built 33, backing around 95, 96. With my family. It wasn’t the same. It was a little lower. Wasn’t like an old Gasser. I wish we have done it different, but. He said the same later, the 30 threes were his thing, and Rocky Perone owns series of Gassers.

He owns replica of the Ks car, which is in museum in California, and he owns the Big John Mazmanian 40 that’s out there as well. And also a replica of his father’s boss, hydro 33. Home yet, which isn’t home yet. Yep. So I was fortunate enough to, I drove the Big John MAs Manini car. In fact, I drove it against Freddie Bear in the Ks car at Bud’s Creek the first time I ever drove the car.

And, uh, Rocky’s father-in-law had set the wheelie bars [00:14:00] up a little higher, not thinking about it. When I left the line, the thing was really carrying the wheels out and I didn’t know any better. Just like driving a Super Bowl down the track, I’m like, well, I guess this is how it’s supposed to leave. I didn’t know they stayed in it.

And then these guys came back to all applaud going crazy. Well, we got the on the track and you’re sitting here now and, and, uh, you’ll agree with me. Fred Bear and I walked up each other and we both had tears in our eyes and I said, man, that was for Ks and my dad. And that was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I was honored. Race against Fred

Fred Bear: Barr.

Ken Hall: I was a hundred. Oh, it meant the world to me.

I haven’t driven the Ks car yet. And Rocky says, before I die, he’s gonna let me make a pass in the Ks car. My brother driven many times, Fred’s driven it. We all, I I think we all, it’s like luggage. We just passed that thing around.

Fred Bear: Yeah. Prostitutes.

Ken Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It’s bad. Anyway, uh, so, uh, I’ve gotten a chance to drive these old cars and my father was there when I drove a couple of ’em and he told me the same thing.

He says, they’re just like, they were back in the day. He says, be ready. They’re a handful somewhere. I have a picture of my dad of the Ks [00:15:00] car going through the lights at Maple Grove with a front wheels, a foot in the air.

Fred Bear: I’ve seen that picture. Yep.

Ken Hall: And he used to tell me, he says, did no matter what you were doing straight, it’ll be straight as an narrow, but you just pick the front up outta nowhere, half track or finish line or whatever.

And he said that thing was a lot of fun to drive. We were fortunate to go through it, to have Ks in our life and, and to have Freddy and everybody, and my mother got to be a part of that. I’m gonna give her the microphone for a minute. I’m sure she’ll have something to interject here and tell me where I screwed up and did something wrong.

But thank you all for letting me come out and ramble on for a few minutes. And, um, I’m now, wait a minute. I got a

Fred Bear: Ken and Thelma story. We’re at Beaver Springs and I’m running you, I think you were in the Ks car. Maybe the balls that I was Mike. I was Mike. Was that Mike? Okay. Well, how they look alike. I’m driving the Ks car and this is bj.

That’s before Judy and, uh, get ready to make a run. And I [00:16:00] said, Harry, how about turn me up with a nomad? And he goes, what? And I says, I need somebody to turn me the nomad and bring me back after the run. You know what I’m talking about? And he goes, you want me to? Yeah. Well Harry was a big man. And it took a shoehorn to get him in the nomad.

And Thelma got in the right side and they towed me up. And as well as I remember, I won. Uh, because the other end here, it comes down the return road. He’s got a smile that you couldn’t get out of the nomad with him. You had to take the two out individually. Next run, he says, can I please tell you it was my car?

But that is my last good story of you. And Harry together. I’ll never [00:17:00] forget it.

Audience Q&A: That was wonderful.

Ken Hall: Thank you Fred. Well, mom, what do you, I know you’ve got probably something you could add to about the Ks days or

Thelma Hall: Oh, the Ks days. They were fantastic. The one incident I remember very, very well, if Ks was gonna be running at English town and Harry racing as well, he would normally stay at our home.

And the one time when he was with us, he had brought his two daughters, Tammy and Debbie. Tammy was a her set with Linda Vaughn. And I can remember we were getting ready to go to Englishtown. Tammy was still in the house trying to get ready to be her set tall boots up to her knees, was part of her outfit.

And we’re all outside waiting for Tammy. NKS is going, Tammy, get out here. We’re gonna be late. Let’s go. Let’s go. Tammy still wasn’t coming out. He’s still in Tammy. We gotta go. Here comes Tammy. Running out of [00:18:00] the house had her tall boots on. They had laces that were unbelievable. Didn’t have time to lace her shoes.

So she’s running across the lawn, holding onto her shoe laces her feet, trying to run across the lawn. Well, we were rolling in stitches, laughing at her, trying to come across the lawn, but it was just so funny to see her. We had a lot of good times with Kay. His daughters. And with drag racing, the many friends that were like family to us we’re so thankful for.

And today I also wanna thank, being that Mike could not be here today, his beautiful daughter Tori, who is a successful dirt track racer, and also Allison, Ken’s girlfriend. Thank you for being with us. Thank you.

Jeff Golden: Thank you, Thelma. I, I [00:19:00] just wanted to throw a little word in here. From my point of view, many years ago, I guess 10, 12 years ago, before Ken’s dad died, they had the race up at Beaver Springs, after the York Mussel of Armenia, and they raced kind of as a booked in circuit. His dad, I was really impressed when they staged the cars, the two crew people with their dad at the time, pull the cars up, look at each other and go like that before they went down with a race that I thought that is true.

Sportsmanship one didn’t take off without the other or try to burn the other one down. They made sure they were ready to go and away they went. Well, what

Ken Hall: you didn’t hear is my dad would be in the car before we’d stage and he’d always gimme words of advice, like, don’t be a dumb ass, or turn a fuel pump this crap.

Better come home in one piece, or I’m gonna beat you with senseless. You know? So he always had some encouraging stories from my dad. As I’m staging the car.

Jeff Golden: I only got to talk to Kay one time in my life. And that was up in Carlisle. And I think the good guys were up there, which was probably 20 years ago.

And he [00:20:00] was there as a featured car and speaker and stuff. And I was listening to him. He said, police said we were really nuts driving cars with wheel bases in 90 inches. Just untamable. But you know, that’s what they did. That’s the way it was. Stock frames. Stock frames, yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah, that was a stock frame car.

Incredible. I mean, they were men, you know, so Well now I’m gonna turn the microphone over to Greg here. Greg is a local guy and I never ever can remember the name of his car. What’s it called? Hale.

Greg Swenson: No, actually this car is Mickey Hale’s, old Gasser, and he raced in the Ohio Outlaw Gasser circuit, which was sponsored by Scott Rods.

And I’m gonna tell you a little bit about the history of the car, how I came to own it. But before I do any of that, I just want to make a shout out to, uh, gene Alizer. And just to say that way back when, when Darwin Dahl had his events out there at the York Fairgrounds, gene was at a couple of those events.

And I remember [00:21:00] his car was parked not too far from where we were parked at the time. I was racing a little tube frame car. It was a 1987 Dodge Charger body sitting on a, uh, Alston Pro Gas chassis. And it was basically just looked like an old supergas car, fun little car to drive. We were asked to come and join the show, got a chance to meet and spend a good bit of time talking with Gene Atheer while we were there.

A wonderful, wonderful person. And certainly he was, you know, one of my heroes growing up. Certainly remember when he ran the Weasel at the first drag race I ever went to, which was the 1969 Super Stock Nationals. They had that out at York and he had the corvee at that point in time. You know, he certainly became foremost in my attention just getting a chance to, uh, see him as one of my heroes growing up, along with, uh, a guy sitting in the back of the room with that on there, Mr.

Bruce Larson. Alright. My brother and I, I have a twin brother [00:22:00] Gary, and, uh, we both became sort of partners in crime with all this stuff. See, I can’t keep ’em straight. They’re twins. It was an interesting story that I’ll just sort of share with you guys ’cause it’s sort of funny. But my brother and I, when we were about 10 years old, we were basically both really into like dinosaurs and snakes.

And my father was an old machinist. He started his career as a, uh, tool and die maker. And he worked his way through manufacturing as the years went on. But when we were about 10 years old, we were on vacation and my father was so sick and tired of hearing about dinosaurs and snakes that he walked into a magazine rack at a shopping center that we were at, and he picked out a, a uh, copy of popular hot rotting.

It had gas, Rhonda on the cover, an old funny car, and he basically said, I think it was a 1967 issue. And he gave it to my brother and I and he said, here, read this. And we never stopped much to his dismay, I think in later years. But basically [00:23:00] that’s how we really got interested in cars. And we both have continued in that vein ever since.

Primarily started as spectators and then eventually got to get into collecting cars and racing and stuff like that. But I am just a local bracket racer that’s really, you know, what I do. But I got into collecting some cars along the way and, and had a chance to drive a few of these things, which are very interesting.

But again, I’d like to, you know, shout out to Gene Alizer and say that if he remembers a guy that had a black pro gas looking charger way back when, I certainly remember the time that he spent with me. And a wonderful, wonderful person. But as an interesting point since we’re talking about Gassers, a few years ago we bought a 1950 Chevrolet and it was built by a fellow by the name of Harry Logan.

We purchased it from Harry and Carol, Logan and Harry happened to say, you know, when I wound up building this car, there’s a friend of mine who [00:24:00] was into racing and he raced an old Gasser. And in fact, I was at his wedding and he became my best man at my wedding. And his name is Harry Zaner. And so interestingly, you guys probably remember a green 32 5 window Ford coop.

There’s a picture of it downstairs. So there’s a little bit of a connection with that. 1950 Chevrolet with Harry Lou Zader through Harry Logan. But basically what wound up happening with me over the years is back around 2019, right before I retired from Harley Davidson, I wound up getting an interest in the, certainly over the years, I always had an interest in the older style cars, even though I was driving a more modern style car at the track.

One of the cars that piqued my interest was this 1948 Austin Gasser. It was advertised in racing junk. And you know, my brother being my partner in crime is the one that alerted me to it. Mm-hmm. And said, you ought to look at [00:25:00] this. And so I did. And I wound up calling the owner who was Mickey Hale. And Mickey Hale was looking to sell the Gasser at the time.

Like I said, he had had it probably since around 2010. And he was racing in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers. And I’m guessing that you guys probably ran against Mickey Hal in the early days. But at any rate, working with Mickey, we sort of put together some of the history of the car, and I have some pictures of it here, which will sort of show you what it went through.

So basically up in the upper left is how it started life. It was a car that was put together out on the West Coast. And a fellow by the name of Jeff Wright put it together and he built it with a lone 3 92 with a torque flat transmission, and he raced it to a best time of about eight 40. Basically, he kept it for a number of years it was called, of all things fat boys Folly.

After some time he wound up selling it and he sold it to a guy by the name of Don [00:26:00] Wilson and Don was from British Columbia. And this is the way it looked when Jeff Wright built it. I can’t say that I’m real happy with the paint job, but it was still cool for back in the day. But when Don Wilson bought it, he turned it into a bracket car.

And this is a picture of what it looked like when he had it and he was running around 10 seventies. He had a small block Chevrolet in it with a single four arrow and he was, like I said, from British Columbia and ran up around that neck of the woods. And then at some point in time, Mickey Hale bought the car and when he first bought it, it looked pretty much like this.

Right now you can see the car is sitting outside. It’s got some striping along the side, and he has a graphic in the front, which he had put on it pretty much right before I bought the car. But basically he was running in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers. His best time he told me was eight 20, running at about 156 miles an hour.

Had some real good success with it. Here’s a picture of him when he was [00:27:00] running the floor wide down at Zm Max. In, uh, North Carolina. He also was up there at Beaver Springs, at the Gasa reunion there and at Thompson Dragway out in Ohio. He actually won a number of times at the events. Apparently, I guess he won Bowling Green twice with the Ohio Outlaw Gassers.

There’s a, a Night of Fire that’s held out in Ohio with right at the Summer Motorsports Park, and he won that apparently two times. He also raced at Indy, at the US Nationals. I guess there was some displays, you guys did some exhibition stuff out there. And he told me he won that in 2013 and 2015. I

Fred Bear: won it in 12.

Greg Swenson: You did?

Fred Bear: I won it in 12 and I think he won it in 13.

Greg Swenson: And you guys might have some stories to share about racing against Mickey Hal. Yeah, we did a lot. Yeah. And I still keep in touch with him.

Fred Bear: Where’d we see Mickey? Was that the Gators? Yeah, we just saw him at the Gators [00:28:00] this year. Okay. Spent some time with him

Greg Swenson: and he’s a good guy.

Oh, great guy. And uh, and I wound up buying it from him. And actually, you know what wound up happening is I bought the car and I had not put a motor in it or done any changes to it after I first bought it. And he was building a Willy’s, he was gonna compete in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers. And he basically said, well, I got this Willy’s that I’m working on, and we would keep in touch back and forth.

And he said, well, you know, I said, how’s the Willy’s coming? Well, it’s not done. He said, I gotta get this thing done because I got a couple of dates that I have to make happen. And I finally got to a point I said, listen, Mickey, I said, I still have the Austin. I haven’t done anything with it yet. And if you want, I’ll loan you the car back.

You can put your motor and trans back in it and make the dates that you had committed to with that car. And we actually bid that.

Fred Bear: No charge. No charge.

I’ll take it for you. [00:29:00]

Greg Swenson: I promised win. We’ll talk Fred. So basically that is, you know what we wound up doing. Mickey had it for the better part of a year, raced it, and then he delivered it back to me, minus engine of trans. And at that point in time, I took the car over to John. Little John wound up updating a few things on the chassis.

One thing that Mickey had never done with it was he basically said, I always wanted to put the gas pedal on the driver’s side instead of having to swing his leg over the transmission tunnel. And also I wanted to go to a foot break rather than having the hand brake. And we accomplished all that stuff, working with John Little to do that and redid some of the interior of the car.

Actually move the motor slightly forward. We have a small block in it and the mounting tabs for the small block are the same as the original front mounting tabs for the big block. So that gave us a little extra room in the transmission tunnel area to be able to put the power Glide in there, which is the [00:30:00] same as what Mickey ran.

It’s a different transmission than the actual one that he ran, but he ran a Power Glide. We have a Power Glide in it. The rear is exactly as Mickey ran it. And we did lift the front end up a little bit and change the wheels. But other than that, you know, it’s a fun car to drive every time I get in and I got a smile on my face.

But I can tell you that the way I always term it to people who ask about, you know, what’s it like to drive one of these things? And I basically can’t see back. I, I would tell them the tube frame car that I used to drive. Basically I would put my mother in it and she would be able to drive a 10. Oh, I would not put my mother in the Austin.

They are fun to drive, but they have a short wheel base. It’s a straight axle. Takes a little more attention.

Fred Bear: Yes.

Greg Swenson: But it is fun. Every time I get in it, like I say, I got a smile on my face.

Jeff Golden: The car’s out on the porch. We parked it yesterday. He has to bring over it. So we brought head cable, the weather, but [00:31:00] he drove it.

He started and drove it there and of course he could resist stomping on a little bit. I knew that was gonna happen. I told him maybe he could just stomp on off the porch and we lay some rubber out there and you know, get his ER on. I don’t think he’ll do it.

Greg Swenson: It

Jeff Golden: depends how

Greg Swenson: much you wanna see on the,

Jeff Golden: alright. Okay. Well I just wanna say Greg and his brother Gary are any sister, are really signed supporters of the museum and helped me out a lot of times and it’s really neat. They have several cars. So when I get a in a bind and we need a car for a display for a certain class, he’s got one of ’em. So he does bring that car and get that car and, and he was the poster child up at Bruce’s Drag Fest back in October.

So I certainly appreciate that.

Greg Swenson: Do wanna thank very much all the interaction I’ve had with Bruce Larson and his crew, bill and Dave back there. Bruce has been a tremendous influence in my life. It’s just been a [00:32:00] absolute pleasure for me to get to know him and the fellows who work with him. It’s like a dream come true for me to get to know some of the folks that are up here.

Again, I’m just the local bracket racer, but it is an honor, the honor of my life.

Jeff Golden: There again, there’s Bruce Larson and he’s probably one of the biggest contributors to the drag racing area of the museum. Well, next we gotta move over to another. Supporter of the museum is Ken Bingham. He comes over and, and helps us fix the museum on Fridays and stuff.

That’s the old farts day when, you know, retirees come over on Friday, they’re supposed to be fixing stuff and we wind up bullshitting. So I’m gonna turn it over to him and let him tell about the car out on the patio also.

Ken Bigham: Okay. It’s the, uh, orange 37 Ford Coop. It’s the, uh, old Nash Collodion, YOC car. I guess I should say it.

It’s, uh, Nash and Yoc. They were the main guys behind it. They originally had what they called the BUN band. That, which was a, I think a [00:33:00] 27 or 28. Model a pickup that they campaigned very successfully. They started with that and then they added the 37 into their collection in 1961 when they took it off the street and turned it into a pure drag car.

I bought the car out of an ad in the auto ator, probably in about, I’m guessing maybe 85, I guess 83. 84, 85 is where I bought the car, and I actually bought it to flip. I was, didn’t really know much about the car, I just thought it was a neat car. And uh, I bought it and it just happened to be the week before fall, Carlisle, from the very beginning, I had been a flea marketer at, uh, Carlisle events.

So, uh, I told my wife, I said, we’ll, pick the car up the day before Carlisle and we’ll just take it down to the flea market and put it up for sale. When I took it in that day, from the minute I entered the grounds till I got it to my space, it was kind of like a big magnet. I mean, it drew a lot of attention, and like I said, this is in like 83.

He and I was like, I couldn’t [00:34:00] figure it out ’cause it basically, it was a huge drag car. When we got on the spot, my wife said, well, what are you gonna ask for it? I said, well, I don’t think I’m gonna sell the car. And she said, well, I said, well, there’s something going on here that I can’t quite figure out.

Why is it? So many people interested in the car. So I said simply just, we’ll put a sign on. It says Wanted, ’cause I always wanted an early funny car or an A FX car. So I put a sign on it, wanted a FX or early funny car. Of course, through the process of the weekend being there, I did get some guys who were familiar with the car that knew a history about the car.

At the time it was painted black and it had kid’s toy written on it for Kid Rear who is the gentleman who bought it from them originally. So the few people knew about it. But in the process of this car sitting there, I think it was on probably the Thursday or Friday, that weekend, a young kid walked into my display and said, I know where there’s a funny car I think you’d be interested in.

So I said, okay. So he describes the 66 Chevelle that’s sitting downstairs. Funny car. I [00:35:00] honestly hadn’t heard of the car, so I didn’t, you know, he was explaining this car to me. He’s a fairly young fell. He was too young to have known the car from back in the day. And I eventually said to him, well, how do you know that this is actually a funny car?

He goes, well, he said, it’s a centerfold in 1966 Car Craft Magazine. I was like, really? Okay. So in the process, he says, when I get, he said, it’s, it’s just down the street from where I live. I’ll, uh, get the guy’s name and address and I’ll let you know about it. I listened to her cell phones. So anyhow, when I went home that night, I wanted my attic and dug out my magazines, and there it is.

June, 1966. Centerfold and I was like, oh my God. Mm-hmm This is unbelievable. How did I not get this guy’s name and address? So it went probably, I’m thinking maybe November of that year, I finally get a letter back from him that was very apologetic. He was sorry that he hadn’t gotten back to me, but the guy had moved and he tracked him down and found his new address and gave me the new address [00:36:00] for me to go.

Of course I went out and bought the car and brought that car home and kept it. But in the process, the car that I bought, the flip, I still have it. Never left it go. And of course I learned more about the car. Uh, these guys were very, very active in the sixties in the local area. Raced it extensively in the mid-state area.

I know they were at York, they were to Hagerstown. Uh, I’m not sure about South Mountain Beaver Springs. They were there an awful lot. I have an interesting story for Beaver Springs. When we first got the car back together, we joined the East Coast Gassers. First race we went to attend was at Beaver Springs.

I had never been to Beaver Springs because I quit drag racing in I think 71, and that’s when Beaver Ball opened up. Sohow. We get to the track that day with this car. We were a little bit late as usual, and I’m in there and this guy comes riding down the the aisle with a scooter and he’s going, oh my God.

Oh my God, that’s the original car. I said, yeah, it’s the original Knick Nash car. And he goes, they’re lining up in the line. You [00:37:00] gotta get that car up there right away. And I said, well, I’ve gotta get it checked in first. And he looks at me. He said, well, where’s your card? So I went in and got my tech card and I handed it to him.

He scribbled someone and he said, you’re ready. Get up up in the line.

Jeff Golden: That’s Beaver Bob.

Ken Bigham: He takes off. I turned around and some guy said, who is that? He goes, well, he owns the track, so if he says you’re good to go. So we raced it several times up there and then followed the circle around. I think it was a year or so later.

Again, we’re back at Beaver Springs and my son was driving the car that day. Well, he blew the engine going through the lights and that was the last run, last time we ran the car. When we got back that night, I was like, you know, this was a lot of fun when I was a kid, but this stuff was staying up light and building new engines.

I said, no, I wasn’t cut out for that. So we basically took the car and parked it in the back of the barn and left it set for a few more years. And then one day my son said, you know, we really ought to put that car back together. So he bought a motor and that’s the motor’s in it now. And [00:38:00] I just haven’t gotten around to finishing final details so we can start it up running some more.

But the real history belongs to Nick Nash and, uh, Jimmy Ock because they were the instigators and the main operators back in the day. And, and as far as a, a nice original local East coast car, it’s, I personally feel it’s one of the better guessers, you know, because, uh, it’s just a neat, and I kept it as original as I could.

I didn’t, the motor I had in it back in the day was a correct motor with the right heads and all that nonsense. Son bought this motor. It’s a newer motor. It’s a three 50 motor, but we just like, okay, just for the sake of having something that runs. But it’s just a nice, neat piece of original history. I’m glad I never flipped it.

Glad I kept it. I’m not very successful at flipping, as you can see. Fortunately.

Jeff Golden: Thank God for that many

Ken Bigham: stay.

Jeff Golden: Oh, thank you guys for your cards. I just wanted to say something in case you haven’t noticed. These guys raced each other, [00:39:00] but it actually was a big family. ’cause everybody knew everybody and they all traveled together.

They, some of ’em slept together and

Fred Bear: that’s a whole different story. Okay, that’s different.

Jeff Golden: It was really united. It was. It was really neat. You don’t have that today. Everybody’s out for each other, but they really mentored each other. They helped each other and it was great. It was just true sportsmanship.

So with that being said, I wanted to ask. We’re gonna turn this into a question and answer period. We’re gonna sort of angle off onto the SNS Speech office. Of course, this was before my time, but I remember, and I think Fred was what said probably Beaver Springs. You know, the three circle things that they have for the Olympics.

Well on his car, all the cars, there was five rings. You’ll see it down on Gene Izer and

Fred Bear: the Olympics is five rings,

Jeff Golden: is the Olympics, five rings? Well, he said that stands for a five ring circus, and I thought that was pretty probably appropriate because you guys were fun to watch. [00:40:00]

Fred Bear: A little history on that.

Five rings at the start of the 64 season, Chuck Stolte, who owned s and s parts in that time was sponsoring. Five Gassers, of which I was fortunate to be one. And he came out with that design and it became our emblem and our T-shirts and everything. A few years later, the US Olympic Committee who up until that time, if you order enough to remember the Olympic symbol, was like a US roadside, whatever shape, and they went to the five rings.

And so what, well, it turns out years later, the s and s team is selected to be. Some of the top 50 guessers in the nation, and we were honored at the US Nationals that year. And David Hales, one of our teammates, sent in pictures that NHRA requested to do promotion. And he gets a letter back that we can’t use any of the pictures with the Olympic symbols on [00:41:00] him.

David calls me and he says, what do you remember about this? And I said, well, ZY said that he copyrighted it and sued him and they wound up settling. So we did some research and it turns out, and he had copyrighted it to change a copyright 15% is not an infringement. Well, the copyright committee decided, and I think Chuck agreed with them, that the five colors in the Olympic Committee said they had picked five colors for the rings to represent the five continents, which made sense to me and it was all settled.

And we go, wow. David sent all of this back to NHRA. Three days later, David got a letter or email from NHRA and says, we have checked your information. You are correct, right? We can use all of your pictures. And that’s the end of that story. Now, footnote is. A few years ago, we’re doing a reunion race at [00:42:00] Old Dominion Speedway, which is where David and Jean and I grew up, made our first passes and I think probably most rooms have somebody else that made their first passes at Old Dominion.

We got Chuck’s son to bring Chuck out there. He become very recluse. He enjoyed himself. We put him on a golf cart and tow me back up to Return Road and all, and he came back the next year with his son, brought him and he gave me an envelope to Charles h Stal and he says, here, I think you’d like to have this.

I open it up and it was that year’s. Olympic flag dated and I go, oh, this is cool. What’s this? And he says, every year they send me all kinds of stuff. And I thought maybe you’d like to have this. And I still have it. It’s an hundred possession. Wow. But the Olympic five rings, when you see ’em, change the colors to yellow and think of the SNST.[00:43:00]

Jeff Golden: Okay. While you’re on the mic, tell us about the SNS organization. I should mention first, Dave Hales. Who lives in Florida and I thought he lived close to Fred, but they on the other side of the continent, I guess down there. Dave Ha was very instrumental in getting Gene’s car here because he’s more or less the, what do I wanna say?

He takes care of legal work and Fred does the, the gopher work, but he called me and, and was very receptive to us having the car and wanted to check it all out. His car is in Speedway? Yes.

Fred Bear: David’s. Willies is the only SNS car that survived all the rest of them got.

Jeff Golden: He was a better driver.

Fred Bear: Crashed, killed, shot, buried, whatever happened to all of them.

And that includes a person that wasn’t one of our original five. But Rapid, right at that time became an SNS member, and that was Malcolm Durham. I know Bruce raced against [00:44:00] Malcolm and I knew some other, knew him. Malcolm was one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever known in my life. He was a good racer. He was a good friend.

He was outgoing. He would help you if you had a problem. Am I right Bruce? Absolutely.

Jeff Golden: And he, we have him in the showcase down there. He was Annet team member. Over towards the anchor. We have the strip blazer. We have a picture of these 63, 4 0 9, I think C3, 4 0 9. Then he is later cars. We had a little tribute to him 10 years ago, and his wife and son were here.

Swell guy. I only ever met him one time. Baltimore, Maryland. He was basically close and he raced at Cecil quite often. He came to York often too when he wasn’t.

Fred Bear: Now you started to ask me something

Ken Hall: question I wanna ask you is what were the first original members of the SNST? Which cars? Good question.

Fred Bear: Close to you all’s heart.

The Halls Hearts was Ks Petman, Chuck Dozi owned it. The SNS 33 Willies all are steel bodied with a Zeel Hemi [00:45:00] Gene Ties and the AGAs Anglia that’s, uh, living downstairs. And we, we are very proud to have put it on loan here for the world to see much better than being covered in a garage somewhere. Very garage.

So, uh, we’re honored that it’s here and I, I hope everybody enjoys the car. I was the big Gasser in my willies. Charlie Hill and Port Artman were the seagas with the Filthy 40, which was the only car out of s and s, the original fact that was not s and s Red. And then, uh, Dave Hales was the DGA as Willies and Charlie refused to paint his car and he refused to let ’em wash it.

And Bruce probably remembers this. They came out with 90 10 up block shock. Tremendous invention. Zi was warehouse distributor or SNS for almost all the manufacturers. ’cause he got in on the ground floor of it. We each got a [00:46:00] pair of em and they were chrome plated. Well that was the only chrome on David’s and mine.

And Gene’s Car course. K’s car, which Zi and had Chrome axle and Chrome rear. And Jim Clinton’s old car, but it was beautiful. Gave him to Charlie. Charlie took him home and spray painted them black and put him on his car.

So, which is a little insight in how we became the first successful racing team. Others were owned by the same company or the same person, but they were competitors. We were as NS racing team, but we were competitors to our competitors. Gene would not adjust the valves and change the plugs on his car to help put a clutch in my car to make next round, and then I might beat him for a little eliminator, and it worked every way.

But years later, in nascar, a very successful team came outta Alabama, known as the [00:47:00] Alabama gang, which I was fortunate enough during that time to work with and for those people, the Allisons knew through me of the success that we had had. And when the Alabama gang showed up at your track, you knew you had to have your act together.

’cause it wasn’t one car you had to beat, you had to beat ’em all. And we traveled together, the s and s team, when we got there, you had to go through all of us and we all had fun doing it. We loved traveling together. I got a bunch of stories in the early sixties of traveling through the South and Malcolm Durham that I guess I could tell some of y’all here, but some of ’em are signs of the progress that our country has made, and I was proud to be a part of it.

Ken Hall: You were talking about the shocks and, you know, and he’d given you a pair of shocks at the time that Ks had the, [00:48:00] the Austin. He had to go race matre somewhere and he was staying in Jersey around our area with my dad. I think my dad had the 33. He just bought the 33 and Ks had the Austin. Yeah. He says to my dad, Hey Harry, I got a mat race Virginia this weekend.

I wanna give you the Austin and I’m gonna take a 33. ’cause it was a better handling car that Austin. My dad said that thing they used to call the football and he said that thing would switch lanes. It

Fred Bear: acted like a football. Yeah, it would

Ken Hall: just all never went straight. Never went straight. So that’s all right.

Well I’m gonna take Austin and we have a, we’re gonna race it at test that Maple Grove or something. My dad took the car home. They do unload it and the shocks, he said, it’s something to be shot. I can’t figure it out. They don’t work for crap. They took the shocks apart and the oil in ’em was like WD 40.

It was so thin. So my dad said, well, we got laying around here. It’s thick. So he said, well, a buddy, it was Kenny Coons used to help him with the car. Kenny said, I got some of his rear grease over here. Let’s dump some of that. They dumped in it. They went out the Maple Grove, not at the time. And a gas double.

A gas. The record was eight 40. At the time. So my dad says they go out and run it and [00:49:00] it went at 8 52. So they came back and my dad said, don’t say a word to Ks so that we, next weekend, dad had a match race Ks at like Cecil County or something. So Ks comes back from his race for 33. Sorry Harry, give my car back.

Dad says, nah, I’ll run this. I’m used to driving it right now. You run it for 33 and we will run it at Cecil County. So they have the first pass and dad said, I want an 8 54 Cashman, 8 68 or something. He said, I cleaned his clock and the K walks over and he says, Harry, what’d you do to my car? He says, I you telling you Tiger.

He said, I’m running it the rest of the year. He said, you can keep that 33, said, oh Harry, I want my car back. That was the greatest thing that Ks had the Opal GT at the time and dad had the 33 and they used to match race a lot, maple Grove, and they tore around the East Coast, up and down and I have articles of match racing these cars.

Dad says he had just made a run by himself, a single and chaos came down with somebody and on the opal. And if you ever sat, see an opal gt, little cadet, your feet are really, [00:50:00] even ca was a short guy. You’re really crammed in his car. Well, K’s foot, like you talked about moving the foot pedal was up on the trans tunnel.

And he said, now Ks, if you didn’t know Ks, he always smoked cigars, always had a cigar in his mouth. He even rolled a hole in his fire mask and had a cigar sticking out his fire mask. Yeah. So dad says, we’re down the track. I see the car coast and smoke’s come outta it. I’m wondering what happened to him.

And he comes to a stop and his foot is out of the windshield and had blown the transmission up and blew his foot out the windshield. What

Fred Bear: happened?

Ken Hall: So my dad was walking open his door and he did, he says, tire you okay? And he says he’s dripping with transmission fluid all over him. And he says, his cigars out and he says, I dunno if I’m more upset about my foot hanging out the window or my cigars bad.

He says, Harry, would you push my foot outta the windshield? So I get outta this dang thing. I heard more great stories and I, it’s a shame. I was born in 70. So I missed that era. And I have to say to my dad, helped said it was, I missed being a part of that era back then when they ran these [00:51:00] cars. Because the stories I heard the crazy crap it did.

They were staying at an indie and my dad was in a, one of the hotels and he was talking, I forget the guy’s name, who was one of the master tuners back then as someone who’s an engine builder, but they were in a hotel of a mile down the road. So my dad was in the parking lot and Ks and MAs, Manian and, and Junior Thompson, all these guys just there talking and they were tuning someone’s car.

So my dad said, I just can’t get his barrel of out to go right? And I have a problem with it. So the guy said to my dad, where’s your car at? Dad’s up at the hotel here. Why don’t you bring it down? We’ll look at it. So dad went up, unloaded it off the trailer and drove it down the highway to the hotel. The guy says, what are you doing?

He says, you told me to bring it down. The guy says, yeah, on the trailer. But that was back in the day when you get away with that a little bit more, you know, you weren’t getting in trouble for it. I have pictures at home that I, I cherish this day of like my dad. There’s a picture of him at Island Dragway the first time ever.

He first met K being towed down the track in K is all steel high roof 33 when he first met him.

Fred Bear: Yeah, the

Ken Hall: steel car. Steel car. And that’s when he crashed, I think in Texas or something like [00:52:00] that. No, Noel. Yeah. Where he was born. Where he was born, yeah. Where he was born. More great stories of those cars, of what they did and what you guys went through.

I mean, like I said, dad told me that that KS car was an original 33 frame rails. That they would just beef up a little bit and do stuff to ’em to, you know, to make ’em legal. And I, I look inside the cars, then the pictures of ’em and I think, how did you guys live? You guys were insane back then. Oh

Fred Bear: good. That young we could deliver.

That’s it, you know,

Ken Hall: but like my dad used to say, that’s all we knew. You know? That’s what you, we race in. I see the helmets that down on display here in these rooms. The helmets that you guys wore and the fire suits that you wore. I look at today with what we have at technology, and I think you guys were outta your mind.

Fred Bear: They got the job done,

Ken Hall: they got the job

Fred Bear: done. One of gene old’s early helmets. Is downstairs in the display case. Bill Cline brought it up. I mean, I knew Gene had had a long time before Gene mother talked him into not racing motorcycles anymore because it was dangerous. So [00:53:00] he went drag racing, but he had that helmet from there and he wore that helmet into his funny car career.

Bill says there’s new manufacturers, there’s no tags, there’s no date. It’s almost as old as dirt. But it was all we knew and it was all we had. Thank you Lord for taking care of us. You’re still here to tell the story, right? Yeah, yeah. But uh, you’re right. I mean, look at some of these helmets and Yeah, and the things that, and look at the roll bars, a lot of these sprint cars, every picture you see.

The helmet is this far above a robbar. Now where is the safety in that one? Folks who passed that protect, right? Everybody did it. All of them were the same.

Ken Hall: And that’s why I say I have my father’s fire suit downstairs on display. That was probably from around 74 or five, I’m guessing. The blue fire suit.

Mom and I look at that today, the fire suits that we have now, like Bruce that you wore and stuff. And I think it’s amazing the helmet that’s down there. I mean, I’m afraid to drop it from my waist high. It’s on a crack in half. And I think you guys felt [00:54:00] safe in these things. But it’s funny we say that I drove for almost 20 years a jet car for the Hannah Hell.

For El Hannah did a hell of a job. Thank you. I appreciate it very much, bud. I really did. I closed my eyes ’cause speed scares the hell outta me. Only wait

Fred Bear: a minute, folks. Not only did he do a hell of a job of driving stupid jet, I know my dad said that. Yeah. My

Ken Hall: dad, when I first drove it, he said, why do you wanna drive that weed burner?

What do you thinking?

Fred Bear: But he. Made probably thousands and thousands of friends for himself and drag racing. This gentleman was so good with the crowd, with the public that even if he’d been bad, Al Hannah would’ve kept him on. I

Ken Hall: paid him to hang out. That’s all it was. Yeah.

Fred Bear: Well, thank you. Al was good people.

Yes, he was. Al was good people

Ken Hall: and we just lost Al Hannah a few months ago. Uh, he was my boss for years with the jet cars. We go on story about that. We’re not here for the, for that, but he will be missed. He was a good guy. [00:55:00] He, yeah, he’s the one that hired me and took me to another level. My mother and my father took me to a level of racing and I was fortunate them to build cars with us and let me and my twin brother drive the willies and the, the T buck and everything else.

So thank you mom for that. We’re very fortunate to have family who did it

Fred Bear: way back when, and I don’t know who made the rule, whether it was the NHRA or Old Dominion or Costco or what. But the new rules for that year were that you had to take your jacket and soak it in boar rats tire and hang it up to dry.

Yeah. To fireproof your jacket. Well, thank God none of ’em ever caught on fire that I know because I can’t imagine it helping. But felt nice and they were stiffer than, uh, they would stand by themselves. I trustee, they like canvas.

Ken Hall: It’s funny you say about Old Dominion Manassas Dragway. I drove Rocky’s one Gasser down there at Manassas Dragway

Fred Bear: [00:56:00] reunion.

Yeah. Three reunion. We ran each,

Ken Hall: we ran each other. I think when I staged, I remember going up to the pre looking over for Freddy and I could have reached over and touched his door handle. I thought, please go straight. For you and me both. Oh yeah. Yeah. And we left the line, I, we went 300 feet and it was smoke in the tires.

I only had a half throttle and it was, I mean, from guardrail to center line. And then I’m going, now if I’m doing this, what’s Fred doing? So I kept looking for Fred, is he in his lane? Where are we at now? And we had better tires and better that point.

Fred Bear: When that first race there, it was no wider, but there were no guardrails.

And this is in the late fifties, you’d be getting ready for the flagman and the crowd would be down about three or 400 feet. And you took off. And as you got there, they backed up and still on the edge of the track. I don’t think we ever ran over anybody. You don’t think so, right? I don’t. I never heard stories, but, well, it didn’t happen when I was there, thank goodness.

But it was the way it was. It [00:57:00] was accepted and we were being as safe as we could. I mean, we had a paper thin helmet and four ax jacket and a seatbelt. Cost a dollar 98 at Pep Boys.

That was probably down with sheet metal screws and Thank you Wiley Parks and Bill French for making safety rules. And everybody that contributed, because we’re sure we’re still having fun, huh? Bruce? Yeah. And Bruce. Bruce can share stories too on all that? Yeah. Oh

Ken Hall: boy. Yeah. What kind of fire suit did you have when you drove that car?

Do you remember? T-shirt.

Fred Bear: No fire suit.

Ken Hall: No. Fire suit?

Fred Bear: No. No.

Ken Hall: Well, you had a helmet though, right?

Fred Bear: Jeans and a no Gloves.

Ken Hall: Jeans and a t. T-shirt, no gloves. Well, I remember pictures somewhere. I, who it was driving a funny car and they had gardening gloves on. I thought, who are they Right behind past that. But I, I guess I thought maybe they were soaked in, uh, borax.

Whatever. They, [00:58:00] they were safe. Yeah, they were like brand new. Yeah.

Fred Bear: They never got his hand around the steering.

Ken Hall: Nope. Never, never once. Guys, I apologize ’cause Fred and I could sit here for hours, just keep telling stories and I’m just remembering stories as you guys were saying about the shocks and stuff and it was, we’re the entertainment department.

You all are serious. Yeah, really. I sit and tell the funny stories. These guys are telling the historical facts that I’m like, well, I fucking idiot sitting here telling these goofy stories. But as my mom would say, I’m sure we all said we were lucky enough to have my dad and Ks and yeah, Freddy and all these guys that contributed to what my dad got to do.

And um, we were fortunate to do it. The cars that were still around today, unfortunately a lot of those cars aren’t here anymore. The Ks, the 33 Act crashed, like you said, a lot of the, uh, original s and s guys that earth cars are all crashed. Or

Fred Bear: Charlie’s the filthy 40, the filthy for crashed. Uh, my car got crashed.

A guy who became real good drag racer in New York. Bob Chipper. Oh yeah, chipper Bob Chipper. Bought my car and raced it with a blown small block in it with a four speed [00:59:00] set the mile an hour record. For big ass super in that car with a blown small block with a four speed. Wow. He was in a buildup area and a Mopar Super stocker went to do a burnout and was in reverse and slammed into the driver’s door.

Today we fixed it. Yeah. He scrapped it and put everything in a 33 Willies and then he went to funny cars. You we ran with him. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you probably ran him with him for years. Yeah, but that was the end of mine. All ties. First Anglia, the stock top one that won the nationals. It was just on an Anglia chassis and after one year it was war slam out, so we cut the car up ’cause he built his car, single car garage under his parents’ house.

So we started a new car and I started bracing and

Greg Swenson: more

Fred Bear: roll cage, no them more rollbar, but strengthening the frame, [01:00:00] gussets and plating and stuff that we all learned as time went on. And then that car sold and sold and disappeared. So we don’t know what happened to that. David’s car made the rounds and he bought it back a few years ago, restored it.

In fact, the person that painted it 29 years later painted it again. He was a friend of ours. He painted my, all my stock cars. He painted ’em my, and I said, uh, this paint job is under warranty, isn’t it? So, uh, that’s the one in the museum. Malcolm’s Corver became Allie’s, Corver, he bought it from Malcolm before he went to the Loki cars.

Now you crash your car and you fix it back. Then you just got another one.

Ken Hall: They were still prevalent. Yeah, you can still get ’em. Well, I’m gonna pass it down to you guys, but I always wanted to This a one thing. Jeff, thank you so much and the museum for letting us put my dad’s door in the museum. And Doug Wood, this all would’ve been possible [01:01:00] without you, my honor.

Believe me, that door had been long gone for years. And if you were at the uh, Lebanon car show last year, Doug presented the doors. A picture over here of him, presented the door to our family on stage, and that door had been missing for years and years and years. Doug bought it at an auction. And we’ll learn the story of how we were looking for it, which we didn’t know Doug until this time.

And he so graciously donated it to our family. I had talked to Jeff and said,

Fred Bear: wait a minute. He said he was giving it to me and but you outbid me now you say he gave it to you. What steal here? Uh, I read, you forgot.

Ken Hall: I don’t wanna hear it.

Fred Bear: The

Ken Hall: dinner. And Doug, we still owe you dinner. We keep trying to get this planned.

And anyway, uh, the Dohan came back to us last year. I believe it was at, at the, uh, Lebanon Drag Fest. So I talked to Jeff and I said, instead of it sitting in our home, you know, and doing nothing, it would be an honor to have my dad and Ks remembered [01:02:00] and put here on display with my dad’s fire suit and a couple other items, Jeff and the whole staff here.

Thank you so much. It means the world to my family.

Jeff Golden: We’re really proud to have

Ken Hall: it. And I also wanna say something,

Jeff Golden: Doug also donated K S’s toolbox, what would you call it? It is a big box that he kept his suit and stuff and traveled with him. Yeah, it’s downstairs with full pictures. It’s a box. It’s a box. A wooden box.

Okay. Unfortunately I don’t have enough room to put it on the floor. I’m figured. Maybe we can hang it from the ceiling or something. That was Lynn’s thing. Well, we’ll hang it from the ceiling. Well, thank God the snow load’s high. I just wanted to know it’s there when we get done with our inventory, I’ll get it out to be seen.

But

Doug Wood: do you want the CliffNotes version of how I came into all this stuff? Yeah. So a friend of mine is in the business of helping people sell cars on the internet and stuff like that. Howard Rackey apparently was a friend of Ks Pitman’s. Oh yes. Also. And when Ks would come into town, if he wasn’t staying with the halls, he would stay with Howard.

When [01:03:00] Howard passed away several years ago, my buddy JD was contacted to help liquidate Howard’s car collection. He took care of the cars, but he said, Hey, Doug, look, I’ve got all this KS Pitman stuff. Do you want any of it? Of course, I had no idea the pole story that was going on, so I said, yeah, I’ll take anything of kss that you’ve got.

So I paid whatever the estate wanted for the goodies. You know, I was just gonna hang on to it, but then I got to thinking that, you know, I don’t know that it’s sitting in my basement’s doing anybody any good. So I was gonna give it to Rocky to go out to Lions with the tribute car and the year before I gave the door to you guys.

Rocky told me the story that the hall family had been trying to get ahold of that door from Howard for years, years and years. I don’t know the backstory, but there was some bad blood I think that was going on. He, he said, no, there’s no way you’re getting it from me, but I, I’ll buy that grill shell from you.

Something like that. [01:04:00] When I heard the story, Rocky took me over to meet Ken and Mike. Mom wasn’t there that day. And I just knew that that’s where the door needed to live. So I decided at that time that I was gonna gift it to them. And I had a friend of mine make the cherry stand that it’s sitting on, and I gifted it to ’em at Drag Fest.

Honestly, it has been, my honor, really has

Ken Hall: what we’ve, we’ve looked for that door for a long time. I knew where it was, and my dad had, actually, years ago, probably in the early eighties, mid eighties, had given the door to a guy that worked at Vargo, was Dick Long, Dick did tech there and things like that. It was just a, everybody knew Dick at Vargo, so he gave him the hang in his barn.

He had a big display in his barn of all kinds of memorabilia. It was a really cool thing, like Bruce Larson’s, it was a beautiful display and everybody, it was just a lot of memorabilia. Well, when Dick had passed, his son sold the door to Howard. And we didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t know what had happened.

I just heard that Dick had passed and I thought, okay, [01:05:00] well let me reach out and talk to, I tried to call his wife, no one to answer the phone and I was trying to get the door back. I said, you know, if things are gonna start getting just gone, or I want the door back, ’cause it was never theirs to sell. So when it got sold to Howard, I, I found out Howard had it and I had met Howard through Ks and my dad, I had said, Howard, I understand that you have the door.

I’d like to get it back. It was my dad’s, you know. And he said, well, I bought it, it’s mine. And I said, well, it wasn’t for sale. I want it back. My dad gave it a dick just to display in his barn and it was never meant to be sold. It was his loan to him. So it became a sort of a heated argument on the phone.

And I just said, I hung up and I’m calling him back. I said, listen, I don’t wanna fight with you. I just wanna say in writing, let’s do something of some kind of contract that I get the door back before it gets sold again to someone who we have no idea where it is. So he pretty much didn’t agree with that and hung the phone up on me and, and it was never to be seen again.

And this is where you came in, you purchased the door years later. At that point I give up on it. I thought it was just gone. It was who knows where. So when you approached me and my brother at the car show with. [01:06:00] And told us you had the door. It was like the Easter bunny. He had just delivered Santa Claus to me.

So that’s where the whole story came from. So that’s where you have been such an instrumental part of getting this back. You and your family. So our family, thanks you so much, Doug. Thank you. And Howard,

Fred Bear: thank Harry. Thanks. You and the Howard in this story, some of you may know among his car collection was a clone of K’S 56 Ford pickup that he had in numerous shows all over this area.

The York shows, Lebanon Valley. He built that truck in honor of his friend Ks and that may TA together for some of y’all. Yeah, that’s cool. That is.

Jeff Golden: I just wanna mention, I contacted Rocky Perone when we decided to get this all together a few months ago. Told him what we were doing and he, I, I can almost hear him bawling on the phone.

He said, I gotta go to Texas. We’re having a match race with the funny cars. I can’t come.

Fred Bear: And you didn’t hear [01:07:00] it canceled? Yeah,

Jeff Golden: but his cars were here on display three years ago, I guess for a couple years, two, three years ago. So his dad’s car was here and the, the new car that they reincarnated was here.

So we’ll get it back. So now I wanna know why you guys built your race cars. Out of the orphaned foreign car, back lot special cars where you just cheap. You don’t wanna spend the money for a good car like Ken’s cars. At least it’s a Ford. All the offbeat stuff is what you put these cars out of. What was that all about?

The wheelies was cheap. Austin, that was a foreign car, wasn’t that? What are you

Fred Bear: talking about? Why were you, wait a minute. Alright, here you go. Here we go. Story. David paid $20 for his Willies. It still has it and still has it. Well, it paid more for it the second time, by the way. Uh, and he worked for Fort Motor Company.

Oh yeah. Well not at that time. We looked for a long time after David’s car got wrecked on a towing [01:08:00] accident. Coming back from SCO for Willies. A lot of funny stories with those trips, but we finally found David’s Willies. In a guy’s yard who was a hoarder. Didn’t know it at the time, there was a word like that, but there is now, they had school buses packed up to the windows and the doors with stuff, refrigerators, everything.

And he had this willers, I don’t wanna sell it. We wound up making a deal because we didn’t want the engine to transmission the rear end, the tires and wheels, the seats. And so he got it for $20, but we had to give him a $20 deposit. And then we brought all of those parts back. Put ’em in a pile. Got the $20 deposit back.

Now, a year later, all ties wants to build an Anglia. Hey, the guy TB in near Brandywine, Maryland had an Anglia. So we go over there, all ties. Bought the Anglia for the total of $15, but he had to give a $20 deposit until he brought the engine to trade. Oh, [01:09:00] and when we went over to get the Anglia, all the David’s stuff was still in the same pile.

And when we took all the Anglia parts back, got the $20 deposit back, my will is the one that I have now. I bought in 67 before we found David in Mont, Maryland, which we just came through. We found this, and the gentleman had this willie’s and a Willie’s pickup truck. Well this Willie’s was his parts. His pickup truck was his farm truck when Willie’s had been sitting there.

And it was a sapling about that big had grown up between the front bumper and the front end. And we made a deal for it. And I don’t remember how much. 20 bucks, $25 in my memory. And there are no tires and wheels on it. So we go back the next weekend and the old man’s not farmer is not there, but his son is.

So we tell the [01:10:00] son, we’re gonna give you a hundred dollars deposit. We’re gonna jack up the pickup truck, take the tires and wheels off of it, put it on the wheelies. And while we’re making this, I saw the sapling down and the boy. Yeah. Okay. Well the sapling had to be cut down. Took the bumper off. You still couldn’t get the car out.

It was in the woods. We got the tires and wheels on the car, hooking up a tow bar, and he comes home and goes ballistic. Yelling at his kid, yelling at David and I by cutting his tree out. Hell, man, you got hundreds of ’em. David gets mad at it. Well, David didn’t even get mad at anybody, but he’s got his money back and we left.

That was 62, 63. David built a car. Now I’m going to college in DC at night trying to get smarter. It didn’t work. One of my classmates says, friend of mine’s got a Willie’s guy he’s gonna build and he’s [01:11:00] lost interest and he’s paying rent on his garage. You wanna buy it? I said, oh, yeah. Said, when can I look at it?

How about Saturday? Okay, so I go over, walk in this garage. I’m looking at the car, I look inside. And here’s this giant slash where somebody has taken an ax to the sail area and I go, this car came from Mont, Maryland. And this guy goes, yeah, how did you know? I said, David Ha and I. Oh yeah, he doesn’t like you guys.

Well, I still own that little girl. Or we now own it. I have a partner. We own it and we love it. She’s raced it. I’ve raced it a whole lot. The original frame from under that car is under the KS Pitman Rocky Perone car. Kidding. Tell us about that. That’s my 33 Willy frame. Frame. Underneath of our Willys is under the Big John MAs Manian car.

Wow.

Jeff Golden: Talk about incest man. [01:12:00] And what was the other frame? You were telling me the story the other day. Who’s, whose other frames where

Fred Bear: the 33 frame came with one of the Lias Rex Red Throat. Some of y’all know him from Florida. Four door pre effect. Crazy man. Very involved with our nascar hot rod reunions.

Friend of his had an Anglia. We were looking to build a new izer car. I go down, I look at it and I go, ah. And they wanted to on him at the time. I don’t know. Rick says, what, what about the frame fork? And I said Frame. ’cause it was just a body in the garage. So go out behind a shed and here is an Anglia frame.

And it turns out Rex had boxed it, Rex professional welder. He had boxed it or to look at it. When we dig it up out the weeds, there’s another frame. Really in the dirt. But I look at it, I crave it, stand it up, and I go, uh, this is a Willy’s frame. And he goes, yeah, about that [01:13:00] years ago. And I never have done anything with it.

And I go, well, does all this go with the body? He said, yeah, I could do that. I’m driving outta his driveway. I didn’t even get to the main highway ’cause we were building the Ks car. But going by the 67 rules, it had to be on a manufactured frame. It couldn’t be on a 68, you could put ’em on a tube chassis.

But we built that in 67 Ks did. So that’s what Rocky wanted. I wasn’t a hundred yards outta their yard loading the car up. I call Rocky and I go, I got a 33 frame.

So

Jeff Golden: you probably thought you were elucidating at that point, right?

Fred Bear: The whole family stays together. And that’s what all forms of racing are. And all of you that are racers know exactly what I’m talking about. You got a family that’s your blood to, but it’s nowhere near as good or big as the family you got [01:14:00] racing.

Amen. And that’s how I see it. Yeah,

Greg Swenson: that’s very true. I’ll just say that earlier I talked about my partnering crime being my twin brother, and so I just wanted to let y’all know he just walked in the door. So the guy in the back there over the years, best friends growing up and basically had a lot of the same interests and we both went down the same path doing the car stuff and collecting and racing, and he’s here in attendance.

Fred Bear: Well, you guys call yourselves the surf brothers. The surf brothers. Yeah. First thing is he’s told five or six stories about you. I want to know which one of ’em are true.

Greg Swenson: They’re all lies. Yeah. Gary and I, like I said, our father was the one who’s responsible for us both getting into this probably way more than he ever had thought we would just, over the years we’ve, you know, we’ve had the pleasure to be a part of all of [01:15:00] this and to make some great friends.

And really, you know, despite the fact that we all have a tendency to focus on the hardware, I have to say that it’s really the friendships that we make that make this whole car seem as important to us as it really is. The hardware is the means to an end, but it’s the friendships that make the most difference.

I just wanna

Jeff Golden: say something Greg said about his dad getting him a magazine. In 1963, when I was 10, we went out to Western Canada where my father was born. Now, that was a about a three week trip because we drove out, drove around there and came back. So of course, 10 years old. Back in those days, they didn’t have phones and computers and stuff, so I got bored.

Well, we stopped in the grocery store and my dad bought me a Hot Rod magazine. It was the Argus issue of 1963. And I read that thing 30 times over that I still have it. The, it’s torn, it’s frayed and everything. And that hooked me.

Gary Swenson: Yeah, actually my [01:16:00] brother and I, uh, I don’t know what he said here. I hope it’s not all bad.

Greg Swenson: You’re probably gonna tell the same story.

Gary Swenson: I’m not going to. Anyway. Yeah, my brother and I had gotten into it years and years ago as kids. We just loved getting Super Stock magazine, seeing all the cars that were in there and what have you. Years passed, I ended up, I got married and I had done just a little bit of drag racing, just a couple of shots down the track, and I was talking to my wife and she said, well, you’ve been talking about going racing.

Why don’t you just go do it? And she probably regrets that to this day because we started out, I bought a 1955 Chevy, which I still have. And in fact, I’ve run it up at South Mountain Driveway. It’s been at some of the car shows. I don’t know if we had it in museum. I think it was, but it, it’s bright orange and started with one engine.

Actually, I bought it and I remember when we looked at it down in Maryland and I was with a friend of mine who’s passed away, and I turned to him and I said, do you think this thing is safe? He [01:17:00] said, well, I think safe enough. Anyway, we ran it for a while, took it up to Beaver Springs and ran it out of 4 0 6 in it at that 0.406 small block and two speed glide set of five 13 gears in back.

We thought they were four 80 eights, but then we counted teeth and I think it was five thirteens. Anyway, ran it at Beaver, ran it at South Mountain, it was running down around 10. Oh, and we said, well, you know, I think I should get this thing certified. There was a certification up at South Mountain one day, and so I ran up there with the car.

Kurt Leho was inspecting, and he looked at the car and he said, well, this isn’t gonna pass. This isn’t gonna pass, this isn’t gonna pass, and this isn’t gonna. So I turned to him and said, so you’re telling me if I stay above 10, oh, I can be safe. This is fine. He looked up very slowly and purposefully and said, well, have you got a wife?

You got kids and I, and at that point I parked the [01:18:00] car and luckily I had another car to run. After we got married, I bought a 63 Corvette two frame car, ran that for about a year and fixed the 55 Chevy. So we completely redid the frame on it. We did all the aluminum work and then ran the car after that and it did certify at that point and that’s the way the car is today with the exception that I changed the motor.

We ended up, we put a 4 21 small block in it and I think it’s run a best up at South Mountain 6 25 or something like that up there. So it’s a fun car reminiscent to the Gassers, although I would call it more, it’s a bracket car at this point. It started life as a Gasser and the history on it was that we went back far enough to find out it had been pulled out of a junk yard.

Similar to what happened with your cars. Fred had a tree growing out of the center of it and a friend of mine had pulled it out, you know, restored it as a race car and it went through several iterations and then finally it, it is where it is today. In fact, we just had it at the [01:19:00] Lebanon inch show this past January.

Had a real nice time up there. It’s a great show. So I’m honored to be here. It’s far from what I expected when I walked in the door, but, or desperate. But, uh, nevertheless, you know, I have to echo what has been said before, which is really a, racing is a community. Everybody looks out for each other and it really, it’s a testament to a group of people that really have the same interests and care for each other.

Now,

Jeff Golden: I guess at this point, I got one more question.

Fred Bear: I got two answers, and you’re not gonna like one of them.

Jeff Golden: How did they designate now you ran, when you ran outta s and s you all ran different classes. Yes. What was the difference between A and B? Was it cubic inches or horsepower? What made, how did they classify it?

Fred Bear: At that time? The rules were cubic inches. To weight B was 11 pounds to the cubic inch. C was 13, D [01:20:00] was I think 15 A was maybe seven. So if you had a 3 0 1 Chevy your car and run B is that weigh 2,709 pounds. Makes sense. And they had a p and g to check cubic inches award they made before they invented pg.

You had to pull ahead if you got protested or you could set the record. Or cheating. Huh? Or cheating. What? Cheating.

Gary Swenson: Never heard that word. What rules

Jeff Golden: cheating? They heard. Do they know what you’re talking about? You know, it’s, it’s, you know, NHRA. This was told me, excuse me sir. This is America. We like to speak English.

NHA had the rule block and I think they started in 1958. I’ll never forget, George N, who was the announcer at York said, yeah, NHRA tells you what you can’t do, but they don’t tell you what you can do. So everybody cheated, and then the guy that cheated the best one, okay, it [01:21:00] wasn’t

Fred Bear: cheating until you got caught.

Jeff Golden: There you go. That innovation, that’s the second part of the slogan. It wasn’t cheap until you got caught. Ah, okay. That was before they went horsepower, because Jimmy

Fred Bear: ditches to wait. It was that way until they went to bracket racing, which made it so much easier for everybody but the racers because then

Jeff Golden: double-edged sword, then

Fred Bear: you run 10 seconds flat.

And if you run quicker than that,

Jeff Golden: you’re out.

Fred Bear: You’re outta here. And that’s why I quit drag racing.

Jeff Golden: And if the guy beats you, you’re out because you’re racing yourself.

Fred Bear: When they made the rule, people started getting ahead of the other car, hitting the brakes,

Jeff Golden: sandbagging to

Fred Bear: go across the finish line. Well, in reality, that creates negative caster,

Jeff Golden: runs the car outta control, most applies

Fred Bear: the incorrect steering.

And a lot of cars crash. And I said, I really like racing to the finish line. And that’s when I went, stock cars fastest

Jeff Golden: car that, you know, it’s very hard for people to understand bracket racing. They have.

Fred Bear: [01:22:00] With delay boxes and blah, blah, blah, blah, and what all that is. It used to be the

Jeff Golden: fastest car won and then, but the fastest car don’t win.

Fred Bear: Absolutely.

Jeff Golden: The the audience, the spectators don’t get. We had

Fred Bear: more fun, didn’t we?

Jeff Golden: I had heard stories, but then I actually saw picture someplace when they raced at York and I think this was at the, uh, the big super stock, first super stock nationals. Of course, York was a long track with a big shutdown area.

People were lined the whole way up. They would come out on the track, the cars would leave the line and they’d watch ’em come and they’d spread off the track. Yeah. And then they’d go past, back on the track, next pair come down through. And that’s how it was. Talk about safety now. Wasn’t that safe,

Fred Bear: huh? Yeah.

That was at York. Yeah. Yeah. When they ran four wide. Yeah, four. Yeah. I remember ran people all over, but I’d already experienced that. Believe.

Jeff Golden: No, I got that was, there’s a picture of it downstairs. A four car wide deal. But I just want you to all know, I mean, I worked there, but this was before I did that.

The only two cars. That [01:23:00] actually worked off. The TAing was the center of two cars. The normal two cars, when they took off, the two outer cars took off. So it really wasn’t four, it was four wide, but it was only two lanes working the clock. So

Fred Bear: they ran four wide.

Jeff Golden: Yeah, but they all looked off Christmas tree and then only the two.

Oh yeah. And the two in the middle were the ones that were,

Fred Bear: it was all one. They were the ones that got, they were the ones that got the time slip,

Jeff Golden: the two outer cars. There was no time slip.

Fred Bear: Yes.

Jeff Golden: Let’s throw it open. Do you guys out in the audience? Anybody wanna ask these guys questions?

Fred Bear: Yeah. Would the twins loan me some money?

I don’t have any left. Got good answer. It’s in my car. Good of cars. How about loaning me a car to race for a year? That’d be, work that out.

I think you’ve

Jeff Golden: got this, you break it, you fix it. Isn’t that the, isn’t that the guarantee? You break it, you fix it.

Fred Bear: That’s it. And don’t ever lose.

Jeff Golden: That happened to me one time, but play breaks. Camaro over I Macquarie running. Right. That’s took it out and blew [01:24:00] it up. So I wound up fixing it, but I, I did find out what was wrong with it, but it cost a little time and money.

Yeah, that’s the way it goes.

Audience Q&A: Curious Fred, did you ever get interviewed by the wide World of Sports Fellow? What’s the fla? No, Chris?

Fred Bear: No, but they interviewed Porky and it was quite entertaining. He had a big black wide brim Amy hat on, and of course a cigarette part of it is on a movie. What year would it, but I would have

Jeff Golden: Amy’s eyeballs.

Fred Bear: No. Now, uh, the first national televise drag race was the 1963 Nationals. It was on Wild World of Sports and it was delayed for them to edit, and it was on, I think in October. And it turns out a b, CY World of sports showed up and they knew nothing about drag racing. [01:25:00] Here was this guy with media or something who turned out to be Monk Reynolds, who some of you people know.

Yeah. He went on to do super stock magazines and drag illustrated.

Jeff Golden: He was also the promoter of the topless thing at York, US 30, which never happened because it rained out that weekend.

Fred Bear: Oh. He was quite a promoter. He was a mailman in Alexandria. His name was Monk Reynolds and one of the ram rod show he raffled off.

His street Rod pickup. Street Rod wasn’t a term then, but that’s what it was. Luckily his brother-in-law won it. That was the bankroll for Monk. And he started Eastern Drag News, which morphed into magazines, stock car and super stock, drag illustrated and various other things. But he was there with Eastern drag news wide world of sports.

Guys, what are we doing? And in East Coast, car would come to the start line. Oh, this will be a good run. And then a [01:26:00] California car. Come to the start line. Now you want this. So if you ever watch that and it’s available, everything’s available on the internet, but if you ever watch it. The vast majority of it.

Every run is an East coast car. And, uh, pork got interviewed and, uh, quite a few others.

Jeff Golden: Pork lived right here in Hanover, just

Fred Bear: 10 miles from here. 2 56 Baltimore Street. There you go. I slept on the couch. Many.

Jeff Golden: I bet that was a party, but, uh, yeah. How about that? It’s amazing how everything’s all related, you know, it’s, it’s really neat, you know,

Fred Bear: and Port grew up and became an IRS. Agent. No kidding. I never knew that. That’s after drag racing and Len’s Artman fiberglass at a guitar shop. He finished college mid to late 20.

He interviewed for an FBI job and was accepted and he asked for duty station, no, we [01:27:00] assign you duty stations. Well now he told me a few years ago the FBI finally dropped that program, but then. He went and interviewed with IRS and they wanted to hire him, and he asked for a duty station and they said, where do you want to go?

And he said, York, Pennsylvania. And they says, no problem. And he was an IRS agent out of the York, Pennsylvania office and lived at 2 56 Baltimore Street in Hanover from the time he got married until he died.

Jeff Golden: I never knew that

Fred Bear: I stick around. I got a thousand.

Jeff Golden: And he did. He didn’t fit the mold. You never thought he, that’s the way he’d have been.

Ken Bigham: He,

Fred Bear: he knew all the things, the ins and outs all. Oh, I bet. Okay. See, that was before my time. To the extent that. He did tax returns for his friends and one of his friends is a Harlow dealer. Well, he is on 30.

Jeff Golden: It went logger, but loggers.

Fred Bear: Well, every time [01:28:00] pork wanted to go to Sturgis, guess who loaned him a motorcycle?

So there is benefits, right? Oh, there is benefit. How about that? Uh,

Jeff Golden: what a small world. Wow.

Fred Bear: How many of you knew pork? Yeah. Did he look I in later life, did he look like Wilford Brumley?

Jeff Golden: Yes.

Fred Bear: The TV

Jeff Golden: actor, the mustache. Okay.

Fred Bear: He and David and I in an airport somewhere on a connection, I think we we’re going to hot rod reunion, California.

We’re sitting there pork treating his USA today. Every day read that paper and we’re sitting there and these two women. David and I are looking at each other portrait. Finally, they stop and they go, excuse me. Do you know who you look like? Yes, Paul Newman,

these poor ladies, looked at each other. Looked at David, and I looked at pork again and walked away. But that was [01:29:00] poor sense of humor.

Jeff Golden: Yeah.

Fred Bear: He was the most straight faced, hilarious comedian. But you had to pay attention even if you were poor or you missed the punchline. Yep. He was just that good at it, and I’d have loved to have sat in.

On an I interview with somebody that when he was doing an audit for him,

Jeff Golden: I grew up less than half a mile. The crow flies from Charlie Hills garage in Wrightsville. I was back in road. I mean, if I walked down it was, it was less than half a mile, but I used to hear him fire the engine up. This is when I was still a kid.

I used to ride a bicycle down there and stuff. And then when I got to B 15, I bought my first car, my old 41 Ford. For a hundred dollars.

Fred Bear: It was a lot of money.

Jeff Golden: You better believe it. I, I mowed grass all summer to buy that son of a bitch. I still got it. And uh, you know, and I’d ride down and got to know Charlie and actually Charlie and Bob Palmer, who raised Drove bad habit, drove bad habit.

He was a welder stuff. They actually [01:30:00] made some parts ’cause you couldn’t buy speed equipment for stuff like that. But he made some parts. I still have ’em on the car yet, you know, and he’s gone. But it’s just sentimental. It’s kind of neat, you know, to have that. God, that was 55 years ago. Holy

Crew Chief Brad: shit.

Jeff Golden: Where’d it go?

But I just wanna throw that in. Pork has two sons, right?

Fred Bear: Yeah, Greg. And I’m not good with names. What’s her name?

Greg Swenson: My understanding is, huh. And my brother and I in a previous life used to play in a metal band. And Gary was a guitar player, very good guitar player. And I was the drummer and their sons. Were also playing in a band around the same time.

It was Pork Sons.

Fred Bear: Yeah.

Greg Swenson: Both of those guys played in a rock band. I forget what instrument each one of them played, but they were on the circuit at the same time we were.

Fred Bear: Pork had a guitar shop

Greg Swenson: in Hanover. What was the name of the guitar shop that you remember?

Fred Bear: I’m doing good remembering his name.

Greg Swenson: I’m doing good.

Remembering that I played drums,

Fred Bear: pork was, was [01:31:00] musical and mm-hmm. So it rubbed off on his voice. Yes. And he and Robin were good parents.

Greg Swenson: I don’t know that they ever got into cars, but they were good musicians.

Fred Bear: The only race car that pork ever owned. He and Larry Roberts, who Larry wound up driving the filthy 40 some, had a 32 Chevrolet that was named the Bad News.

They built the car but didn’t have a motor and transmission for it. And the US nationals in Detroit in 59 was coming up and Larry had a new 57 Chevrolet 2 74 speed and he was about a year into the payments on it when they pulled the engine and transmission out and rolled it up beside parents’ garage and put the motor in, transmission in the bad news car and went to Detroit and won C altered, I think they put the motor back in.

Larry’s 57 and sold the car to Bruce [01:32:00] Larson. That’s the car over there.

Greg Swenson: That was the original Mr. The original. The original

Fred Bear: and it didn’t look that good. Then

Greg Swenson: I remember seeing pictures of it when it was called bad news. Yeah, I guess it was some of Jim Amos’s. Videos to be on video and he has some pictures of it from way back.

Fred Bear: And then Charlie did a fuel alt alter. That was a bad news car. Bad habit. Bad habit. Bad habit, bad. A bad habit. Yeah, bad habit. First it was a dirty 30. Yeah. And then that was, then it became, Dick Smith had, well

Greg Swenson: actually, yes. Scott Hoof Magel now has that car. That’s the one

Fred Bear: Bob Palmer drove. Right. And uh, the, see I remember the

Greg Swenson: Dirty 30, that one is actually being restored by Scott Hoof.

Magel. And it’s really, you know, when Smitty had it, it became more of a bracket car and it, it still looks like more of a bracket car. It’s lowered, it doesn’t have a straight axle or anything like that. But it’s around

Fred Bear: a few years ago. Yep. Yes it was.

Greg Swenson: In fact, I was parked right next to him in [01:33:00] my tube frame car.

Oh, okay. Years ago it was, Smitty was in one, you know, it had us lined up almost like we were racing. But the bad Habit is owned by Bill Leininger and that’s. Car is currently in St. Mary’s, Ohio, and it was restored. Mike Guffey had it for a while, and he bought it from Mike Guffey. So let it still around.

And actually, before the York Show was finished, when Darwin started moving it up here, bill Leininger brought bad habit into that show before the last show or two that they had in York.

Jeff Golden: Dick Gerber, who’s from Lancaster, he’s a vor. He does upholstery work and stuff. And when that car showed up in York. He came into the guy got some, once somebody got Dick and went over and Dick confirmed that the upholstery in that car, which like snapped in the comic cover snaps, was the original upholstery that he made for that car.

Fred Bear: Really?

Jeff Golden: Yes.

Fred Bear: Wow. So

Jeff Golden: that car was definitely authentic, but Dick said, yeah, that’s, I did that. So that’s really neat. Why’d you [01:34:00] guys

Greg Swenson: buy that? I’m first in line from Bill, so Bill basically said if he ever decides to sell it, he is calling me first.

Jeff Golden: It belongs back here. Not out there. Damn it. It was an east coast car.

It should be here, you know, but that’s what happens. They get passed around, moved around, but it’s amazing how they resurface over years and stuff and it’s put away in a garage someplace and somebody dies or gets married or something and it’s for sale. Hopefully. Maybe we’ll get back here someday.

Alright, well I’m getting singles. I’m running out of time here. I mean, this has been a blast and a half. Uh, not bored of a second, but does anybody have any question for the guys? Here we go.

Audience Q&A: Yeah. I just wanted to know all the gentlemen on the diet today. How many of you have worn spandex pants, or are wearing, I think I did.

Greg Swenson: I’ll answer that. How many

Ken Bigham: more spandex pants? He doesn’t even know what it. [01:35:00]

Greg Swenson: Way back when in the eighties,

we all did some pretty crazy things and part of being in a heavy metal band was to look, I’m sure you, I don’t

Fred Bear: wear any, so,

Greg Swenson: so, but back then there was a look that everybody was after. And so in our previous life, you know, we basically, we would go on stage. We had fog machines, we had bombs going off and everything else. And, and yes, we wore some pretty bizarre stuff and I’ll just leave it at that. But I had a pair of red and black tiger striped spand deck pants that, thank God I sat behind a drum set.

And I don’t know where they are anymore, but I do know one thing I’d never fit in them.

Jeff Golden: Okay. Well, I wanna thank all you guys for coming up here and putting up with [01:36:00] me. And Fred

Greg Swenson: also like to thank Jeff for doing a great job as the mc for this thing. Also gonna pass one other word of thanks out to EJ Kowalski and his.

Gang over there. One of the things that EJ has been very much involved in is the vintage eliminator, and I think that that is such a return to the original days of racing, and it is chance for us all to really relive the past, the way that it really was a chance to sort of get back to that golden age of drag racing, you know, even before it was a golden age.

Again, I think what brings most of us here is the nostalgic value. And that’s got a heck of a lot of nostalgic values. So thank you ej.

Fred Bear: Yeah, thank you all for coming and laughing at the appropriate moments. We really all appreciate that.

Jeff Golden: Once again, I wanna thank Fred for bringing the car up. I mean, that is just, thank you. That is, [01:37:00] and then, and then having him as a, whatever you wanna call him, it’s just a riot, you know, so pick up a schedule over here for the rest of the events for the rest of the year.

I want to thank you for all coming, and please come back again and, uh, anytime we’re open, Friday and Saturday. 10 to four. Thanks again.

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 [01:38:00] the engines running and the memories alive.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motor Sports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.

Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the episode.

What a ride through memory lane – from the roar of the Gassers to the quiet grit of the people who built, drove, and preserved these machines. We’ve heard stories that stretch from Englishtown to Florida (and everywhere in between), from the early days of modified production to the EMMR’s museum floor where cars like Garlits’ “Swamp Rat III” and Gene Altizer’s car now gleams thanks to tireless work.

Dan Garlits “Swamp Rat III” courtesy EMMR; photo by Mihalko

Fred, brought more than stories – he actually hauled a Gene Altizer’s legendary drag car (below) all the way from Florida for this event. That car, now proudly displayed in the EMMR’s drag racing area, is a piece of history that once tore down tracks and turned heads. Behind it sits a showcase of Gene’s race photos and innovations, including the one-off intake he designed but never patented – an idea so good, everyone copied it.

Gene Altizer’s Gasser, photo courtesy EMMR; photo by Mike Winslow

To our panel – Ken & Thelma, Fred, Greg, and Ken Bingham – thank you for bringing history to life. And to everyone who came out, stuck around, and shared in this celebration of speed, spirit, and storytelling: you’re part of the legacy now. And as we learned: the stories, the drivers, and especially the cars, are more than metal and rubber – it’s a tribute to ingenuity, community, and the relentless pursuit of speed.

About the EMMR

The Eastern Museum of Motor Racing is a premiere destination for motor racing enthusiasts, showcasing a vast collection of historic racing cars, artifacts and memorabilia.

Each roundtable brings together voices from across the motorsports 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 die-hard fan of dirt tracks, drag strips, or open-wheel icons, the Racers Roundtable is your seat at the table for candid conversations and timeless memories from those who lived it.

To learn more about the EMMR, or to take 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.EMMR.org. Follow them on social media for the latest news, upcoming events, and exclusive content.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Copyright Eastern Museum of Motor Racing. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing. This content in this episode has been remastered and published with the EMMRs consent; and has been reproduced as part of the Motoring Podcast Network and can be found everywhere you stream, download or listen to podcasts!

Sunday Niagara: Reliving the Golden Age of Drag Racing

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

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October 21, 2025

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Sunday Niagara: Reliving the Golden Age of Drag Racing

In the heart of New York State, just north of the Niagara Falls Airport, a stretch of asphalt once roared with horsepower, tire smoke, and the cheers of thousands. From the early 1960s through 1974, Niagara Dragway wasn’t just a racetrack – it was a cultural landmark, a proving ground, and a Sunday ritual.

Photo courtesy Dean Johnson, Niagara Dragway Collection, now part of the IMRRC

This post revisits the golden age of drag racing through the voices of Dean Johnson, longtime promoter of Niagara, and Jim Oddy, a celebrated competitor and Hall of Fame inductee. Their stories, shared during a presentation hosted by the International Motor Racing Research Center, paint a vivid portrait of a bygone era.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Niagara Dragway began with a simple idea: get street racers off the road and onto a safe, sanctioned strip. Dean Johnson’s father, concerned about his son’s street testing, partnered with Jerry Hammond, a local speed shop owner, to build a dragstrip on 197 acres of land. The construction was as grassroots as it gets – no stakes, no surveyors, just a bulldozer and a tree in the distance marking the finish line (below).

The first race in 1961 tore up the starting line, prompting a quick repave and a clever fix: Portland cement broomed and wetted into the asphalt, creating a durable concrete launch pad that lasted for years.

Slideshow

This is a collection of photographs courtesy of Dean Johnson and the Niagara Dragway collection that is now part of the IMRRC.

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.

Crew Chief Eric: Niagara Dragway was one of the most popular and iconic drag strips in New York State from the early 1960s through 1974.

The Sunday Niagara commercials boom from Superstation WKBW during that period, making Niagara the place to be for maximum automotive excitement during Niagara’s tenure, icons of the sport, Gar Muldowney, Perdome Ewen, and many others rocketed down the Niagara quarter mile. And this presentation features Track promoter Dean Johnson and longtime competitor at Niagara Jim Otti, who is a member of both the NHRA Division one and International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

So sit back as we relive that history with stories, photos, and memories of those wild Sundays at Niagara.

Kip Zeiter: My name’s Kip Zider. I’m the Visitor [00:01:00] Services coordinator for the Motor Racing Research Center. We are very excited about this presentation. I’m gonna start this off by thanking everybody involved in this because inevitably at the end of it, I forget to thank people.

So the first people I want to thank obviously are are stars here, Mr. Dean Johnson and Mr. Jim odi. Hold your applause. Not at the end, but hold your applause right now. I wanna thank Jen who’s flitting around here as our high school. AV person who’s here. I wanna thank Jim Galbrath, my good friend who Jim and I have spent weeks trying to call 3000 slides down into the 250 that we’ll be seeing this afternoon.

It’s been a very difficult task, only because of the fact that there’s just so much good stuff that we’ve seen there. I wanna thank Eric technical wiz who’s taping this and all this good stuff. I want to thank Alison Kreitzer from the Easter Museum of Motor Racing, Les the photographer. We’ll have one gentleman that will speak for just a couple minutes after our formal presentation is done here.

His name is Jim and he represents Skyline [00:02:00] Dragway. We had a couple cars that these guys were gracious enough to bring in this morning. Parked outside Skyline is located in Tioga Center. It’s the eighth mile drag strip and then the old Shangrila two on the bottom. Very, very cool place and I wanna thank Jason.

Who brought in the Christmas tree short of the interesting cars that we bring in from time to time, the Christmas tree’s, the coolest damn thing we’ve had in the center in a long time. I wish I could keep it there. I wish I could take it home actually, but my wife would get upset about that. So I wanna thank all these people without this, without all of their help and, and Jim’s especially, this just would not have come to place.

So, brief background on the collection, Dean actually stopped at our place probably three years ago with a couple different scrapbooks, and Bill Green and myself started looking through the scrapbooks and were literally just jumping up and down because this is my era of drag racing. I knew all these guys and the archivists that we had at the time, for whatever reason, just wasn’t particularly interested in the collection.

So Dean left, fortunately to come back to us again about a year and a half ago with multiple boxes, [00:03:00] multiple scrapbooks, all kinds of memorabilia about Niagara. We advertise ourselves as International Motor Racing Research Center, and that means we touch on everything. But this is the first program we’ve ever done on drag racing.

I kind of consider this the golden age of drag racing. We wanted to get some of this collection out into the public view, so that’s why we’re here today. So Dean, thank you very much for bringing this. Without further ado, I think let’s roll.

NIAGARA PROMO: Y We open this weekend, Sunday.

It’s opening day. Look at the lineup. The incredible line bill and its wheel standing LA dark. Plus the spectacular supercharge supercharger Azar Bunny Fido, side by side against Omo zone. Jimmy Ti. You’re gonna see it and next time you roll up that stuff, like Buddy, you stop. Think of us and save it for

the Racers Place in New York State out on Lock Foot Road just north of Niagara Falls Airport in Niagara Falls, New York. See you at two. [00:04:00]

Kip Zeiter: I have played that so many times that the people I work with, I mean, they have lots of reasons to hate me, but they have hated me because I just love those commercials.

Those commercials were iconic. And we’ll touch on the commercials in a second, but before I turn the microphone over to Dean, I just have a couple questions before we get into your component and involvement with the track. When did Niagara first open up? Who opened it up? Do you have any idea what the acreage was or any of the monetary, the price.

What did it cost to buy the land, all that stuff, and how and when did you become involved in it? And the final question on that I have on that is we’re gonna see several slides here where it’s called Niagara Airport Drag Strip. It’s called Niagara International, it’s called Niagara Dragway. Were you just trying to keep ahead of the feds or was there some reason why it was.

Called a number of different names.

Dean Johnson: In 1961, Niagara was started by my father and a fellow by the name of Jerry Hammond. [00:05:00] And my father was, I guess he was concerned about me doing some, uh, testing on the street. He became interested, he, he wanted to know if there was any way it was possible to get us street racers off the street.

And I put him onto a P by the name of Jerry Hammond, who had a dragster and a speed shop in Niagara Falls. And between the two of them, they figured out that they needed a certain amount of Anchorage, and they put together a, a program where my father was actually able to put two pieces of property together, totaling 197 acres.

They decided that they could run a racetrack and maybe make a couple of bucks too. So in 1961, I was with my father and the bulldozer on a tractor trailer came up and they unloaded it, and the fellow said, uh. What do you want me to do? And there were no stakes or anything and we were at one end, we were at the airport end of the what was to become the drag strip.

And my father said. You see that tree way down there at the other end of the property. And the fellow said yes. [00:06:00] And he said, well, that’s from here to there is where I want the track. There were no stakes, no nothing. So away they went and the fellow said, uh, how much do we want? And he said, 60 feet wide. I want it cleaned out.

And uh, that was the deal. No stakes, no nothing. And they did have a permit to build a drag strip. Heaven knows what that meant, but that’s what it said. You have a permit to build a drag strip. Uh, there was a lot of rain and they finally got it where it was running late in the year in 1961. And the first.

Race that they had. The cars tore up the starting line and they had to repave it between the races and the, and the following race. And my father was pretty smart. After they had repaved it, we put down Portland cement and broomed it in and then wet it and then poured more Portland cement in and broomed and wet it.

And in effect, it gave us a concrete drag strip, the start and that lasted. So it worked out pretty well.

Kip Zeiter: There were various names for the Strip, Niagara Airport, Niagara Dragway, Niagara International.

Dean Johnson: Originally it was named Niagara Airport Drag Strip because we were immediately [00:07:00] adjacent to the Niagara Airport drag strip, and we thought that would make it easier to find.

And over the years, whatever was fashionable, we used that name and it was Niagara this or Niagara International or whatever it was, but it was always Niagara and it became Sunday Niagara. Everything seems to have been tagged Sunday Niagara, but it was always Niagara. No matter what was fashionable, it was still Niagara.

This is the NASCAR summer nationals to be 67. If you look. At the very center, the return road there, and that’s all dragsters. And we would put them out at the quarter mile and that’s when we push started them. So they would come out at the quarter mile and push start up the track. And there’s, there’s a lot of people there.

There’s probably 10, 15,000 people there in the track. The airplane, the wing, that’s my father. He’s checking up on us. But it’s really a gorgeous picture. There’s one more in there, which probably we’ll see where there’s two dragsters leaving this starring line, which is probably one of my favorite pictures.

The towers to the left of center. And just past that, you can see the [00:08:00] road. And that road is full of dragsters, which in this area that’s pretty good. We, we just, we’re not a track known for a lot of dragsters. Most of the cars we ran were a competition car or a Gasser or super stock, stock, that type thing.

But this is quite a good picture because it, it, it, there’s a lot of people here. This is the hot car staging lane. Tended to put our motorcycles on the far side and then we would tell the whatever class we were trying to run, they would come in and line up. Uh, you can’t see the signs, but there were numbers one through eight or 10.

And we’d say, okay, such and such a class, we need you to get in lane one or lane two, whatever. And then we had another section of staging that we ran the stock cars out of. And so we were able to run the cars pretty good. Uh, on our biggest race, we ran about 610 cars. We would run them about every 30 seconds.

We’d run a pair of cars. You have to, because we just didn’t have the time to do anything else. We ran a lot of cars and we ran ’em pretty hard. If they were running them too slow, they tended to get an earful from me and I’d be [00:09:00] shouting, run ’em, run ’em. And they’d say, well, there’s cars on the track. And I’d say that they ought to know by now, they better be off to the right or left because I’m sending another pair down on ’em.

And the dragster guys would have to stuff their shoots in their cars and all that, and they’d say, you know, you ran cars down of me. And I said, I told you you only had a few seconds to get the heck out of the way. And they believed me after a while.

Kip Zeiter: You mentioned that you had a lot of dragsters. How many different other drag strips were you guys competing against in Western New York during your time there and was there a reason why you guys drew more top fuelers than maybe most?

Dean Johnson: Well, a lot of the top fuel cars were, uh, booked in stage shows where we’d book in a couple of cars and we’d match race, ’em two outta three. Sometimes we would run open competition, but as a rule, the bigger cars tended to go to where there would be a show. Like the car here, I don’t recognize the top car, but the car on the bottom is from, uh, London, Ontario, and it’s old style.

Nowadays, the cars don’t smoke the tires like this anymore. To me, I like this kind of racing. I thought when they lost the smoke [00:10:00] and the noise and everything, in my opinion it lost. Its a lot of appeal. But these guys would be turning these tires and they would, a lot of them would smoke them right through the finish lights.

They had a lot of horsepower and I don’t know what kind of horsepower they had back then. Probably six, 700. Jim,

Jim Oddy: I, I told I had 3000, 2000.

Dean Johnson: Okay. But now they have 10,000 or 11,000 horsepower. It changed quite a bit. There’s the picture that I like in the top, you can see the spectators and then you can see the row of dragsters that they, they’re going down and then they’re gonna, after this pair clears, they’re gonna come out on the track and push start coming up to the track.

I got so aggravated that it took so long to push start these cars. We built a set of roller starters and used a little Chevrolet motor, and we would start one car at a time and, uh, we could start them so quick. It just saved so much time. And about a week or so after we got our starter system installed, NHRA came out and said, you need to have self starting cars.

So all my work was for Naugh, but it was pretty exciting to see a car come down [00:11:00] with a, another car pushing it and the car would be absolutely outta control. And it, it was really something to see these cars being pushed. It was not the safest thing to do, but with a roller star boy, it speeded things up a lot.

And when you had a lot of cars, you need to keep the program moving. And that’s what we did. And that’s just a picture looking down track and you can see where the tire marks are kind of all over the place. And uh, that’s a little bit exciting, especially for the driver. We had a good photographer when we were taking pictures.

I wanted to see crowds and I wanted to see our name. Les Glenn is here with his wife. His father was a track photographer for a number of years, so he has a lot of these pictures. The thing that I wish we had done more was I wish we had taken more pictures in the pits with the car and the driver because the cars are nice, but it’s pretty interesting to see the drivers too.

Kip Zeiter: I was gonna bring this up a little bit later in the discussion, but regarding sponsorship, I see Gord there and we have Gordon in several of these slides I actually talked to, I think it’s the son of. The gentleman that started [00:12:00] that years ago, they seem to be one of your major sponsors, or at least there for a number of years.

So I was wondering how did you attract sponsors? How did you keep sponsors? Happy? Racing now is nothing but keeping sponsors happy and keeping sponsors and the money still has to keep rolling in. So I’m just wondering what it was like back in your days.

Dean Johnson: All of the speech back then were really good people.

I think I traded that sign for a set of bags for one of my cars. I don’t think they ever did anything else. We left the sign up ’cause I didn’t have anything else to put. That’s the truth. The, there was signage down on the pit side and I charged nothing for that. We wanted people to see names to make it look more exciting, so it was like pulling teeth to get people to put a sign up.

It isn’t like today, we sold all those signs over the years and they now they have great

Kip Zeiter: value. So you’ve made more money selling the sponsorship signs than you did talking to the people to get them to put their names on the sign. We

Dean Johnson: might basically gone $25 for a [00:13:00] couple of signs on the pit sign, and that would’ve been it.

And we never took ’em down. We just left them up. They paid $25 and it went for eight or 10 years. We didn’t care because it made the place look busy. People make people, if, if you have people and they, and they have a good time, they’re gonna tell somebody. Oh, for sure. It’s important that people are with people.

This is the kind of stuff I like, ’cause it the, it’s got a known car and it’s got lots of people. This fellow here, the last time I looked, he was very ill. It’s Larry Downs, but it’s got him putting things together. We’re in, as you can see, the tower, you can see the car. It is an exciting picture because it shows a lot of the way things were.

And the top one on the right, we used to do a parade. If we were doing exhibition cars, we would do a parade. And then if you look in the left side of that top right picture, you could see yellow and that is rosin. And when we were match racing, we would put Rosin on the track and they would do burnouts and it would improve the traction and it, it would be part of the show where you’d be running a Ford against the [00:14:00] Chevrolet or against the something or other, and they would put the rosin down and it became quite a show.

And the announcer would get who’s for Chevrolet and who’s for Dodge. And it got to be a lot of fun. And the announcer was a great portion of what people saw because if he was good, people saw a good show. This is a rain out, not a total rain out. We’re trying to drive the track. So we’re driving the cars down the left side and back up the right and, and a lot of times we get comments of people’s memories and I just read one where a guy said I was 14 and I got to drive my father’s car down the left and up the right, down the left and up the right we did that to drive the track.

And the girl on the left, she’s putting the numbers back on the cars because the rain has knocked the, uh, we used shoe polish. They had to replace the shoe polish, but that’s what we did to dry the track. And that’s me looking slightly dejected. This is out the window in my, uh, office. And it’s a great picture because you could see the funny cars, and I don’t see Jim here, but he’s probably here somewhere.

This is a big race. And you could see the [00:15:00] rain and of course the forecast would predict rain. And we worked hard to get the stuff in, but boy, it, it’s hard to do. You can see it’s a big race. You can see the flip top cars and the mud and the water. It, it was just brutal. It hurt your headcount terribly. But we were able to get the race in.

We didn’t care who you brought as long as you paid 50 cents for your kid.

Kip Zeiter: Was this bring a chimp to the race stage? We,

Dean Johnson: we don’t care. We got our 50 cents. We were happy. A lot of the stuff I never saw, I didn’t see this particular thing. And there’s a lot of pictures where there’s some really pretty girls and I think where the heck was I?

’cause I never saw that end of things. But I never saw the chip or, or this fellow. But like I say, if you paid 50 cents, I’m for it. Is that what the admission charge was back then? Huh. Jim and I were talking about what we paid. When the track opened, it was a dollar general admission and it was a dollar to race, and it was a dollar to get in the pits.

Kip Zeiter: Well, that’s just outrageous. I don’t know how I [00:16:00] agree.

Dean Johnson: It’s much like today it’s, it is. Places are about the same. On our last race, we charged $6 general admission and $1 to race, and $1 to get in the pits. And we were frightened to death that the $6 would have turned people away because we thought $6 was really pretty dangerous.

Hard to believe.

Kip Zeiter: That’s amazing. Regardless of today’s economy or back then, that’s just. So we’re touching now kind of on our local hero segment. We’ve got three slides here of Jim Zaia. Is Jim in the audience? No, I guess not. His wife is not. Okay. I’m sorry about that.

Dean Johnson: No, she’s not doing so hot. Jim’s a good guy.

Kip Zeiter: Well, yeah, if you could comment a little bit on Jim. Now we’ve got slides that we’re gonna leave till the end for Mr. Otti here, who again is a, a very, very much of a local hero and actually kind of a national hero. But if you could speak a little bit to Jim here, and then we’ve got a bunch of other slides that we just kind of called local folks.

So if you could speak to that.

Dean Johnson: Well, Jim Zs from [00:17:00] Niagara Falls. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car of his. It wasn’t gorgeous. The car that I like the most is the one on upper right. That’s one that was my favorite. Uh, he’s campaigning a car very similar to the one you see on the upper left, but it’s a, it is totally changed an awful lot.

There’s a lot of work been done on it, but he, he would run these cars here. He was very successful. He took a lot of my money and he’s always got a, Hey, I never, you, you, you forgot to give me a check. And so I, I had a check left over for when we were running NASCAR and I gave him a blank and I told him, fill it out, whatever you want.

He still has that.

Kip Zeiter: So Mr. Adi, did you ever run against Jim? Did Jim run against Jim?

Jim Oddy: Actually, we were pretty good friends. We hung out a lot together, but actually Jim ran his cars in, uh, what they called modified illuminator. And all my cars were competition eliminator cars. We never actually raced each other, but we hung out a lot and took a bunch of Dean’s money, so we were pretty happy.

Kip Zeiter: When you say you took a bunch of Dean’s money, what would it have meant on a regular basis? [00:18:00] Let’s, let’s exclude the big events for the moment, but on a week to week basis, what would winning your class put in your pocket?

Jim Oddy: Well, I remember the days like competition limited to win with, we got $400, which was pretty good money, and back in the day I kind of did that full time.

All I did was race, so it was really important that we did well.

Kip Zeiter: Did you pay simply the guy that won or did you pay a second? I mean, I know how drag racing works, but if you get knocked out in the first round, you probably go home, say Thanks, we’ll see you next week. But how did you structure the prize money?

Dean Johnson: Normally we paid four places and at different races we paid round money against the winnings. And this is Jim Za again, and this is Jim with his whole family on the left. And this is one of my favorite pictures here. Jim broke an axle or a drive shaft. We have time to fill, so we let him push a car for ways and uh, it was good exercise for him.

And whenever he gets mouthy, I bring that picture up and say how much I love it. He has a fit and can’t breathe and everything. It’s just wonderful. But that’s the car that I like. And he didn’t do much braking. His cars [00:19:00] were pretty complete and they spent very little time like this. This is Bob Sullivan and that’s me on the left before my first wife.

That would be the one woman to the right. We got married, and this is Shirley and Bob Sullivan, this car. And they also had a top fuel car and they call pandemonium and it’s appropriate. And good friends. And now they’re, they are both gone, but wonderful, wonderful people. Larry Downs on the left side, that’s Larry again.

And I’m in this picture on the right. Larry Downs and Paul Ack. Anyway, he had a Buick Dragster and Paul blew his motor or he had a big motor and he put the big motor into uh, Larry Downs’ car. And uh, I think he drove it and they, they were relatively successful on it. But Paul crashed a car one time, uh, on one of our big races.

All that was left was the cage of the car and he was upside down on the finish line. And uh, we didn’t wanna turn it over ’cause we knew he was dead. And so we’re discussing what we should do with the body. And finally he said, Hey, uh, can you get me the heck outta [00:20:00] here? And we said, well, he is alive. I guess we can turn it over.

So he broke his finger. Good thing he landed on his head, which didn’t hurt him a bit. So this is, um, Chippewa and it’s a Satan’s car club, but he was a, a wonderful striping and stripping and made a good living at it. And he also drove Fran ADA’s car, and that, I think is an Oldsmobile engine in that, if I’m not mistaken.

And you can see the tires dragster with what? Six inch tires. They, they don’t do that anymore. They’re big tires now. The car on the left and on the car on the right originally was Tommy iVOS car. Ivo was an actor who got into drag racing and he had a car called the Buick Master. It had four Buick motors in it, and uh, they put a part of a car to make it look like a car on the rear of it, but it was four wheel drive and it was very impressive.

There’d probably be pictures in here coming along. It wasn’t particularly fast, but it made a lot of smoke. And when we were doing promotions it was pretty exciting. I, I like the odd cars and I think most of the people did too. So this is a [00:21:00] clutch artist, dragsters, this little sea dragster. There’s a club in Buffalo that’s been around forever and uh, even some of the, the members are still around, but the, this is their little sea dragster and it’s a good little car.

You know who Station wagon that is? Uh, yes, I saw it. I can’t remember who it was, but Dan Cini. Okay. Dan Cini was a member of the Clutch Artist and he was a business manager probably for the clutch artist. That was a killer car. Hard to beat that car. Yeah, the station wagon in the back. This is Jerry Hamam Hammond ran the track 1961 and part of 1962 and the car he’s got there is a, a little Mustang with a 2 89 cubic inches blown and it’s a nitro.

And this is the car stopping and I don’t know who’s running on, on the far side, but that’s how they stop them.

Kip Zeiter: Obviously you have a full body car against a, a rail. Is that some kind of like a competition eliminator thing or a match race or what? What would

Dean Johnson: do is there were national records for all of these cars and so Jerry’s car was called a double B alter and this, this car here would probably be an [00:22:00] a gas dragster.

So whatever the record was, they, they would run each other using their records. So one car would get a later start than the other handicap’s called.

Kip Zeiter: Oh, okay. Alright. Not bracket racing. No,

Dean Johnson: no. Bracket

Kip Zeiter: racing came

Dean Johnson: along

Kip Zeiter: later.

Dean Johnson: Much later, yeah, much later. Okay, this, this is early because you can see the tower in the picture on the, on the left the tower was pretty shaky.

And uh, I have a picture of a very famous announcer and he is standing and you had to stand on the floor, Jo. ’cause if you didn’t, you go through to the first floor, the ceiling’s falling down and it’s just the way it was back in the day. And, and you, we ran it that way and nobody thought a thing about it.

That’s just the way it was. We were glad to run. Well it was all that

Kip Zeiter: sponsorship money that you

Dean Johnson: collected that Oh yeah. I don’t, I don’t know what I did with that $72. Alright. This was our first snow out on the left and these fellows that come in from Massachusetts to go racing and uh, we got snowed out.

This little dragster here, I believe the fellow on the left is [00:23:00] Rick Johnson. He runs Johnson Building Company now. Now this is Val Port on the bottom right. And I was his crew probably in 67. I was his crew, which is pretty frightening in Florida when we won the Florida Internationals. This car on the right is Tommy iVOS, wagon Master.

This is Summer Nationals. This little car on the, on the left is a fellow that came from, uh, big North of Barry, Ontario. And he would come every week and he was not a winner, but he was a good guy and he, he liked to go racing and so they, they.

Kip Zeiter: Well, one of the reasons we wanted to use this slide was you see the NHRA in the left and you see the NASCAR summer nationals on the right.

So what I’d like you to speak about, and Jim, if you have some thoughts on this, everybody knows NHRA, it’s been around since parks started it years ago. Was the track NHRA sanction when you opened it up? And how did you become a NASCAR sanctioned track?

Dean Johnson: We, we ran in 1965, we ran [00:24:00] NHRA regional meet and we had, uh, 9,007 people in that.

And Dal was a divisional director for the division one, which we were in, and he called the race. It rained for a couple of minutes and quit. We had 9,007 people in the place. The rain quit, the sun came out. So we had all these people, Dominic called the race without asking me, and I was fit to be tied. So we had people coming in and people going out.

Ultimately the race was called and we ran the race a month later, so they took a quarter of that. ’cause that was NHRA they, for this race. They took one quarter of the money for them and they rescheduled the race for a month later. And so they took a quarter of that. Also. There was a riot over the money and it was really a bad deal and he should never have done that.

Kip Zeiter: Is that what precipitated, how did you become a NASCAR section track?

Dean Johnson: Well, when we ran this event in 1965, they had a meeting of Division one on the east coast, and all the operators and managers were there and dial and dah was telling us the changes and who [00:25:00] got what races and when they announced the races, we didn’t get one.

And I got up and it like 150 people and I said, what’s going on here? We, we didn’t get a race diamond Choice. You had one last year. So I went to, uh, the fellow that was my promotional fellow, Ian Michel, he and I walked out and we had a quick discussion about what we should do. We decided we were gonna call NASCAR Drag Race Division and see if we can run over there Pittsburgh and ask him, we wanna.

Wanna run under the sanction, and we wanted to, uh, uh, run some of their big events. We called up Ed Berger, who was the head of NASCAR drag racing, and, uh, he said, come on over. And so we walked back in and, and I was just going, I left Ian gotta run his big mouth. He opened the door and, and a place like this.

And Darwin’s up talking. He shouted about everything. He said, Hey, Darwin. And Darwin says what? And Ian said, I don’t care where you put your races, but if you put your race one against one of our big races, we will kill you. And we slammed the door and [00:26:00] walked out. That’s pretty subtle. I got you have in your records Western Union note that Dow and sent to me, Dean, you’re no longer sanctioned with the NHRE.

And I said, Dowen, you already knew that. We told you we quit. So we went over and talked to Ed Berger and he said, well, what do you want? And we said, oh, we’d like to run the NASCAR summer nationals. He said, okay.

Kip Zeiter: How many years did NASCAR. I sanction drag racing. We

Dean Johnson: ran a couple years with nascar. Okay. And we ran a lot of their big meets.

They were cheap compared to everything else. We had the ability to get a lot of interesting cars. They, they, they ran a Coca-Cola Cade of cars, which was, it toured mostly in the, uh, central to the eastern part of the world. And, uh, the great shows great, great, great shows, but they weren’t the very biggest of the big.

But they were big. They did all of the great shows. They didn’t break a lot, the good people. So we ran them a couple of times. We were very satisfied. We ran a lot of, uh. Record runs for nascar and we did a lot of stuff with nascar.

Kip Zeiter: [00:27:00] Jim, did you run NASCAR sanctioned races and, and was there any difference short of whose name is on the tower at a cost of what, 15 bucks or whatever we have established for that?

Was there any difference running NHRA versus nascar?

Jim Oddy: Well, everything was pretty much the same. I did run that event and we were pretty happy. We set the record in the double leg gas super for nascar, which made a pretty good day. I think we won the event. So it was all good for us.

Kip Zeiter: It was sort of a different sanctioning.

Everything else basically was the same in terms of Yeah, you couldn’t

Jim Oddy: tell the difference. Okay. Other than, other than the signage.

Kip Zeiter: Okay. Alright. So now we’re entering kind of what we call our cars and stars thing. Exhibition cars. Exhibition cars. I mean, I don’t mean to harp on this. This was kind of my era, the Hemi Under Glass, the LA Dart Wheel standards like this.

So we’ve got a fair number of slides. If you could just kind of comment on the names, and maybe we can get in this later. I’m interested in. We’re gonna see Gars, we’re gonna see Shirley, we’re gonna see McCue, and we’re gonna see all these people in a couple seconds here. Can you [00:28:00] comment on who was great to work with, who maybe was a little bit difficult to work with?

Just kind of stuff like that?

Dean Johnson: I would say there were only two cars that I was unhappy with over the years. I had a couple of cars that didn’t show, but for the most part everybody showed. This is Bill Schuberg in the La Dart on the far side in the hand under glass, which would be Bob Riggle. Bob Riggle was the driver when, uh, Jay Leno went on his head had a roundy round race strike not too long ago.

Bob Riggle. Died shortly after that. Not related, but he just, he died. But these were a lot of fun and they were scary as heck when they ran. I would go in the tower. I couldn’t watch ’em because when they started, they didn’t spend a lot of time on the track. We never had to cut the grass. They were off in the ding weeds.

And, uh, I had a deal one time where Bill called me in the middle of the Saturday night and he said, I wrecked my car. And I said, okay. And I said, well, I still want you to come. And he said, well, there’s nothing left. And I said, well, I advertise you. I want people to know why you’re not here. And I said, who did you get to replace you?

And he said, I [00:29:00] didn’t get anybody. And I said, well, surprise me. And, and we’ll have, so there’s two cars here. So he got somebody up and they got another wheel stander. And they showed up. And when Bill showed up, I don’t think there was anything in his car that was worth anything. There was just total garbage.

It was just totally wrecked. But he was parked outside, so the people had to walk by him to see why he wasn’t on the track. He wrecked that car. He wrecked a lot of cars. All these, all these wheel standard guys. They wrecked a lot of cars, and a lot of times they’d go down the track and they’d, they’d wanna get a better track.

So they’d come back there. That’s what the car looked like. And that was parked outside the, the entrance. But, uh, the, the cars would go down the track and if they weren’t happy, they’d turn around, they’d come back up the track and you don’t know if they’re gonna stop. And I lost a Christmas tree once to, uh, a fellow that had the car was called a mystery mover.

And I, I was booking cars for Reunion, and he was saying, well, I, I had the mystery mover. And I said, I, I don’t remember the car. And he was, he described the car. And I said, I, I don’t remember the car. And he said, I ran over your tree. And I said, now I know who you are. [00:30:00] So he ran over brand new tree. I hadn’t had the tree for a week and he ran the tree over.

Kip Zeiter: So these guys all came to do match races, right? Am I correct in that? Well, we,

Dean Johnson: they didn’t start out match racing, but we match raced them. You, you’re gonna come, we’re gonna give you as much grief as you can. So if your car doesn’t run, you’re gonna get beat by somebody better. So we, we ran them, we ran them all.

But you paid these guys to come. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Kip Zeiter: Okay. Berry and the, how much did you pay like the wheel standard

Dean Johnson: guys? 700, 750. Now I, that car there, I own half that car. He borrowed $5,000 for me and signed a paper that said I owned half the car. I was with a group of people at one time and there were, I don’t know, 15 or 20 people and everybody in that group owned half that car.

He sold that car to everybody. I said, yeah, I don’t half that car. They said, yeah, we do too. This is Nicole Moran. The fellow on the right is Brutus Lou Arrington. Tell the California guys ’cause their hair is just perfect. And uh, the [00:31:00] girl, Nicole was from Montreal. But yeah, back to cars, it’s just match racing.

This is, uh, Peewee Wallace on the left, Phil Cast Nova and the Virginian. You could see the signs and so I have like 20 or $30 worth of signs. But we left them up because it made things look busy. This is TACA four. This is 1965 when we had the 9,007 people and we had not enough seating and the people were lined up along the drag strip and we couldn’t control, but we just ran the race.

They were five feet from the race car.

Kip Zeiter: I thought the interesting thing about this shot is that Taca is still multi-generational ’cause task is still a funny car guy. Yep. And still getting the job done. So I don’t know what generation Taska this would be, but they were New England based, I think. Right?

Rhode Island or Massachusetts, something like that. I’m a little confused on a gas and comp gas and all the rest of that stuff. Is this a car you would’ve run against?

Jim Oddy: Well, a FX car, it would fit in comp preliminary, but it was actually a separate [00:32:00] class. I’m pretty sure where the A FX just raced against a FX cars.

That was kind of the beginning of the funny car.

Dean Johnson: But we did a deal once where car broke or didn’t show or something. Yeah. And we ran Jim against one of these cars, handicapped probably.

Jim Oddy: That was a fill. How’d you do? If I remember right, I’m pretty sure it was Bruce Larson with a Cobra.

Dean Johnson: But you, you could lie because nobody could remember.

Jim Oddy: Well, and I don’t, and, and I don’t remember, but I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just went there to race. The next thing you know I’m doing a match race with Bruce Larson, who was a pretty famous individual at that point. Sure. It was an a sports car. It was a Cobra. Really ran fast. I’m sure I didn’t win or maybe I would’ve remembered it.

Kip Zeiter: No, we think you won. Right? Didn’t he win? Yeah, he won every, everybody knew he won. Okay.

Dean Johnson: Okay. This is Jungle Jim, and I think this is Nu Jungle Jim. Number two car, when these guys got going, they would have an a car or a number one car, number two car. If I couldn’t get the number one car, we would buy the number two [00:33:00] car and nobody would know the difference anyway.

Oh yeah.

Jim Oddy: Yeah. They would.

Dean Johnson: Most of the inspectors wouldn’t have a clue. Oh yeah. If Jungle Pam wasn’t with him, but Jungle Pam never was at Niagara, and I wish I could open a racetrack just to have her show up. So

NIAGARA PROMO: she was the show,

Dean Johnson: and the nice thing about her is it never seemed to have gone to her head. She always seemed to be pretty level-headed and she just never seemed to have changed.

Love that to death because she didn’t get nutty. She worked in the car, did she? Oh yeah. She was part of the crew. And, and I’ve seen some stuff where she said, yeah, you see all of the fancy dresses and the low cut this and the short that, and she said, it doesn’t show the time when they’re traveling between places and you’re sleeping in the back of a truck and they’re bouncing around and no food, and you don’t see any of that.

You just see a skimpy outfit and, and a car making a lot of tire smoke. She said, you didn’t see the, the work that went into this stuff. So I, I, I always liked her and I, most men do, but she just seemed to be very [00:34:00] levelheaded and it never seemed to go to her head. And she still around and makes appearances and that would be on my bucket list to meet her.

I, I just think she’s the best thing. This is, it is just another race. You could see the weather’s really shaky here on the right, and this is one of the few pictures on the very right is Ian Mickel, who does my promotion. Mr. Cosmopolitan, I ran the racetrack, he ran the promotion. He didn’t have much to do.

We ran a good show. He just put the people in. I did the rest. I had a good crew. I, I’m so fortunate when I hired everybody, there wasn’t anybody that didn’t love the racing and there wasn’t anybody that wasn’t honest. There was no favorites and somebody got a favor and, and there was none of that, which is very important because you don’t want people to think that, Hey, Jim’s here, he is gonna get a treat.

We didn’t give Jim any treats. We, we made it as life as impossible as we possibly could. Him and Zeke.

Kip Zeiter: Well, on the subject of promotion, let’s, let’s talk about that for just a second. We’re all familiar with the radio ad. How did, how did that actually. Come

Dean Johnson: [00:35:00] about. We were in WKBW in the recording lab and Ian was saying, I want this different sound.

He wanted this Sunday Niagara, everybody’s in there screaming Sunday Niagara. It was like a nutcase. And finally one of the tech guys said, you know, do you want this sound? And he screamed the Sunday Niagara Ian said, that’s the sound I want. And that’s the sound that it, we used it on all of our ads. So

Kip Zeiter: that was

Dean Johnson: just

Kip Zeiter: a tech guy from

Dean Johnson: the radio Yep.

That did that? Yep. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any recording. Oh, okay. But he got listened to all of us arguing back and forth and he said, is this the sound you want? And he did it and Ian said, yeah. Why did you do that sooner? Okay. So apart from the famous radio ads, how else did

Kip Zeiter: you

Dean Johnson: promote the track?

We, we did mailers and uh, we would mail out. I remember one time we mailed out. 33,000 pieces of mailing, 33,000. Everything had to be by zip code or in Canada Postal Code. Everything had to be in order. And uh, we had to call a post office and say [00:36:00] we’re coming. And it would normally take probably two van loads to do this stuff.

So to do 33,000, I might have 20 people in my house. Somebody be stamping and somebody be licking and somebody be sorting. And I wish we had taken pictures because when people say, oh, it’s really hard to promote now. Yeah, you go and you tap in something and it pops up on somebody’s screen and they go, wow, that was a lot of work.

You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen 33,000 pieces of literature. More match races, stone, woods and Cook. They ran early Gassers and very famous. This is Connie Colletta and that’s Miss NASCAR on the far right. And uh, there’s some pictures of him with a trophy and, and he’s all dirty and he’s been working on his car and there’s a pretty girl and he is got around a girl and I don’t think the girl wants anybody touching, ’cause everybody in that group was not very clean.

We’ve been working hard and he’s holding this trophy. He didn’t win. But the Kendall people did the promotion, and so they’ve got the [00:37:00] Kendall’s got a big trophy and he’s holding the trophy. Well, he didn’t win, but

Kip Zeiter: nobody knew. I must admit, I didn’t realize till we saw the slide. I didn’t realize Colletta drove a funny car.

Did he drive a funny car before he got into a top few car? No, drags

Dean Johnson: dragster first.

Kip Zeiter: Oh, really?

Dean Johnson: Okay.

Kip Zeiter: I didn’t realize that.

Dean Johnson: Yeah. Now the other car is Caleta also. That’s a little bit later. And then he went back to Dragsters. This is Tommy Ivo. He’s quite the showman. That’s his car, his trailer, and I think he had a Corvette in there somewhere.

Kip Zeiter: I’m sure everybody’s been over to the center. But the top fuel car that we have on the floor was actually built by Tommy Ivo in 1963. The records that we have indicate that he built somewhere between 10 and 12 chassis. He became known as I’m sure most of you know as tv, Tommy Ivo. He appeared in numerous TV shows and a couple movies, I think in the sixties.

But he competed at Niagara on more than one occasion. Yes. I think it’s pretty cool that we’ve got one of his cars next door and here he is and

Dean Johnson: he’s a good guy. Okay. Gars, really not much you can say [00:38:00] about him. He’s been there. He is done that he is done. Everything. Innovator, old guy he is. Gotta be 93.

Very successful. Worked hard at it. I don’t know how. He ghost as many things as he does, and people like me would go up and say, Don, you remember me in a, he says, oh, certainly I remember. Yeah. Right. But he, he, he’s a good guy and he’s paid his dues. He, he is the king. Well, he

Kip Zeiter: was the innovator when the motor blew up and tore off half of his right foot.

Yeah. My understanding is that’s when he said, maybe it’s a little safer if I put all this hardware behind my head instead of in front of my face. And so he was the innovator of the rear engine.

Dean Johnson: There had been some rear engine dragsters around. We had Steven Piper brothers had a dragster that was a short wheel based car that very innovative.

Everything was behind the driver, which is kind of what you wanted. It was a lower class car than top fuel. It was like a B dragster, something like that. But it very innovative.

Kip Zeiter: Jim just, did you ever have any desire to go top fuel, funny car or anything?

Jim Oddy: No, [00:39:00] not really. I was pretty busy what I was doing. I did crew on some fuel funny cars and kind of got.

Itching to do it, but it was back in the days when we’re hurting a lot of drivers. I didn’t wanna be responsible for someone getting hurt or burn up. I had a lot of friends that were getting burnt and killed and so I kind of stayed away from

Dean Johnson: it. This is Don Pdo on the far left and then the fellow in the center on the left is

Kip Zeiter: rolling Leon?

Rolling

Dean Johnson: Leon now. He died a couple of years ago, but PDO is still around. Tough card to beat. This is Jeannie Pru and, and uh, that’s Bill Berry on the top left. Uh, and these are just race pictures, that’s all.

Kip Zeiter: Isn’t that McCune on the lower right. PDO and McCune became famous Match Racers. The Mongoose and the snake.

Dean Johnson: Yes. And they worked hard to promote it. They good for them. They worked hard at it. Uh, this car on the lower right I think is Shirley owing before she was famous. Yeah. These are all Shirley’s. Yep. And I like Shirley. Shirley’s always been nice to me. And what I like [00:40:00] about Shirley is she spent the time with the youngsters.

They’d come up and they’d ask her questions and she didn’t go buzz off. She spent the time with these people and I like that. And I know my daughter was somewhere where, where Shirley was and she said, uh, do you know my dad? You know, I’m Dean Johnson. She said, oh, absolutely, and blah, blah, blah. And she was so nice to my daughter and she didn’t have to be.

So I like that. This is Paula Murphy. On the left, I had published a picture of a fellow underneath a. One of her cars and I had said, I wonder who’s under the car. And I got this email and all you can see is from the waist down. I say bare feet. And the fellow said, uh, that was me and it was her son.

Somehow I got their phone number and I called him up and I was asking him how everybody was doing, and I said, how was your mother? And he said, here, you ask her and handed the phone over to Paula and I got to talk to her and I thought, well, how lucky am I, all these people that were out and about and all these experiences?

And, uh, so I got to speak to her and I thought, boy, I’m so [00:41:00] lucky. And she has died since. But I just thought she was so nice. Pretty lucky for me. Blue Max. Nice crowd too, by the way. And it’s cold. Look at the all the heavy clothing and uh, we had a photo cell go out and if a photo cell goes out, you can’t get a elapsed time on the car.

And so I was down adjusting the photo cell and they turned that car loose, which is why I have no hearing today. Probably that picture will show up in here somewhere. But when I had my head down on the track, all of the dust, there was nothing on the ground. Anything, any dust was picked up by the exhaust noise.

And I would’ve known that if I hadn’t have reset this stupid photo cell. But I had my face right down on the ground and all this dirt and dust was held off the ground by the noise on this car.

Kip Zeiter: Speaking of the, uh, coats in the background, when did Niagara Open and how long was your normal season? When would you, you’d, you’d run through when?

September, October.

Dean Johnson: It was difficult to make ends meet after Labor Day. We would tend to pack it in by Labor Day, and we would open as soon as we could. Did I, I remember we [00:42:00] opened one time, it was probably Mother’s Day and, and uh, we went, oh boy, how are we gonna get around this? So we went out and bought a gazillion roses and every woman that came in got a rose.

So we kind of got off the hook a little bit. But, uh, it is tough to run race on Mother’s Day when mother’s not happy about you going drag racing. This is, uh, Arnie Beswick. Arnie Beswick just had a birthday. I think he’s 95. I have a friend that lives down near him. I said, I have this photo. Would you please ask Arnie to sign it?

So Arnie signed it and he said, that’s not me in the photo. So I have, I have a photo signed by Arnie Beswick. That’s not Arnie Beswick. So this photo that we’re looking at? Yep. That’s not, Nope. I don’t know who it is. Well, I guess we didn’t vet that very good, did we? Wow. But he said I signed it. That’s interesting.

He said, I signed it, but it’s not me, Jim. We were so proud of that. Who knew. So I sent a bunch of stuff to Arnie to be signed. He’s a farmer. They called him the farmer. And the stuff never came. And I waited a month or [00:43:00] so and I called him and he said, oh, I had the back of my car open and the wind blew it out and I about had a hernia and I had so other stuff and I, I sent him the other stuff and I said, please be careful.

I got a call. He said, you aren’t gonna believe this. He said There was a farmer up Paul in his field and he found all your pictures. So he signed everything that I sent to him. So if you need something signed by Arnold Beswick, I probably have a hundred or so pieces. He had a major fire at his barn. It burned all of his memorabilia and all of his old cars up.

He had nothing left. And he’s probably one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Aside from that not being him. Uh, I don’t know who the dragster is. Uh, the bottom one, it’s a Ford engine, which is kind of rare. And it’s Herbie Rogers out of London, Ontario. And it’s an ejected Ford, which is, uh, they call it a camera.

Herbie has been gone for a long time, but it was, it was a good running car. This car here, I don’t know what it is. I just like the picture here. That’s kind of behind us. I don’t know who that is. Hard to tell. On the [00:44:00] dragsters,

Kip Zeiter: we put the ed pink car in because he was a master engine builder and Mr. Pink just passed away.

Did he just die? Yeah. Yeah. Very, very recently.

Dean Johnson: But he was very old. He was, he was 93. Oh, I thought he was a bit older than that. Well known. If you had one of his engines, you had a good. Uh, these are just cars that paid to get in and go racing.

Kip Zeiter: We’re segueing into not fuels, not funny cars, but just all the other classes that you ran.

And maybe you could speak to this, and Jim could certainly speak to this about the various other classes that ran. And without getting overly technical, just the differences between, I’m assuming that’s a Gasser and honestly I don’t know what the, what you would consider the car on the right. So can you speak to that a little bit, Jim?

Jim Oddy: Yeah. Well the Gassers are generally like full body coops. Back in the day, they ran in modified eliminator, uh, a gas through F gas with different size motors and weight brakes. And then the Royal T car here, that’s a. Let’s see, that would be an A altered car. It’s not supercharged. And that would run in [00:45:00] competition eliminator.

And that’s where you were? Yeah. Yeah. We raised him a lot. Can’t think of his name, but he was good. Yeah, more alters. Double a fuel altered. And a double a al Altered Charlie, he one with the Canada flag. Yep. Yeah.

Kip Zeiter: Now were most of these guys from the western New York area? Canada.

Dean Johnson: Well, the car here on the right, on the upper part is Charlie Havelin.

His son is still racing and he was from a cow farm. And his father, he said, I’m, I’m going racing. And his father said, not till the chores are done, and then he’d have to get home in time to milk. The cows father said, no, no, no, you’re not leaving until all the chores are done. And uh, I spoken quite a bit to his son and they’re all campaigning the same car.

Believe it or not, this is a rear engine car built by Steven Piper. This was before Don Gar was doing rear engine, but you see everything here is behind the driver. This is a sidewinder. A sidewinder, yeah. The engine’s about a across lots. Very innovative. We ran a lot of Dragsters. This fellow on the bottom, probably EJ [00:46:00] Potter, I’m not sure.

There were two. There was a Ford and there was EJ Potter, and this may be the Ford that’s Potter there. I toured Australia with him and, uh, bury and, and uh, just Tyree, this one here is a fuel bike, I believe. Top Fuel. This is a good show. I, I, I don’t think that’s ej, I think that’s, there’s another, another group and, and that’s not ej.

Were the bikes part of the weekly show. None of us particularly cared about bikes. And, and so as a result, we did them dirt and we didn’t care. And, and finally I had a little tiny girl come up to me and she said, I, I don’t like the way you’re running the bikes. And she ran a bike and she probably weighed 95 pounds soaking wet.

And I said, if you don’t like the way we run the bikes, you run the damn things. I said, we’re, we’re not interested. I said, when you’re done, give me a list of who gets what. And leave me alone. So the next week she ran the bikes. They never ran any better and the guy said, we don’t know what you did, but we love the way you do it.

And I said, go see that little itty bitty girl over there. He ran the bikes, she did a wonderful [00:47:00] job. And the bikes weren’t second class anymore. We ran a few jets and these were our Arons jets. They were okay. They were better at night. And most of the people like Jim don’t like them because they claim they oiled the track.

We didn’t care.

Kip Zeiter: Maybe

Dean Johnson: I didn’t notice in the photographs. Did the track have lights? Did you run at night? I got permission to put lights up. We put ’em up. I spent, uh, probably 120, $125,000. We ran a couple of races and the town said, we don’t like them. Take them down. So where did they go? They went to, uh, it was called Empire at the time.

Empire Drag Strip. Oh, another

Kip Zeiter: drag strip. Okay. Yeah.

Dean Johnson: And they, uh, forgot to pay me. Well, perhaps they’ll see this.

Kip Zeiter: Well,

Dean Johnson: if you’re in the audience, anybody. I sued them and, um, they offered me, uh, $3,500 for the a hundred thousand dollars lights. And I, I was not happy. And my lawyer said, take the money. And I said, I don’t think so.

And he said, take the money. And I said, why would I want the money? And he said, because [00:48:00] if you don’t take the money, they probably will kill you. And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well. They were kind of from the underworld and they, they would be offended at you. So I said, send me that $3,500.

So I paid the lawyer. I ended up with about $2,700, $2,500 for the a hundred thousand dollars I wanted. Hell on wheels was a real standard. It was interesting. It was just another wheel standard. A lot of people liked them. Little Red Wagon. Always a good one. The two cars here, the, the one is um, the Volkswagen, I can’t think of the name.

And this, this is stage called West, the one in nearest us. And the other bug I saw, I was at Norwalk one time when this car on the behind hit the rail and got turned around and upside down and the motor went out of the car and sailed. They had an ambulance there and it went over the ambulance and went over a light pole and landed out where nobody was standing.

Fortunately. But it was pretty exciting ’cause it was still running high LPM when it went by me. [00:49:00] These are wanna be, these are brothers, believe it or not. They were okay. They never oppressed me and I don’t think we ever paid them. They weren’t good enough that, but I should have paid them. But they

Kip Zeiter: had to learn somewhere, so that’s why they were there.

Well, we put these in because Jim was just fascinated by the bugs. So this is our ode to Jim Galbrath. We put these slides in, well.

NIAGARA PROMO: Uh,

Kip Zeiter: they were

Dean Johnson: free and it was, the sixties and seventies were very innovative, and we had people on bicycles with rockets strapped to the back, and there was a lot of strange stuff out there.

This was a Corvette wheel stander, and it got upside down, no big deal. They run over and flipped it on his feet and he was good to go. This was a car called Double Trouble. It crashed at Niagara before I was there, and I, I don’t know any of the details other than nobody was hurt, I guess, or killed. That’s all I know.

Two Chevrolet Motors. This is, uh, the Hearst Harry Olds. I like this car. And we had run it one time and we booked it again. They had a problem with it. Tower to pull to the right or pull to the left. And finally some kid [00:50:00] came up and he, he said, well, why don’t you just put the steering so that it steers in the opposite direction so it’ll go straight.

So they did that up here. One of the engines quit or something, and he got off track. Joe Beck tested our, uh, barrier. We had, uh, telephone poles in the ground with big, heavy cables, and the telephone pole was right next to where he was sitting. If it would’ve been older, a bit more, Joe Beck wouldn’t be Joe Beck.

So that was the last run of the Hearst Harry Olds. I loved it. Uh, there’s the picture where, uh, Kendall’s giving this trophy to, to kind col letter for no reason, which is great. I, I thought it was wonderful. You know, it’s group motion. This was the car that ran and won the NASCAR summer nationals. It’s

Kip Zeiter: called the Probe.

I like the photo on the right where you have the sole eliminator. Oh yeah. I thought that was pretty cool. Stupid

Dean Johnson: stuff. We could get away with it back then, and it was no big deal. We didn’t think anything ever. We just thought of the radio station would like it. And so we did a soul [00:51:00]

Kip Zeiter: show. We had a good time.

This was our winners slide, obviously. So that lets me ask the question, what was the most money you would’ve paid to win a Top Fuel or a funny car for a big show? And then on a regular, I think you already said you paid like $400. Jim, did you become rich winning your class week after week at Niagara?

Jim Oddy: Ask Jim what I did to him in a later years when you won a week.

Then he got tired of me one Sunday afternoon. I had won comp eliminator and I’d go up to get paid and he says, you can’t come back next week. I said, oh no, I I I’ll, I’ll be, yeah, I’ll be back. No, no, no, you won’t. You’re gonna take a break. He says. That lasted a a while and uh, we finally came to an agreement.

I’m pretty sure we raised the following week.

Kip Zeiter: What would’ve been the most money you would’ve won? And did you pay in cash when everybody went up to the payout window or was it cash?

Jim Oddy: No, Dean was all checks, no cash.

Kip Zeiter: Did, do you hustle off to the bank right away? Yeah, there was no rubber

Jim Oddy: [00:52:00] there. It was all good.

NIAGARA PROMO: That’s good.

Jim Oddy: Yeah. Um, some of the bigger events, there’ll be some contingency stuff where different people kick in for when accomplishment or a real good Sunday to go home a thousand dollars, which is pretty good money. Back in the day

Kip Zeiter: when you ran the NASCAR Summer Nationals Dean, how much top prize money at that?

Dean Johnson: Well, there would’ve been a lot of contingency money, and I tell you the truth, I don’t remember, but it would, it probably would’ve been 500, $800,000 plus contingency money. Couldn’t live on it unless you were really pretty competitive. Back to what Jim said about me telling him not to, we told him if you ran an eliminator.

What happens? There were some cars that killed the eliminators. He happened to own one. And so they say, oh, DY Iss gonna be at Niagara. I’m gonna go somewhere else. And so I fixed it. So Dy wasn’t at Niagara every week, so they knew Dy was out somewhere and they had to figure out where he was, but they knew he wasn’t gonna be at Niagara.

So we always had a good car count when he was elsewhere. And I, I did that for quite a while, but the [00:53:00] cars are so good. They killed the class. Say, well, I can’t win, but I’ll be runner up. I said, take a break and go race and bother somebody else.

Kip Zeiter: When you weren’t at Niagara,

Jim Oddy: where else did you run? We raced a lot back in the day.

Back in the day. Lancaster, they’d run on Thursday nights, so we’d run there on Thursday night and then, uh, Friday night’s, uh, empire was running and Saturday night we’d go to Gregory Park, Yuga, and then Sunday, if anything left, we’d go race at Niagara. We were busy.

Kip Zeiter: Okay. So theoretically you could run four nights a week?

Jim Oddy: Correct.

Kip Zeiter: Okay. Well that’s And if you would win

Jim Oddy: Yeah.

Kip Zeiter: Every four nights, that probably helped out quite a bit.

Jim Oddy: I was kind of doing that for a living for quite a while. So it was worth doing, oh

Kip Zeiter: boy. Sorry, we had to throw a couple of these in. What is a racetrack without beauty Queens? So we have two of these, Dean, if you would care to comment on any of this or care to not comment on any of this.

Dean Johnson: I, during the summer months, it was tough to make ends meet and we were doing a lot of silly stuff to try and put people in. [00:54:00] I wouldn’t ever do this again because I hired a model once and I don’t ever wanna do that again. It’s like going to a meat market. I don’t know how the women could do that. And uh, I wrote about this process of hiring a woman and I wrote at the start, my apologies to, and it was Audrey Hagan, who was very smart and she’s very good looking.

I had to interview her and I don’t ever wanna do that again. I’m a farm kid. I am not from the city. Anything to do with, it was like going to a meat market. It was terrible. It was just terrible.

Jim Oddy: Who numbered? I don’t know. And what did that mean?

Dean Johnson: I don’t know. I don’t know. I see pictures in here and there’s some really, really pretty girls.

And I never saw these girls. All I did was run a racetrack and I was not interested in anything else. And I look back and I go, I can’t believe I didn’t see that girl. And I see these pictures and I go, on the other hand, she’s probably as old as me right now, so no more interest in me than I have in her.

But these girls were pretty good sports. Look [00:55:00] at you. Oh yeah. That’s why you wanna talk about a nerd. That’s me. Look at you. The, the best part about this, this girl. Paul Zago, who was, is a racer, took her for his senior prom or her senior prom. Really? Yep. Unbelievable. And she’s sitting on, uh, Bob Sullivan’s dragster on the Wheel and that you can see Sullivan name on it.

That was Paul Skoda’s girlfriend. Who’d have thought. That’s me and all my splendor on the left. My wife, I had a friend that painted this thing with trust me on it. And this is me and my wife after our reunion, which we were gonna make a lot of money and we didn’t. And, uh, I, I had to work for another 10 years to get out of debt.

But I had a lot of t-shirts, two or 3000 extra t-shirts at the end of it. This is Dizzy Dean on the left. I didn’t know that. Dizzy Dean published Wheelspin Magazine in Canada. And then this is John Lundberg. It was John, what was his nickname? Iron Long or something? Yeah. To that effect, John Lundberg. Right?

Is it [00:56:00] wonderful to announce her in a wonderful person. They took this girl who was running around in this bathing suit, and they put her in Bill Berry’s wheel stander. So Bill Rebury has got a fire suit. He’s strapped into a seat, he’s got a fire suit, a helmet and goggles and all that. And they put this girl in without a helmet in a bathing suit.

And they told her to hang on to the, uh, cross members. And she said, there can’t be anything wrong with that. And Bill went out and the car goes up so high, it gets on the skid plates. Well, when it gets up that high, it stops. But she didn’t. And so she, so when the car goes. And so she’s going up and the car stopped going up.

So she’s banging her head on the roof of the thing and then of course the car quits and she comes down and then he goes back up again. And I can’t imagine what she was thinking. And this was all nascar. They put her into this. This was somebody’s girlfriend and I think they were trying to get rid of her, but, but they have [00:57:00] pictures of her.

It was wonderful. I’m glad NASCAR did it ’cause I wouldn’t

Kip Zeiter: have had the

Dean Johnson: brass.

Kip Zeiter: So we thought we’d throw a couple of these in. This is basically the people that made the place run? Yeah. Okay. All the people that helped you out. This is my, uh,

Dean Johnson: secretary short sherry. And then this is Ray Jones, who’s now gone.

This is Paul Schneider. And he’s gone, and I don’t know who this is, but she was reading the clocks clock reader on the left top. This, this was

Kip Zeiter: why you had to work another 10 years, right? Wasn’t because of the reunion 96. And it didn’t come out quite as well as you had

Dean Johnson: hoped. Yeah. It’s another statement didn’t turn out well.

The track had closed, this is a one or two years ago. There’s Bobby Pine on there. I thought Bob would be here today and then Randy’s there. Bob Kelman on the second from the right. This is a Christmas tree that we built. We spent like $33,000 on it because we were stupid and we could, and uh, I sold it for $2,000 each light, there were five spotlights in it to [00:58:00] make it work.

And it was like 35 feet tall. This is a magazine that we put out. This is at Lancaster. My wife, myself, dude, Jim Zaki on the right, the picture on the right on the bottom is a Christmas tree working. It was a working Christmas tree. It went out to a speed shop in on the East Coast Sunday.

NIAGARA PROMO: This Sunday reasoning Challenge 72 Auto racing’s. Big go September. Fabulous Sunday. Niagara, this is it. The race racers are talking about Challenge 72, where you’re gonna see some of the roughest, toughest wheel to wheel competition racing. Never stations in Dagara. And without a doubt, just one of the unreal drivers.

They all gotta get by his Bob Belows. An incredible Jimmy Ti, the man who went in the summer national just two weeks ago and blew the doors off the finest comp cars in the country. Yeah, the word is out baby. This Sunday everyone’s heading Niagara and the Giant Challenge 72 1 sensational day only, no reserve seats.

Gates open at 10:00 AM championships at 3:00 PM sharp, free overnight caming for fans and drivers towing in for the big beat. And don’t forget, once again, as promised, the track will be spray coated before the race [00:59:00] time with amazing revolutionary world breaking VHT Track lock. This is it with 3 72 Niagara Racers yearbooks to the first thousand fans of the pits.

That’s Sunday Niagara. This Sunday, the championship of championships, the fabulous challenge 72. Don’t miss it. We’ll see you now.

Kip Zeiter: Oh boy. So we did that just because we could and we had to hear Sunday Niagara again. But this is our very subtle way of segueing into the great Mr. Jim ti, who we are honored to have here along with Dean. And we’ve got three slides here with multiple cars. So Jim, if you could start out what got you into drag racing?

How did you rank Niagara as opposed to maybe some of the other places? I know you won India at least once. I’m not sure if you want it more than that, but that’s the big time. That’s India and Labor Day weekend. That’s where the greats are made. So if you could just spend a few minutes commenting on your career, we’d appreciate that.

Jim Oddy: This is a 65 year journey. You know,

Kip Zeiter: we’ve got time.

Jim Oddy: Yeah. [01:00:00] Actually a lot of people agree. This guy over here, he changed a lot of our lives with the snag or drag strip thing. We started out racing on abandoned drag strips, and I belonged to a custom car club in South Buffalo, and we had a Sunday where we went to this Kohler Air Force base, which is Dragway Parka.

All these cars are running e, G, and F, G and GG. So I just started asking question, what’s all this G stuff about? Well, it’s a gas class, right? At that point in time had a 36 Chevy coop. Me and my dad put it together and I had a 57 Chevy six cylinder motor in it, and went to dunker a couple times a watch, and I thought, well, I’m gonna enter, I’m gonna enter this deal and see what goes on, right?

So I entered a car, was like an EGAs F gas car. What happens is I won a trophy, right? I won a class, won a trophy. Well, that was the worst thing that ever happened. Because then we just got more interested in it. And this Anglia Hill was actually the first actual race car I built. A bunch of us Motorheads were hanging around your host one night, and it was a [01:01:00] weekend of the Indy Nationals, which was a big deal, right?

So there was three or four of us. So let’s go to Indy. One guy had a nice, fairly new Pontiac, so he said, well, you got the best car. We’ll take that. We’ll go to Indy. We’re just going for Saturday and we’re gonna come back. It was 1964. Jack Chrisman, the first funny car. We were blown away so we couldn’t leave.

So I spent the night in the trunk of a Pontiac and we stayed there. I liked all these Ang, all these gas cuts, these, I kind of really liked these Anglia cars. Pull the wheels up in pretty cool car. So winter of 64 when I found that Anglia up in Canada, we drug it 25 hours. They drug it out of Canada, spent a winter bowling it.

Dean kind of just got the track going. It was a pretty good racetrack and he would’ve these Gasser meets so you could kind of tell that bunch of guys, Ohio was famous for the Gasser cars. Joe call all these guys with great gassers and they come, he would have a special Gasser day and, and we’d have a couple hundred great gassers so you could judge what you were doing with the rest of these Ohio guys.

So in 64 I got [01:02:00] pretty competitive. I could run close to the record and stuff. So 65, you know, we just had a old Chevy I towed around, I had a tow bar. So I tow bared the car to Indy to see if I could run it Indy in 65. Well I ended up, we got the thing going pretty good. Had a lot of good help. We ended up winning.

Final round around BGA at Indy went eleven twenty, a hundred eighteen. I’ll never forget that. Bob Riffle, which that was the rod shop car, which at that point in time was a pretty big deal, right? So we, we won the class and, and the next day, oh, I’m, I’m getting ready to go home and no, you gotta stay, you gotta race street eliminator, all the winners, the gas classes, they all faced off what they call little eliminator.

So, okay, we’re gonna do that. So I get out there and I gotta race this black Willie’s coop from California, some stone woods and cook guy. I don’t, I don’t know who they were. So I’m, I’m running down the race track, I’m shifting on hanging, I get about two feet forward, the finish line, man, I got this deal, this black car comes running by, [01:03:00] blew me off the racetrack.

So I really got interested in that and I went back to the pits and I hung out the rest of the day and the stone was in crooked pit area. So I thought, well, this looks cool. I’m gonna go and put a boiler on Miami Lee and run this super charge gas deal. Well and its race says you can’t do it. Because it’s only got a 90 inch wheel base.

To have a bull, you gotta have 92 inch wheel base. So I sold that car to a guy in, in, uh, Indy at a Chevrolet dealer and he wanted that car to display in his dealership. So I had sold him a car back, well actually Grand Island, I found an Austin, which was 92 inch wheel base. So I’m gonna build me a double leg gas car.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I went to junk car, got old 3 92, got a set of cylinder heads and I’ll never forget it. I’m building this car and it’s about the middle of the winter and I’m out in the garage and a potbelly stove and a bunch of guys helping and comes Dean Johnson. I’m like, what’s going on?

He said, well, I’m checking to see how your car’s coming ’cause you got a match race May 10th with Stone Woods and crook and, and Ks Pitman. [01:04:00] I said, what are you talking about? That really kicked us in the butt and we, and we got the thing done and sure enough, the Saturday before it snowed, but the Sunday was great.

We went and raced and KS had a little trouble with his car and I ended up beating him, which that really set the hook. So that really got us going with that car from racing at Niagara and with Ks and, uh, Doug Cook, when they would come to the East coast, they needed more cars. So I would tour around them in the summer with them guys.

And they, I mean, Ks put me, he kind of took me under his wing and taught me really how to run these cars. I didn’t have a clue, but first few years they’d fight over, who’d get to run me, right? I’d go in the stadium lanes and they’d be a battle line who got behind me to race? To race me. ’cause I wasn’t very good.

But through the years, come, let’s see, it was 1968. There was such a big discussion over the double A gas cars, ’cause George Montgomery built a Mustang. Joe [01:05:00] built a Camaro, they started letting turbo cars in and there was just nothing but arguments. So any Ray abolished double a gas class, I went to double B gas and I got pretty good at that.

And in 68 we won the NHRA Division one Points Championship and I was the first one to ever be elected by the division one to be driver and mechanic of the year. That was a pretty cool deal with the Austin and like I said, we went Indy with the Anglia, won the point championship with the Austin and then it got where the big old car was kind of obsolete.

Everybody started building these Opal GT cars, which is top left and it was a, it was early seventies and them cars were just being new. So I looked around junk yard junk. I couldn’t find one wreck. So one of the guys that was helping me on the car, Mikey, he was a body man, he worked for Jack Stevens Buick.

So he, he said to me one day, he says, the boss wants to talk to you about building this opal deal. So I go in, I talk to Jack Stevens and I asked him, I can’t [01:06:00] find a car. He said, well, we can get you all the panels for a car, quarter panels roof, trunk doors. Would that work? I said, well, yeah, yeah, that would, that would be great.

So I ended up, they got me all the panels to build a car. I said, well, you know, what’s this all gonna cost? He says, well, all you gotta do is on the back of the tail of the car, but wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick? That was, that was all deal. That was early seventies and 72. We ran competition limited at Indy.

We won the double B gas class and then they ended up winning competition limit there with that car, which was, I mean, that was a 10 or $12,000 payday back then was, was really good. And two weeks later they had what they call the national dragster open at Columbus, Ohio, and we went and won that deal. So I, I was rich, we won two big events in a row and I had people knocking down the door to buy that car.

So. They talked me into it, selling it and built some funny cars and did okay with [01:07:00] that. But that thing tried to kill me a couple of times. So we had toured the country with the gas cars and it kind of dried up and everybody wanted to have funny cars. So I got hooked up with Smoker Smith’s funny car, and I went to a couple races.

First race I went to actually was in Dragway Park. The cars were really fast compared to what had been driving. So when more sun down through there in the first run, a nice car, custom auto body painted a beautiful car. I got to the finish line and let up on the throttle and the windshield had come down and wrapped around the injector and held the throttle wide open.

So I thought, oh, okay, I’m going 180. There’s a bunch of corn fields so that that don’t look too bad. So I remember I couldn’t get a stop, did a shootout, burned the brakes out of it. I said, well, you know what I’ll do, I’ll put it in neutral. So I put it in neutral and it threw the rods out and I still wasn’t stopping.

So I put it in reverse and that kicked the bottom out the tra. It was okay. Got out the car, I thought, well, we still got the car. We’re good shape. ’cause we had a lot of races lined up. So I got the bodies up on poles and [01:08:00] we’re going down the return road and the guy told him, he starts going pretty fast.

So I’m trying to put the brake on, but I got no brakes. Next thing you know, the body flies over the back of the car, tore the back of the car off, and ripped both parachutes off it. So then I jam on the brake and the body comes. Now the poles go up through the front of the body. So I ran in a couple more times.

We had a good race in Pittsburgh and I run the car and it was like 20 pounds heavy. So I said, oh, I’ll take the wheelie bars off, we’ll be okay. So I’m going down two and the car wheels staying a little bit. It’s all right. So I get down with that finish line thing’s driving left. I’m correcting correct man.

Not this thing’s crazy won. Don’t correct. So we get back in the pitch and the guy comes down with a picture, he says, tells me this picture. I said, I carries the wheels on this by the start line. He says, no, no, this was the finish line. So I went home and I didn’t like that deal. I had a good friend that helped me through a lot of these cars, big John Elli.

I told him, John, I don’t like this funny car thing. I’m going back to [01:09:00] competition eliminator. If I can find a fiat body, we’ll cut it all up and put it on this funny car chassis. ’cause there’s a points race at Drag Park Yuga in two weeks. Me and John find a guy in Ohio and he’s got a fiat body. So we buy the body and I got my pickup truck with a cap on it and the body won’t fit in the truck.

So we asked the guy if he’s got a saw. So we saw the thing in four pieces and put it in a truck, but we had modified, we lengthened it and chopped it and we had modified it quite a bit. Long story short, we put that thing together, went up to drag Park, Huga, division One Points race, and we won that race and I had missed the first Division one points race.

But there was four left. I went to the rest of ’em and I won all four of them, and the final race was in aco, New Jersey division director. So we finished the day. We thought we won the point championship, and the point champ, he gets to go to Ontario, California, and $5,000. Well, you collect the [01:10:00] money at the pay window in Ontario.

So we’re all loaded up, heading out, and here comes Darwin doll running out the track entry. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I, I said, Don, what’s the matter? He said, well, we just did all the points and you and the Zo brothers are tied for points. He went to all five. You went to four. But he was the car to beat. Really? He says, you wanna go to Tyson?

Says, yeah, I wanna go to Ontario, California, man. Absolutely. He said, well, they wanna go too. How are we gonna do it? I said, oh, you want flip a coin? What do you wanna do? Tarzi wants to race you for. Now it’s midnight, right? Everybody’s gone cold, no Christmas tree. How are we gonna do this? That one says, I’ll get out there and flag you.

I’ll have a guy at the finish line. Whoever wins the race goes to California and the Zi car was called the Italian Way. They were out of New York City. I was pretty scared of these dudes when I beat ’em. I got out of, I got out of there in a hurry. They were really good guys, but they were, you know, we run [01:11:00] the race nighttime.

I don’t know who wins. It’s so close, right? And at the end of the racetrack it’s a big bang and fire and everybody come down and says, oh you, you blew the thing up, right? I go, not really. I says, run great. Right through the lights. He said, well, there was a big bang at, and the end of the finish line, meanwhile, the guy comes walking up.

That was at the end of the finish line. He says, man, I can’t believe you made it through that. I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, there was a guy in the bleachers with a shotgun trying to shoot your front tire route. I just, I wonder who that was. Right. So I’m like, there’s no way, whatever. And we got down and sure enough there’s a bullet hole right through the headers.

They went for the front tire, but they got the headers. Guy was related to the guys who were running. I’m just guessing. But anyway, we towed the car right out of the track to get out of there. When we come back to return, we just kept going. Another guy grabbed the trailer, we went out in the road and loaded the car and went home.

We didn’t wanna get no power [01:12:00] of that deal, but we went to Ontario and it was was 74, 75. Carlos set the ET record if it was good for like eight years. I mean, it was just an incredible race. So

Kip Zeiter: did you ever race those guys again?

Jim Oddy: No. No, I did not. Oh. No, that was kind of the end. My, I was lucky enough they had twin boys and they, they were born and I kind of took a break racing and opened up a shop and started engine shop and Chasis shop and I was busy for quite a while with that deal.

I didn’t race much for about 10 years.

Kip Zeiter: Are you racing now?

Jim Oddy: Yeah, that’s actually was the funny car tried to kill me. Oh, okay. Gotcha. See how close the windshield is to the injector. Yeah. You don’t wanna do that. It’s not a good deal. So where do you race now? Took a break for, oh, like I say, probably eight or 10 years.

I built, I built a little Vete Street car just kinda running around the street, but. I ended up getting crazy with that deal. Lancaster one, I put alcohol in it and put on its roof. There was no door car that ever had run a four second ET so, and this was a street car where I had a blown big black Chevrolet in it and it was [01:13:00] pretty nice on gas, but I wanna be the first guy in the floors with a door car, so I put alcohol in it.

First run went 5 0 8. Oh man, I’m gonna wait till about nine, 10 o’clock and the air comes in, we’re gonna have our first four. So I went out to said, well I gotta get a real good burnout going here. Get the tires real. How about half track? It flipped up on its roof. That was the end of my chevette and, and then we, like I said, we took a break for a while and then IHR came up with this top sportsman quick eight thing.

It was a deal where you had have a door car and they didn’t really care what was in it. You just, as long as it was a door car, the doors had open and closed and the driver had to sit on the left. That was the only rules there were. So me and Big John Terelli, again, he got me in a lot of his trouble. He said, you know what, we’re gonna kind of build like an alcohol, fine car torsion bar, front sour rearer.

I said, well, where are we gonna put the driver? He said, well, we’ll build a driver’s pod like a jet car has, right? So I said, well, okay John, we will do [01:14:00] this. So we get an old Corvette body. We stretched it and built this car. At that point in time, everybody was trying to run a six second ET and 200 mile an hour with a door car.

So we ran this couple race and ran some seven O’s and. I, I thought, well, they got a nice race coming up at Bristol, Tennessee, and like, I got some new stuff I wanna try. We go to Bristol, Tennessee, and this was a top sportsman bracket race, right? You had to dial in what you want. So we had run a couple times and didn’t run the full quarter.

Fred says, man, this thing’s really good. Fred Ho is driving for me, really good driver. He said, whatcha gonna dial? I said, well, what do you think? He said, I, he says this thing’s gonna go well into the sixes. I said, well, how about 6 75? He said, I think it’s gonna go better than that. I go, can’t. There’s no way.

No one’s ever ran a six. How can we do this? So, sure enough, he gets in, goes out there, makes a great run. It goes 6 68 A 2 0 8. The owner I trade said it was the worst day of his lifetime. Because everybody just went berserk and [01:15:00] everything in the car got for the next season with was the beginning of pro mod.

Whatever was in that car was outlawed. No straight front axles, no sour rear, you know, no driver pot on the left. Had to make it more like a pro stock car and stuff. And I thought, well, the car was done. I said, no, John. No. John says, no, we’ll just put a backup on the chicken and we’ll put a suspension in the front, suspension in the back.

He was really clever at doing this stuff. I was the welder. He was a fabricator. I was the welder. So whatever he made, he’d make something all day and I’d be there all night welding it. But then following year we brought that car back with the way they wanted it, and we won like three straight events with that car.

They had promised everybody that was gone, but we ended up winning some IHRA championships and NHRA championships and we ran pull out for 15 years and, uh, I was inducted in the Northeast Hall of Fame, the East Coast Hall of Fame. I got a call one day from Don Garla after I had kind of quit the pro [01:16:00] mod deal, sold everything off, moved to North Carolina.

He said, we wanna induct you into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. And I’m thinking it’s a joke, right? Yeah. You have one of my buddies joking around and I said, no, you don’t ever, you don’t ever bring somebody from the east. It’s always West Coast, Perol and McEwen. It’s all West Coast guy. No East Coast guys ever get in Hall of Fame, right?

I didn’t believe it. He actually had, the next day he had a secretary call me back. That was probably the biggest and best thing that you could accomplish. Oh yeah. I would think so for sure. In the drag racing world. And one of the biggest and best things. Was, is I had my twin boys for all the years of promo, right?

Which they were such a big part of it. It was when the data logger start coming along and I didn’t need a data logger. I, I looked clutch, disc rod bearings. I knew what I wanted to do. I didn’t need a data logger, but we got in some trouble a couple times and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. But when I got the data logger, that’s when my, both my boys, mechanical [01:17:00] engineers, I think they interpreted most of this information a lot better than other people did.

And it was, Hey dad, we need to do this. Hey dad, we need to do that. Like, eh, nah, rods look good, cuts. This are good. We’re going, no, no, we need to do that. We need to. And, and that’s when you get inducted in the garbage deal. You gotta find somebody to induct you. Right? So this was like, holy moly, what do I do now?

I had some great, some incredible people help me whenever we got in trouble, for some reason, I, I just got in Florida and I got the wheels back. Wheels on fire. Front wheels are two feet in the air. Over we walked Bob Newburn, like he used to call me, Joe Otie. Go, Joe Otie, you can’t win this race in 60 feet.

And he’d teach me things and Kenney and some chassis guys. We got to a point where I would just keep throwing horsepower at pretty soon the car wouldn’t go on the racetrack. Good shock guys would come up and just wanna help. And I just, I was so lucky from the beginning with Ks Pittman, he was the first guy to start to help me, but I was just always lucky to have [01:18:00] Big John.

Thriller was a big part early of what we did. So anyway, we ran a lot of circuits. Pull my car. We would run 30 events in the summer and all of us worked full-time jobs. The boys, Fred worked at a plant and I had a shop. So I go, well, Brett Keppner, he was at the United States Super Circuit, I-H-R-N-H-R-A, super Chevy.

He was the announcer ’em all. I I I, I’d like to call him up. And he said, yeah. So I asked him if he went and, oh yeah, I’d be glad to gotta go to Florida and get him fixed up. So he called me one day and he. How long have you run Pro Mod? I said, I don’t. He said, well, you ran 15 years. He said, you got any idea how many championships you won?

I said, he, I said, I, I don’t. ’cause we, like I said, we on so many stories. He informed me that in 15 years we won 12 championships, which I went to. There was no way, well, he’s a drag racing historian, or he had every one and named every one of them. But you’re so busy when you’re doing it. I don’t think any of us had any idea,

Kip Zeiter: you know how

Jim Oddy: [01:19:00] much

Kip Zeiter: you know?

Yeah. So he’s the guy that inducted you into the Yeah, Brett Kepner. That’s great. That’s great.

Jim Oddy: Fabulous announcer. He’s still, to this day, a drag race story, and he would go to tracks that were closed and he, you know, they’d be trailer parks, but here’s where this guy set this record and that record, and it’s just perfect

Kip Zeiter: authority.

Well, that’s quite a story. That’s quite a career. There you go. And you blame it all on this guy. He was instrumental. Uh, we,

Jim Oddy: there’s a lot of people, oh, this guy, a lot of thanks for what he did. I mean, he stuck his neck out there and built a drag strip. And run a drag strip when I’m sure when he started out he wasn’t thinking he was gonna end up being rich, but it was something that he wanted to do, and that’s what,

Kip Zeiter: that’s what makes the difference.

Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for sharing all that. Dean, we’re somewhat coming to the, where we need to wrap this up and we’re gonna throw it open for questions, but I was just wondering if you got anything else you’d wanna throw in, or you don’t have 37 pages there, do you? No, I do have that.

Dean Johnson: Me personally, I was done with drag racing when I had a fellow come up and they wanted to get [01:20:00] some of the signage that I had in my hangar, and we found all of this stuff that I had no idea I was too lazy to throw away.

What happened is people from the sixties and seventies that, that I knew and for the most part were my friends, I got to see them again. And so from 1960 to and 60 and 70 till now. To see people that were such a big part of my life, you just can’t believe how fortunate I have been. So I met some awful good people and most of the people now have forgotten all of the fighting that we did.

And we did a lot. We’ve become friends and, and breakfast and sers and different meetings and it’s been a treat to have been a part of this phenomenon, drag racing. And we got in on the, on the first part of it. So all of the people, or many of the people that started that were basically nobody where they were forced to build stuff and they became very famous for products that were involved in drag racing and, and we.

Basically we were nobody with just an [01:21:00] interest in, in the sport and we became part of history, I guess.

Kip Zeiter: Yeah, I would say so. Very definitely. We’d like to open this up for some questions.

Audience Q&A: A lot of my friends have been asking me why did the Greg Strip close and how come

Dean Johnson: we closed in, uh, 19, 19 74 was the last year we ran.

The, we had been restricted, it ends up about 21 days a year. We had one or two Saturdays we could run. We couldn’t start till one. We had to be done by dusk. We basically got, uh, regulated out of business. You can’t run a business 21 days a year. And so we just couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t make ends meet, couldn’t pay her bills.

The woman that owned the, there was 129 acres, two sections of property, and she owned the bottom end 129 acres. And, uh, I had just paid her a four or $5,000 Christmas time, but I was still behind. We had been going on like that forever. So she took my money and the next day she said, my son is gonna run the track.

And, uh, there wasn’t anything I could do. She [01:22:00] was right. We owed her the money and I couldn’t pay it. And so the next day I went down with an ax. I was pretty sure I couldn’t run the track and I cut absolutely. Every wire that I could find, I cut in the track or chopped with an ax. We took all the bleacher boards out and I threw my keys in the tower.

They seemed to keep coming back to me. She went down there and saw what was going on and she said, well, how am I gonna run the track? And I said, well, you’ve got pavement and you’ve got the frame for the drag strip. You’re on your own. Well, she didn’t have it and she put us outta business, but it was our fault.

We were late. And she was right. But the town of Niagara had seen to it that we just couldn’t You, you can’t run a business 21 days a year. You just can’t. And you’re gonna lose some of them to rain. Or bad weather. So we were done.

Bruce Mehlenbacher: I’m Bruce Mellenbach and this is Bill Mellenbach. And, uh, we ran Dragway Park in the, uh, seventies and eighties.

To give you a little background on Kaga, our grandfather LB Mellenbach bought the training base in Kohler, Ontario in 1948. [01:23:00] In 1954 is when they started drag racing with the piston pushers car club outta Branford. I’ve talked to Jim once in a while and Jim is a hundred percent correct. I mean, the cars ran at Lancaster, then they ran at Empire, then they come to cga and then they went to, uh, Niagara Sunday, Niagara.

I mean, Jim did it and Zia did it. FJ Smith did it. And, and there’s a long line of storm along guys and, uh, on and on and on. So the reason I came up here is I wanted to thank Dean. For what he’s done, because folks, there’s gonna be a time come and it’s not that far away where there’s gonna be no Dean Johnson’s and no Jim Mati and no Bruce Melba.

And somehow you gotta pass the knowledge along because it’s, it’s history of our sport and it’s very, very important that we do things like this. And, you know, people talk about Facebook and how goofy Facebook is, but you know what? I wouldn’t keep in touch with Dean and Jim’s wife and, and so many more of you that are in here.

If it wasn’t for Facebook, it seemed to have got us all back [01:24:00] together again. And, and talking about history. I just wanted to thank you guys for having this. It was a pleasure coming and, and hopefully we can do it again someday.

We signed a lot of checks for.

Jim Oddy: I’m so glad to see you guys here, man, it’s, it’s great seeing you again. I had such a great time at Dragway Park, Cuba and your mom and dad. I will never to my best day forget Bruce and Joan Millen Barker. They were the happiest, luckiest, just, they were great people to be there. I remember one time he must have had eight, 10 floor funny cars, dragsters, and it’s pouring rain out and I’m like, oh my God.

He got outta business paying all these guys rain money. There’s Bruce. He’s talking to everybody, laughing and joking. I’m like, man, how you gonna get out of this one? He goes, he said, I’m okay. We got rain insurance. I’ll never forget that. But he, he, [01:25:00] he had some of the big events that I told us at Bruce before they had Thresh Muller was big in the day and they had a, a Can-Am national at Drag Park Cuba.

And it was a big, big deal. I mean, it was again, probably 15, 20,000 people there. And I had Austin and it was an deal. And I had reset the double big ass super record and I won the deal and I still have that trophy on my mandle to this day. And that was 68, 69, something like that. And when Bruce and Joan were gone, that place was never the same.

I mean, it’s okay. It’s a good racetrack, but what they brought. And they, you could just see both of ’em. They put their heart and soul into, and I don’t know why they ever did this, but they really, really enjoyed themself immensely. The fact that they just loved to do it. They talked to every racer, every race, car win, loser draw.

They were just roaming the pits. And that’s just stuff I’ll never, ever forget. It was, [01:26:00] it was great. And I’ll never thank him enough. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it Bruce. And Bill, thanks very much for

Kip Zeiter: coming. I think before we formally wrap this up, so Jim Holder slide the last two slides. Let me, let me, uh, have Jim from, uh, skyline come up for just a couple seconds.

If you saw the cars out front, skyline drags down to Tioga Center is about ready to open their season and we thought we’d invite them over and let’s keep this drag racing deal going. So if you can take a couple minutes to just tell people what you’re doing.

James “Robbo” Robinson: Yeah. My name is James Robinson, also known as Rabo in the, uh, drag racing world.

Spent most of my career at Empire. Did a lot of work with the IHA travel with them up and down the East Coast and recently with Lancaster and always wanted my own place or my own track since mid twenties. Thought about it and, uh, you know, lifeguard ahead of me. And so recently, um, I was able to take my re retirement money out.

An opportunity came up with Skyline. But I did wanna mention, by the way, the [01:27:00] honor it is to stand up here with these two gentlemen. They’re awesome, awesome guys. I interviewed. Dean at Lancaster two years ago. It was a great interview. I was at the Empire Nationals and watched Freddy win, uh, what was that like at midnight, the marathon of a race.

It was crazy. The last time I walked, I was at Niagara, was about 2003, and I, it was a nice, warm, you know, Sunday afternoon in July, and I walked all the way down, all the way down the shutdown area, walked up the return road, you know, mother Nature was slowly taking over. And I got back up to the starting line and I was met by an MP from the local military base in the Niagara County Sheriff.

And they were asking me what I was doing there, what was going on, and I explained what I, you know, who I, you know how it’s that empire at the time and feeling nostalgic. And they said, okay, very good. Get in your car, get out here and never return. So that’s my naive story. So, anyways. I’m here to, um, talk about Skyline and one of my friends from Empire and Lancaster found out that I was gonna talk.

They said say something nice about our track. There’s five operating drag [01:28:00] strips in Western New York and they’re nice. That was supposed to be a joke. Ha ha ha. They’re Lancaster by Buffalo Races on Friday night. I was actually working there last night. It was a good night. Empire. Donald Lester. Still operates as a quarter mile on Friday nights.

So if you wanna go quarter mile passes, go out there on Friday night, a little no drag strip in South Butler called South Butler, nostalgia, Dragway. And it’s truly nostalgic. They run older cars. There’s a grass median in between the two lanes. It’s the middle of a corn field. Empire State Timers Association, leveling, known as Esta and Cicero, New York.

And then the one that makes my eye sparkle is Skyline. It was called Skyview years ago. It’s part of Skyline Motor Sports Park where Shangla two is. And last year, um, it went up for sale. And, um, I’m thinking to myself, well, I, I work for New York State, um, there’s no way I can afford the three and a half million dollar price tag unless, you know somebody wants to help us out.

There’s two gentlemen back there, uh, Dave, Jeanette and [01:29:00] George Coleman who stepped up, talked to the guy who actually owns a track, and we met in December and, uh, he agreed to lease. And so I, um, took some retirement savings and I’m an expert now. If you ever wanna make your retirement savings go poof, just come see me.

We, uh, signed the lease, the multiple year lease, signed on with the World Drag Racing Alliance, one of the newer sanctioning bodies, and, um, spent the winter just getting together, talking, doing stuff, and opening day was April 12th. Poured. But the good thing about April 12th is Dave and George worked with Daddy Dave from Street Outlaws on a no prep race and no prep racing.

We could talk about, there’s two no prep cars outside. It’s a different type of racing that I’m not used to. And what we did have a race a few weeks later. I think I had 10 heart attacks within 20 passes because I’m a bracket guy and everything I like is usually straight and through. But we do have once a month, it’s called the Upstate Outlaw Bill Prep series, and it’s put on [01:30:00] with Daddy, Dave, and the group.

Every Friday night we do testing and tuning so you can come out and just run down the track and then have a good time. Saturdays we are doing the no prep. We’re gonna have a junior drag shoot out, you know, it’s basically reserved for um, shows and stuff. And then Sundays are bracket racing and points.

What we also started on Wednesday nights, one Wednesday night, a month, we might go to two where you pay $5 at the gate and $5 per pass. Anybody can come out. Anybody in this room could go drag racing. Right now, if you didn’t know, one of the nice things about your racing is the car you drive to work, school, wherever you could take to, to drag strip, and.

Race it. You don’t have to go and make something purpose built to see if you like it, which is really nice. By the way, I do want to, uh, mention Bruce. He puts on races over at Empire. I was there last year and he is the most detailed oriented guy I’ve ever worked with. It. He puts on a great show. So quick, three, two Sportsman series and what, uh, June, July, August of September at Empire and it’s, it’s a great race and, uh, it’s well ran.

So, but come see us at Skyline. Uh, I don’t know if [01:31:00] everybody realize that from Locktons Glen, it’s less than 15 minutes. It’s off of Route 17 C in between Tioga Center and, uh, oligo right up, there’s a sign out the road and it’s really nice because it’s called Skyline Drive. It’s, you see a sign for Skyline Drive called Mel Road, and that’s where we’re at.

We also have a half mile concrete oval there, leased out to a guy who has track down in Pennsylvania called Evergreen. And so the place is up and running it, it laid dormant for I think eight years. And, uh, now it’s back up and running and the whole crew that we have is a hundred percent behind the track.

We wanna make it work. We want to bring back the name, well bring back the, the excitement, push Skyview off to the side, but Skyline, so please come and join us. The other tracks that I mentioned, go to them too because, um, the drag racing community is pretty tight. You could go to a national event and walk right up to the driver and talk to the driver who just went 300 miles per hour, or you could, you know, go into local pits and this together kind of thing.

It’s, it’s [01:32:00] awesome sport. I’ve been loving it since 1987. But yes, please come see us. Like I said, thank you Kipp, for asking me to join. This is awesome.

Kip Zeiter: Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both for taking the time. Thank all of you for coming down to see this. Let’s wrap it up and go back to the center

NIAGARA PROMO: Sunday.

Kip Zeiter: Just because we could. Thanks everybody.

Audience Q&A: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports. Spanning Continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor [01:33:00] racing throughout the world.

The center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike. To share stories of race drivers race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit [01:34:00] www.auto history.org.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.

And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop Minisodes and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, Gumby Bears, and Monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And [01:35:00] remember, without you. None of this would be possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00:00 The Birth of Niagara Dragway
00:04:52 Early Days and Challenges
00:07:23 Memorable Races and Innovations
00:11:49 Sponsorship and Community Involvement
00:23:48 NASCAR and NHRA Sanctioning
00:34:52 The Art of Promotion
00:38:22 Innovations and Safety in Racing
00:44:25 Drag Racing Classes and Competitions
00:51:04 The Business Side of Racing
00:57:08 The Legacy of Niagara Drag Racing
00:59:47 Jim Oddy: The Beginning of a Racing Journey
01:00:43 First Taste of Victory
01:00:56 The Indy Nationals Experience
01:01:30 Building and Racing the Anglia
01:05:04 Transition to Double B Gas Class & The Opel GT Era
01:06:55 Challenges with Funny Cars
01:09:01 Return to Competition Eliminator
01:15:39 Pro Mod Success and Hall of Fame Induction
01:19:43 Reflecting on the Drag Racing Community
01:26:16 Skyline Drag Racing Revival
01:32:10 Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements

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Learn More

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Niagara went by many names – Niagara Airport Drag Strip, Niagara International – but it was always “Sunday Niagara!” to its fans. Iconic commercials on WKBW Superstation made it the place to be. How could you resist the booming voice promising wheel-standing dragsters and supercharged match races?

In its heyday, Niagara ran up to 610 cars in a single event, sending pairs down the track every 30 seconds. Push-starting dragsters was a spectacle in itself – cars careening down the return road, out of control and full of fury. Still, the show went on… Rosin burnouts, match races, and announcers rallying the crowd – “Who’s for Chevrolet? Who’s for Dodge?” – turning every Sunday into a celebration.

Sponsorship at Niagara was more about community than commerce. Dean traded signage for car parts and left sponsor signs up for years, even if they only paid once. Admission was a dollar – whether you were racing, spectating, or heading into the pits. By the final race, they nervously raised it to $6, fearing it might drive fans away. It didn’t. “We didn’t care who you brought,” Dean said. “As long as you paid 50 cents for your kid.”

Jim Oddy (below) was among the local legends who made Niagara unforgettable. Oddy’s competition eliminator machines took home serious prize money – $400 for a win, which was no small feat in the 1960s. Their camaraderie was as strong as their engines. “We hung out a lot and took a bunch of Dean’s money,” Oddy joked. Dean confirmed it with a laugh, recalling how he once gave a competitor a blank check and told him to fill it out.

Niagara’s relationship with NHRA soured (below; left) after a controversial race cancellation. Dean and his team pivoted to NASCAR’s drag racing division (below; right), securing the Summer Nationals and running record-setting events. The switch was bold, but it paid off – bringing in Coca-Cola-sponsored cars and fresh energy to the strip.

From snowouts to flip-top funny cars, from clutch artists to four-engine Buicks, Niagara Dragway was a mosaic of innovation, grit, and joy. It wasn’t just about speed – it was about community, creativity, and the thrill of the unknown.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC) and was recorded in front of a live studio audience. To learn more about upcoming Center Conversations, be sure to check out the IMRRC’s Website for details.

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The Engineer Racer: Sabre Cook

Tania M

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October 16, 2025

0

From karting in Colorado to racing on global stages like the W Series and Porsche Carrera Cup, Sabre’s journey is a masterclass in grit, grace, and gear-driven ambition.

Photo courtesy Sabre Cook, Sabrecook.com

Sabre’s story begins with motocross roots – her father raced professionally in the ’80s, and her birth coincided with a Supercross Sunday. Racing wasn’t just in her blood; it was in her bones. At eight, she swapped two wheels for four and dove into karting, quickly discovering that motorsport wasn’t just a hobby – it was her calling.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

But Sabre didn’t stop at the track. She pursued a mechanical engineering degree, becoming a first-generation college student and proving that speed and smarts aren’t mutually exclusive. Her analytical mind now fuels her performance, from detailed debriefs to data-driven race strategies.

As one of the few women in open-wheel racing, Sabre faced the challenge of carving out space in a male-dominated arena. “You learn to create your own seat,” she says. Her journey through USF2000, Indy Pro 2000, and the W Series wasn’t just about lap times – it was about resilience, representation, and rewriting the rules.

Sabre’s engineering background gives her a unique edge. She logs every test session with precision, balancing her technical insights with the instinctive feel required to drive at the limit. “You have to let your subconscious take over,” she explains. “The conscious mind is always slower.”

Spotlight

2023 – First Female to Race in Porsche Carrera Cup North America
2022 Kelly-Moss Porsche Carrera Cup Scholarship Winner
2021 & 2022 IMSA Diverse Driver Development Scholarship Runner Up
2021 Only Female to Podium in Porsche Sprint Challenge
2021 1st Place NLS 8 Nürburgring Cup 5 Class Win
2020-2021 The only American to qualify for W Series
2019-2021 Qualified for and Competed in W Series
2019 3rd Place & Fast Lap in W Series Assen Reverse Grid Race
2017 Team USA Scholarship Finalist- First Female
2016 US Open Shifter Elite National Champion
2015 3rd Place US Open Shifter Elite National Championship
2015 Member of Team USA for the Rotax Grand Finals
2015 Challenge of the Americas DD2 International Champion
2014 Maxspeed & Mazda Road to Indy Scholarship Winner
2014 First Female to Qualify for a KZ World Championship Main Event
2013 Women in Sports Foundation Project Podium Grant Recipient
2012 SKUSA S2 National Champion- First Female
3x TAG USA World Champion
8x Colorado State Karting Champion

Synopsis

This episode of Break/Fix features Sabre Cook, a trailblazing figure in motorsports, discussing her journey from karting in Colorado to competing in elite racing series like the W Series and USF 2000. Sabre’s background in mechanical engineering has complemented her racing career, allowing her to analyze and enhance her performance. Despite motorsports being a male-dominated field, Sabre has successfully navigated its challenges, backed by strong family support and her own perseverance. The episode also highlights her involvement in programs like the Porsche Motorsports North America Female Driver Development Program, emphasizing the importance of sponsorship and mentorship. Sabre shares insights on balancing racing with engineering, her support system, and advice for aspiring female drivers. The show underscores the evolving landscape for women in motorsports and Sabre’s role in inspiring the next generation.

Can you take us back to your earliest memories of karting in Colorado and what first sparked your passion for racing?
Why Mechanical Engineering? How did your background in mechanical engineering influence your approach to competing on the track?
How do you see technology and engineering continuing to shape the future of motorsports?
Moving from karting to lower formula racing requires a big jump in financial commitment. What’s the most challenging part of putting together sponsorships? Do you think sponsors still hesitate to fund women drivers at the same level as men?
Competing in the W Series put you on a global stage—what was that experience like both personally and professionally? Was it a matter of dialing up the intensity, or was it a completely different beast?
Now that you’ve switched to the Porsche Cup series in the last few season; what has that transition been like from open-wheel to production based racing?
Who are you watching right now in karting and the lower series? Who should we be keeping an eye on?
So what’s next for Sabre? What are your goals? Endurance Racing, possible Le Mans?

Transcript

Lauren Goodman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Women of the Autos Sphere. On Break Fix, we dive into the stories of trailblazers, engineers, racers, designers, and disruptors who are shaping the automotive and motor sports industries. From the pit lane to the boardroom, from concept sketches to championship podiums, these women are driving change breaking barriers, and inspiring the next generation.

Whether you’re a lifelong gearhead, a curious newcomer, or someone who simply loves a good story. You are in the right place. This is more than a podcast. It’s a movement.

Crew Chief Eric: On this episode of Break Fixes Women of the Auto Sphere series. We’re thrilled to welcome Sabra Cook, a true force in Motorsports whose journey is as inspiring as it is impressive

Lauren Goodman: from her early days.

Karting a Colorado to breaking barriers in open wheel racing. Sabre has proven herself both on and off the track. She’s not only competed in Elite series like the W Series USF 2000 Entity Pro 2000, but she’s [00:01:00] also balanced her racing career with a background in mechanical engineering, working with some of the biggest names in the automotive industry, in a sport where talent, tenacity and technical skill must work in perfect harmony.

Sabra embodies the full package paving the way for the next generation of women in racing, and we’ll dive into her path, her perseverance, and her vision for the future of motor sports.

Crew Chief Eric: And joining me tonight is returning co-host Lauren Goodman, associate curator of exhibitions at the Revs Institute, and one of the many personalities here at the Motor Inc Podcast Network.

So welcome back. Good to be here. And with that, let’s welcome Sabra officially to break fix.

Sabre Cook: Hi guys. I feel so inspired and like so good after that introduction. Like you guys should just come be my pep talk team before I get in the race car. Like that was great. Well be the flavor. Flave. The fla, the Flavor Flav.

You gotta wear the giant clock though.

Crew Chief Eric: Well Sabra like all break Fixx stories. There’s a super heroine origin story out there. So take us back to your. Earliest memories of carting in Colorado. And what first sparked your passion for racing? Did you come from a racing family? [00:02:00]

Sabre Cook: I did. I was super lucky to have a pretty cool dad.

He used to race motocross and Supercross professionally back in the eighties, and he and my mom did not want me racing motorcycles. So compromised with four wheels ’cause it’s much safer. So I appreciate that. Now I have a lot less broken bones than I probably would have otherwise. That’s how we got started.

Got into carting just as far, I was eight years old, so I guess the heroine story started with my dad being my hero and just loving racing and wanting to get involved in that. And I was also born on Supercross Sunday, so my parents, they used to host like a local Supercross events in our hometown. And my mom went into labor the morning of the big race.

So she went to the hospital instead of to, to the racetrack. It was kind of, uh, it was inevitable

Crew Chief Eric: carting at a young age, especially a young lady in carting, you know, and motorsport, as we know, is a male dominated sport, but that is changing. We’re seeing parody in multiple disciplines of motorsport throughout the world.

What was it like for you competing at that level and then moving [00:03:00] up further and further into racing?

Sabre Cook: It was challenging at times, being either the only woman or one of a couple. It definitely made you have a different experience growing up than maybe your peers that would be involved in a space that had more women or more representation.

But I think I learned so much from being in those spaces and I had to learn how to kind of create my own s. In a place that wasn’t traditionally expecting me to be there. So, and I, and I really loved the fact that I got to do a lot of my younger years with my dad and he was a great mentor for me and helped me kind of, you know, navigate the challenges and that anybody goes through in racing, right.

Male or female, just the challenges and you know, the mental and physical struggles that you go through as an athlete and finding your way through and and moving up towards the top. So yeah, it was challenging, but it was, it was great.

Crew Chief Eric: So we talked to a lot of younger drivers who came up in a similar way that you did.

Maybe they started in carting or they went into junior dragsters or midgets or something like that. And there’s always this balance [00:04:00] that has to be struck. Not only just. Within the family, like, Hey, how far are your parents going to support you and push you? But with schooling, so you started carting at eight years old and what we tend to find is kids that young do racing in fits and spurts because as you move to middle school and high school and schooling gets in the way, we’re gonna talk about.

Your mechanical engineering degree as the punchline here, but how did that work for you as you continued to follow your passion but also go into a field like mechanical engineering?

Sabre Cook: Definitely. It wasn’t easy, and I’m still honestly transparently, I tried to do too many things. Like I was the kid that, I can’t remember how old I was.

I had like a complete meltdown to my mom. ’cause I was like, I just wanna do everything. Like I don’t wanna have to choose. So that, that was a problem I had very early on in my life. But I guess I just. Tried to lean into, you know, my teachers and peers around me to say, Hey, this is something I really wanna do, and this is like a passion for me.

But obviously I really care about school, like I love learning. That’s like one of the biggest things for me, is I’m [00:05:00] always like really eager to learn and continue to get better at whatever it is or learn about new things. So I just leaned into my peers, my professors, my family to say, how can I optimize this situation to be able to chase both of them?

And it was definitely some sleepless nights for sure, too many times, especially as I got older and you know, in high school and then into college. But when I was young, it definitely, it did have those little spurts where there was maybe more racing and then there was more school and I didn’t get to drive or drive as much as I would’ve liked to or wanted to or should have been driving because there is that balance and you have to learn also, like as a young sports person, you start to learn like what it really takes the level of commitment that you have to have to start to perform at that high level.

How much it really means that you need to be consistent, and how much it really means that you need to commit time to that. That was something that everybody I feel like you go through when you’re younger is, you know, you don’t get the results that you want. And the hard reality is, okay, well you’ve gotta [00:06:00] commit the time that those top, top people are committing.

And that’s really the only way around it is you’ve gotta be there and you’ve gotta be willing to put in those, you know, the 10,000 hour rule. You’ve gotta be willing to put in the time to get there.

Crew Chief Eric: So did you have one of those awkward conversations with your guidance counselor? That was, Hey, I wanna be a race car driver.

And then they said, you should find a career. To back that up. Did the race car driving beget becoming a mechanical engineer? Was the engineering always there for you?

Sabre Cook: Actually, I was one of those weird kids that I liked school, I liked math and I liked science, and there was never a question in my mind at any point.

Oh, I don’t wanna do school. I don’t wanna pursue like going and getting a degree. It was always a plan of mine and my parents obviously heavily encouraged it ’cause it was important for them. Nobody else in my family up until that point had ever gone to college. So I was the first generation student and had to kind of go through the, the learning curve of that.

Right? ’cause nobody had been through it, but. For them. It was such an important goal to be able to put their kids into [00:07:00] college and have that degree in something that you can go and take and build a life on. It was never a matter of if it was gonna happen, it was just like when and what it was gonna be.

And pretty quickly I decided it was gonna be something that was. STEM oriented. That was pretty clear, honestly, probably from the third grade on. And then it just became more clear later in my high school when I took a mechanical engineering class. And then I was like, you know what, this makes sense. And we have a really great engineering school in Colorado that’s one of the top engineering universities in the us.

So in-state tuition was all about that, save the money. So it became, uh, an easy choice to apply there. And actually, I don’t know if this was a dumb thing or just a bold thing, but I only applied there. I didn’t have any backups. I was like, I’m going here. This is what’s happening.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you been able to apply what you learned from your mechanical engineering degree in your racing, or do you see avenues for potential to exercise your degree in motor sport at some point?

Sabre Cook: So, I mean, I’ve worked. For teams [00:08:00] in a design capacity in motorsports. So I’ve, I have used it. But as far as like you mean using it specifically as a driver,

Crew Chief Eric: like those scientific principles and practices and the way you analyze and break things down. As an engineer, how do you apply that to your driving?

Sabre Cook: I am definitely much more analytical in my approach to things. I have very structured and rigorous. Debrief sheets and like the way that I log, like say a testing event, I have a workbook that I haven’t really seen a lot of other drivers have, and so I have like an an Excel workbook where I have multiple tabs and I log as much tangible data as I can without.

Making my engineer brain overthink. Like when you get in the race car, you’ve gotta be totally free. Like you need to not overthink things. It needs to be more natural, like it needs to just sort of happen and you’ve gotta be allowing your body to take over and the muscle memory to take over. Because if you drive with your conscious mind, it’s always gonna be slower than driving with your subconscious, [00:09:00] really making sure that the analytical engineering brain stays in its lane.

But it is very beneficial when I get out of the car to look. At video and data and try to narrow down what are the big things that we need to be focused on? What’s me, what’s the car? And just being able to have like a clear debrief and logging system, that then allows me to look back on trends and past experiences to then move forward more quickly.

Lauren Goodman: This reminds me a lot of Mark Donahue. The great Porsche driver, that’s who it reminds me of, who also had an engineering degree. And we have, at the museum, we have his notebooks that he kept where he kept all, he logged every single note about every single lab, about the cars. He was testing for Roger Penske.

So I think you, you would’ve been two Ps in a pod, you and Mark Donahue, it sounds like. And they’re all the graph paper notebooks, and it’s all like very, very lined up and very organized. Not like my handwriting at all. So I think the two of you. Would’ve gone on like gangbusters. But I’m also thinking [00:10:00] you’re talking about having to turn off the conscious mind and just feel and engage with the car.

Do you find it harder to do that when you understand how cars are designed and engineered, or do you trust the car more now that you understand the tolerances?

Sabre Cook: No, I think it’s harder if you understand because it just gives you a bigger range to think about. Like first thing that comes to mind is like Adam and Eve, right?

You don’t know what you don’t know till you bite the apple and then all of a sudden you like think about all these things. So in some ways I think it definitely. It gives you just a different perspective, different range to think about when you’re driving. And I definitely have to check myself and I, I always go in and preface whenever I start working with an engineer, like I’m like, look, I don’t wanna do your job.

I’m going to try to like keep myself in my lane. Definitely let me know, like if you’re like. Sabra, like, let me take this over. Like, you don’t need to worry about engineering the car right now. Like actually this just happened in, in a test that we just had, my engineer had to remind me. He’s like, Hey, your job is to just give me feedback [00:11:00] about balance of the car in this moment.

I don’t want you to stress and feel like you need to help me solve the problem. And that’s also like. Typical, I feel like girl, like people pleasing, like I always wanna help, like I wanna contribute kind of thing. So it’s, it’s definitely, I’ve very helpful to have like my engineer that I, I work with this year, I work with very well and he’s also has a driving background.

So I think that’s also why we work really well together. ’cause he understands what I’m going through. It is a challenge sometimes to keep them. In the right lanes.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought that up because Motorsport has been at the forefront of technology. I mean, we can make arguments about planes, trains, and automobiles being the things that drive technology forward, but racing, especially Formula One, and then you kind of counter that with the hypercar at Lamont, things like that are always cutting edge technology.

And so as we wrap up this thought on mechanical engineering and keeping that lens on for just a little bit longer, when you look at the modern cars. You’re in sports car and endurance racing, which is gonna be a little bit different because you’re based on production cars. But when you [00:12:00] look at the technology that’s out there, is there much more to give?

Is it all just finesse and fine tuning? Unlike the old days where it was like these radical inventions and the Formula One used to be at the height of experimentation, where now it’s a little bit more like a spec series. So if you look at it not as a driver. But as an engineer, what’s the technology look like out there right now on the race field?

Sabre Cook: Obviously, like you said in the series that I’m in with Horse Career Cup and like the INS hepatic, it is a little bit more rained in except for maybe the GTP side of things. But as far as like anything that has to do with GT three cars, LMP two a little bit, at the end of the day, it comes from a production or an OEM car.

It has to be within reason. Like it can’t be this like. Craziness because the factories need to justify like why are we putting an investment and research into racing if we’re not even gonna put it in our road cars? ’cause at the end of the day, that’s ultimately how they justify racing all the time is this is supposed to help push our road car technology forward with Formula One though, I feel like the reason why, maybe [00:13:00] like back in the day when you referenced you had all these crazy monster machines and everything.

The engineering field was still very much developing. There was like this big growth of things like they were learning really. Like it got to the point where there was like so much horsepower, right? But then they realized, oh, it doesn’t really matter if you can go really fast if we can’t harness that, you know, with the brakes and the suspension and like optimizing the package as a whole.

So once those two kind of like caught up to each other, there became kind of this like, it’s almost like an exponential growth and now it’s kind of like flat lining a little bit. And now where the big innovations are happening is in efficiency and sustainability. So like a lot of the new rules that are happening in Formula One is I think it’s a gas that has to be made from food waste.

Lauren Goodman: Yeah.

Sabre Cook: All the teams need to be able to create their own fuel and utilize that. I can’t remember what year it starts implementing. Maybe 20, 29. So like that’s a big thing. Obviously the hybrid system, like all the energy recovery systems, stuff like that to make the cars unfortunately quieter, but more sustainable.

It’s important because it [00:14:00] helps us. Yes. Obviously F1 is a big show and it does have like its own carbon footprint to be this big show, but they are realizing that they need to take into account what current global needs are, and so I feel like it’s another way for racing to justify to be racing, right?

It’s like, okay, well if this is the current technology and the issues that are important to people right now is sustainability and all these things, so we need to utilize this racing platform to be able to push that technology if that’s where it’s at. Right?

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, now I’m gonna ask you to take that mechanical engineering fedora off your head and just fling it across the room like a Frisbee and talk to me like a race car driver.

And what I’m driving to here is balance of performance. ’cause the argument is the balance of performance isn’t about engineering, it’s about rules. And putting on a good show, as you said, right? So your thoughts on BOP,

Sabre Cook: I mean, it’s necessary so that way all manufacturers can essentially compete in a level playing field, but it, it’s always hard.

Not everyone is gonna always be happy, right? There’s always gonna be checks and balances [00:15:00] and that’s how endurance. Racing is going to be until you make it like a spec series like Porsche Career Cup where there is a, a such a smaller window, it’s all the same cars. So it’s unfortunately part of it, it’s how it works, so that way more players can stay in the game in which we don’t wanna eliminate that.

Right? Like it’s important to have that many manufacturers, as many as possible in the world of racing. ’cause it’s just better for the sport, it’s better for the fans and it’s better for, for us as race car drivers.

Lauren Goodman: Switching gears from the engineering side to the money side. The other thing that fuels racing.

Sabre Cook: The main thing that fuels the main thing

Lauren Goodman: since time immemorial. If it ain’t daddy’s money, it’s somebody else’s money that’s fueling the racing. Exactly. So when you move from carting to the lower formula, that was requiring a step up in terms of the financial commitment from your family, from sponsors, what’s the most challenging part of putting together sponsorships?

Sabre Cook: So, so many areas. For reference, I didn’t start racing cars until I was [00:16:00] almost 23 years old because I had an amazing family that was very supportive, and they did help quite a bit with my carting side of things. But it got to the point where I had to sustain that through sponsorships and support from the factory teams, even in carting.

And so jumping up to that next level of budget in car racing. Was outta the question, so I didn’t go to cars until very late, like 23 is like way old to start your car career comparatively to, you know, people starting at 14, 15 years old. Now, going into car racing, I didn’t have that opportunity until I found a sponsor that was willing to put me in their car.

So I had to very quickly and haphazardly figure out how to put. A much larger corporate sponsorship program together very quickly because without me putting the corporate sponsorship together, there was no racing, there was no family money. There was not like it wasn’t gonna happen. It was either figure it out like baptism by fire, or uh, go back and go be an engineer and forget about your racing dreams.

I obviously made a lot of mistakes. I tried to figure it [00:17:00] out, but I would say the the biggest thing to understand about sponsorship is at the end of the day, it’s about telling your story, building a story that resonates with people, and getting people to buy into that story and using that story to help someone meet.

Some need. And if you’re able to marry those together, you can make a very powerful partnership that will last longer. Like it’s a business, right? But ultimately businesses are made of people and people just need a emotional justification to choose to be a part of your. Program. So yes, it’s important to show a return on investment, but at the end of the day, it is about them liking you as a person and believing in you and your story and wanting to become a part of that story.

I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve realized about sponsorship.

Lauren Goodman: We got a chance to meet at the Women with Drive Summit. Sponsored by wna had a great time and I, I love how they emphasize the coaching of young women drivers and to do [00:18:00] things like sponsorships, how to go out and put together their sponsorships and their package in order to fund their careers.

And one of the things they talked about, it is still a discussion about sponsors still hesitated to fund women drivers. At the same rate they fund male drivers. Have you seen that change just in the time you’ve been driving? Do you think there’s been some movement or not enough movement, but some movement?

Sabre Cook: Absolutely. I think women in sport in general are, uh, getting more sponsorship dollars if we just look at the data ’cause. I like to just look at the data. In the past, traditionally, women globally have received less than 1% of sports sponsorship dollars. That was a few years ago, and now I think we’re maybe up between four to 6%.

So that’s like a big jump. It’s still like extremely skewed, but that is progress and I’ve definitely seen it in more tangible ways. Like by me being involved in W Series and now being a part of the Porsche Mobile one female driver development program. [00:19:00] There are definitely things that are moving and shifting.

It’s just gonna take time to reach more of an equality level.

Lauren Goodman: Which brings me to W Series. I’d love to know more about your experience moving into that, and I just realized that I saw you drive at Coda in W series in 2021. Yeah, there were two, two races that year. Moving on to what really is a global stage like that.

Did it feel like they were just dialing up the intensity or did it feel like a completely different beast altogether

Sabre Cook: before WS series, I’d actually raced on a Formula one weekend previously with U SF four. So I did race at code like oh. I’d been part of a an F1 weekend in that respect. But obviously WS series was kind of the next step up.

We were very much in the public eye, became, you know, this new thing that everyone’s like, how’s this gonna go? Like, what’s going on? And kind of the first of its kind. It was incredible because. Yes, I know a lot of people had their opinions about it and they have their opinions on F1 Academy, but as a racer, as we just talked about, corporate sponsorship is my bread and butter, and the only way I can [00:20:00] chase my goals.

So to have WS series come in and say, Hey, here’s an opportunity to race an F three car on a global stage. You don’t have to pay. Any of it, and you will get paid. All you have to do is qualify and be one of the fastest drivers. Like you say that to any race car driver. They’re like, oh, okay, let’s go. Where do I sign up?

So for me it was, yes, I don’t love the idea of the all women’s thing because at the end of the day, we wanna be fighting just to be the top full stop, no gender involved. But until WS series, I’d never had a full season of car racing. So that became my first. Opportunity to actually have my first full season.

So without that, no matter what your opinion is on it, it was so revitalizing for myself and so many other women that were a part of it, who otherwise were going to be on the sidelines.

Lauren Goodman: A huge step in terms of visibility, if nothing else. Absolutely. So I’ve been following along with the Academy as well.

Do you think the Academy model is an improvement on the W Series model?

Sabre Cook: I think that it has [00:21:00] definitely engaged the F1 fan base more, and that has been helpful, that it is branded with the Formula One brand and it has that giant behind it that has been positive because it’s given it more reach. The only thing that is, I don’t wanna say a step backwards, but it’s not as beneficial to the drivers, is that it’s not as much based off of qualifying to be one of the fastest in the seats.

You still have to bring money. Not like W Series where it’s like you show up as a pro, you get paid to drive and you don’t have to bring any money. F1 Academy is a little bit of a different structure, and it’s also F four cars, so the cars are slower as well. It’s like kind of give and take, but I think ultimately, like in the long run, I hope that it’s going to create this ladder to having more women performing at the top in the road to F1.

Lauren Goodman: Tell us about the Porsche development program and how you got involved with that.

Sabre Cook: Porsche Motor PORs, north America didn’t have a female driver development program until [00:22:00] 2023 when I became the founding member and the only member in 2023 when I became the first female to race in the Porsche Career Cup North America series.

So it was really actually super cool of Porsche to be intuitive and they are paying so much more attention than you realize. Like when I was first looking at the idea of going into Porsche Kera Cup, who, by the way, the reason why this happened was because of Lynn St. James, who is one of the co-founders of wna.

She said, Hey, you know, this looks like a great series. Like it’s super competitive. It has a lot of potential to put you in a good spot to then build into stuff long term in the sports car world. And so I was like, okay, like let’s. Take a look at it. Let’s see what it is. We wouldn’t announce anything.

There was nothing public going on, but OSHA just paying attention to what was happening. They realized, Hey, what’s going on? You wanna race in the series? And so the fact that they just like, were paying so much attention to realize that without any sort of formal [00:23:00] conversation and say, Hey, okay, you wanna do this?

How can we help you do this? And then even bringing their own corporate partners in to make it happen. What other OEM is really actually doing something like that. So I felt like incredibly thankful and grateful for them to want to create that space and then not just stop with me being in the series, you know, and be like, oh, that box checked done right.

Like every year with the help of mobile one, they’ve expanded the program and now I think there’s like seven of us. Now total in the Porsche Motorsports North America ladder. So it’s grown so much and it’s growing every year. They’re just getting better about providing us with new things to learn more resources or workshops.

It’s been an awesome thing to be a part of.

Crew Chief Eric: After doing a couple of seasons of Open Wheel and making the switch to Porsche Cup racing, what was that transition like? Do you like production based racing or sports car racing over the open wheel, or do you still kinda long for the days of being in an open wheel car

Sabre Cook: as a driver?

Right. Sports car racing. Ultimately it’s a street [00:24:00] car that gets kind of turned into a race car. And a formula car is a purpose built, born bred race car. So it’s meant to do all the all the right things, right? So it is very challenging to jump into a sports car world after being in the open world world and coming into a car that you have to think your way around more because a nine 11, especially it’s engineered wrong, the engine is buying the rear wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m, I’m glad you said it, not me.

Sabre Cook: It’s fine. They know it. It’s the legacy, right? Like it is what made Porsche. Porsche. So it is a very challenging car, but it makes drivers, it gives them a bigger toolbox to pull from. Because it is challenging and you do have to really be in tune with using your tools in the car and driving the car with your feet, using your driver tools to really help the balance.

Like I feel like there’s not a lot of production cars that are at the same level of Porsche Car Cup, where it really pushes the driver to evolve and develop in the same [00:25:00] way. That’s why, you know, they say if you can be fast in a nine 11. You can be fast in anything. After my experience being in the career cup, going back and driving anything that I would’ve driven before, like open wheel, I’m a hundred percent faster.

So like it’s made me a better driver because it’s given me a larger range of tools to utilize. It’s been challenging, but it has definitely made me grow.

Crew Chief Eric: Coming off of the GT three based nine elevens, the modern era stuff, nine. Nine ones nine, nine twos and things like that, have you been able to get behind the seat of a classic analog nine 11 and kind of compare and contrast what the new cars are like versus what some of your heroes have driven in the past?

Sabre Cook: The first Porsche I ever drove. It’s kind of analog, maybe like it still has some, like in theory it has like a blip, but it’s like a mechanical blip where it has, actually, the thing that pushes the gas pedal down is the UH, 9, 9 7. So that was the first GT three cup car I’d ever driven. The sponsor that I mentioned that put me in my first race car, it was his.

So I was destined, I guess, to find my way into a [00:26:00] Porsche eventually, one way or another. But that was my first experience in a Porsche TT three Cup car. And I loved it because it’s super raw. Like the 9, 9 7 is a shorter wheel base. We’ve really aggressive with it. And I, most of my carting background was in shifter cards, so getting in one of those was like, ah, this is like, this is awesome.

So much, like, so similar. So it was a great introduction.

Lauren Goodman: I read on your Wikipedia page about, as part of the development program, you got coaching from Patrick Long, who is a friend of the museum and a very cool guy.

Sabre Cook: Yeah, pat has been awesome, like such a great resource for me and he’s a really cool guy.

Like just so, so accessible, so chill, and I feel like I can, you know, message him or call him and just be like, Hey, this is what’s going on. Like, how do you think I should handle it? Like, what should I do? Like, do you have advice? He is always like there to make sure that you as a driver and an athlete are getting what you need.

Like he’s going to always put you first and want the best for [00:27:00] you as a person regardless of all the other things that lie out there. Because you know, at the end of the day, he’s a race car driver. He knows what we’re going through and he just wants to be like. That mentor and give us advice that, you know, he wished that he would’ve had at the time when he was going through all of this.

So he’s been a incredible resource and it was super cool to see him in the F1 movie. I thought that was, that was a nice, uh, nice little cameo. He did a great job. And, uh, yeah, we just had him as well at, we have a Porsche driver combine every year. Um, it’s been the last couple years it’s been at Penske in, uh, Charlotte and he came this year and kind of gave us a, an impromptu inspirational speech and it was just great to have him there and I really appreciate all of the advice and, uh, mentorship that he’s provided.

Lauren Goodman: And there’s someone you wanna talk to about driving Porsches. He’s the guy, right?

Sabre Cook: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Well, Lauren, if we’re name dropping, Patrick was on Evening with the legend, along with another one of Sabras heroines out there, and that’s Margie Smith. Ha. And you guys did a [00:28:00] video together about generations of Porsche drivers.

You wanna talk about that a little bit? What that video was about for the folks that haven’t seen it before?

Sabre Cook: That was a super fun project that Porsche USA came to me and Margie with and said, Hey. This is such a powerful story, like we’re gonna bring in, you know, the current driver and the one that started blazing the trail and then has this story with the Porsche family.

And we’d love to tell your stories together, introduce both of you to our Porsche community together and just share this awesome story that’s kind of evolved through the years and see how the growth has happened for women in motor sports. So it was actually really cool. The director had this fun idea that she didn’t want us to meet.

Until they could capture it on camera. So Margie and I were actually kept totally separate in the hair and makeup rooms. Like I didn’t see her, I didn’t get to talk to her like we went to dinner separately the night before. They were like, no, we don’t want you guys to meet because we wanna capture this moment.

On camera. So they kept us separate. We’d started shooting in the morning and then I was in the [00:29:00] car and they brought Margie out onto the track on the side of the track, and they captured the moment of us meeting for the first time. And it was so awesome. Like I’d never met Margie before, obviously, and it was great to just.

Meet her and see like how much awesome experiences she had to share. Just how much she still like loved and appreciated the motor sports experience she’s had, and then the shared the love of the Porsche family and how many great things she’s gotten to experience being involved in such a strong community and like.

The support she receives and the great things that she has to say about the Porsche Club of America community and just all the cool things that she got to experience back in the day and how different it was and like, you know, the challenges, things that she dealt with too, that are much better today, but were, we do see some of the similar trends, but it was an incredible time to get to spend with her and uh, I think the video turned out great as well.

So, props to the Porsche, USA and their production team, ’cause it turned out really well.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you plan to follow in Margie’s footsteps? And be one of the very few [00:30:00] American women to race at Lamont.

Sabre Cook: That’s the plan. That’s always the dream, right? So we’ll see how, uh, how and when we can make that happen.

Lauren Goodman: Okay, so quick pit stop before we transition.

What are your top three tracks to drive?

Sabre Cook: Now it’s kind of a tie, but Brands, hatch, gp, circuit, and spa. For sure for a third one. Um, I would say either,

Crew Chief Eric: did I hear Watkins Glen? Is

Sabre Cook: that what she said? I mean, I like Watkins Glen, but I don’t know. I’ve never raced on Laguna Seca, so I don’t know if I can fully say that yet.

I would, I’ve, I’ve driven there but never raced. So like, I liked ASIN in the Netherlands and I actually really enjoy Coda. So I don’t know. Those are kind of like. All time for

Lauren Goodman: third, you like having a nice steep incline. Apparently that’s what you really like between Coda and Spa, that’s what you really like.

Apparently.

Sabre Cook: Well, I’m a Colorado girl at heart. That’s right. I’m like, I need my mountains. I need, you know, I gotta have some elevation changes.

Crew Chief Eric: So if she could drive road Atlanta backwards, it’d be [00:31:00] perfect.

Sabre Cook: Oh, true. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since Lauren opened the door for a pit stop, I got one for you. We haven’t asked this one.

Of one of our guests in quite a long time. But since you have a mechanical engineering degree, Sabra, you are at the head of the boardroom table, and two blueprints are slid to you to decide on by your team. One is the space forward 9 59, and the other one is the fire breathing F 40. Which one do you pick?

Sabre Cook: Hmm. F 40

Crew Chief Eric: wins again, so, okay. Explain why

Sabre Cook: I feel like it’s more overall balanced and I appreciate the arrow elements more. Does that make sense? It does.

Crew Chief Eric: We get a lot of different answers for this, and it tends to be about the passion in F 40.

Sabre Cook: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Clinically, the 9 59 is better on paper, but as a driver, the F 40 is the car you want.

Sabre Cook: It makes you excited to think about driving it.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Yeah.

Sabre Cook: I guess my driver ultimately took over instead of the engineer brain, [00:32:00] but

Crew Chief Eric: it’s okay. The score is way off into Ferrari’s corner for that one. But anyway.

Lauren Goodman: Well, I wanted to know a little more about getting ready for a typical race weekend. What your life looks like as a racing driver.

What does the week up to the race look like? What are you doing to get physically, mentally prepared? What kind of sponsorship commitments do you have? And if you feel like you’re a driver who actually kind of. Gets juiced up by those kind of event commitments or you find them draining and distracting.

Sabre Cook: I am naturally introverted.

I appreciate my, uh, recharge time, but I definitely appreciate the fact that I get the chance and I want to feel grateful for those opportunities. You know, before a race weekend where. We’re living in a space right now and you know, it could change tomorrow, but the fact that I have the chance to create an event that people are excited to show up at and meet me and see the car like that is something special.

And so I, I really try to be grateful for those opportunities, but I will admit, like it does wear you out. So you just [00:33:00] have to kind of manage your energy going into a race weekend, kind of as we talked about earlier, I try to do too many things pretty often. I’m definitely the overcommitment type, so I’ve been working on doing a little bit less or like a little less stress going into race weekends, creating a better tapering mental and physical load going into a race weekend.

It is challenging ’cause as a race car driver, like you wanna do a great job for your partners on and off the track. And so having those, creating those events. Doing those activations before a race weekend is really important to continue to build not only my brand, but also connect my sponsors to more people.

So it’s definitely a fine line that you have to walk to have balance.

Lauren Goodman: What’s something about a career as a driver that would surprise most people who have regular nine to five jobs?

Sabre Cook: Well, I think most people don’t realize that we don’t get paid to race except for, unless you’re some of the elite few, right?

Like you have to bring, whether that’s. Family money, uh, which is often the case, or you bring corporate [00:34:00] sponsorship to the team to race, like you’re not sending in your resume. There is obviously those situations where that does happen, but the majority of racing happens by bringing funding to the team and you have to work on getting paid outside of that, whether that’s coming from an extra amount that you have in sponsorship dollars or that.

Mostly come from me from coaching, engineering, work, media, work, sim coaching, all that extra stuff. That’s where you actually get paid, not necessarily from a team paying. You

Crew Chief Eric: talked about following in the footsteps of people like Margie and others that have come before you. Taking this information in mind, a lot of people probably haven’t thought of before.

What advice would you give to young drivers? Especially young ladies that wanna follow in your footsteps.

Sabre Cook: For anybody, it’s just really important to understand that motorsports is a lifestyle. It’s not just a job. It’s not just about doing cool things and going to cool places as much as like we do get to do that.

But it’s important to, I think, to understand like [00:35:00] the level of commitment that it takes to be successful in motor sports and the sacrifices that you’re going to have to make to make your goals. What, and that’s not just as a driver, that’s, you know, whether you’re an engineer or a mechanic, like those guys do not get enough appreciation for the hours and blood, sweat, and tears that have to be put in to make our race cars go fast.

So I would just say be prepared to, to work hard to. To make it your lifestyle, but also the other thing that I would say is really important is to build a really good team around you. Trying to do it all by yourself does not work no matter what industry you’re in, having the people that you know are gonna be there in your corner and able to direct you in the right path.

I mean, it’s instrumental for anybody, but especially for anybody that’s, you know, an athlete trying to make their way in their sport.

Lauren Goodman: In watching some of the lower series or even some of the, the people still in carting, are there any young people you have your eye on that you think we should also be watching at this time?

Sabre Cook: I will be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a go-kart race. I, I think the last time I was [00:36:00] maybe coaching at one last year, but it’s been a while, so I don’t know if I have the best inside scoop as far as carting goes. But car-wise. I would say, actually somebody that’s really impressed me, her name is Anna Sini.

I’m gonna, I don’t know how to say her last name, but she just started racing and she’s in Porsche Sprint Challenge first year in the GT four cars. I think this is like maybe her first competitive or like really actual, like more pro season in racing ever. She didn’t do carting nothing like, did like a track day with her dad, and her and her dad are like, let’s do this together.

This will be fun. And then she quickly became faster than her dad. I think maybe they did like a WL race or something like that, like the year before, and now they’re full on in enforce Sprint challenge. She’s winning consistently in the GT four cars in Porsche Spring Challenge. To have no background and to be going in and doing that, I feel like that’s pretty impressive.

The other people that I would definitely say impress me is the Hannah’s. If you don’t know them, they’re teammates in [00:37:00] SRO, traditionally, Hannah Greenmeyer and Hannah Grisha. Hannah Greenmeyer, I have known for a long time. She’s a local Colorado girl as well. Maybe a little bit of Colorado pride going on there, but she’s always been really, really fast.

Works really hard. Her and Hannah Grisham are doing a really great job in the GT four cars and have gotten some really, really solid results lately. So I would say definitely, probably those are my top ones. If you wanna think about over the pond though, I would probably say the two latest F1 Academy winners, Marta Garcia and Abby Polling.

I race with them in W series and they’re both wicked fast. Abby has Alice Powell as a mentor and I think she could do some, some great things if given the right opportunities.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s next for you?

Sabre Cook: What’s next? Well, immediately we have our Indianapolis race coming up. Event-wise, I will be doing an event at my alma Mater, Colorado School of Mines, so I’m really looking forward to that.

But as far as overarching for next year, I actually can’t give you an answer because there’s some, uh, interesting things in the works. We’ll [00:38:00] see what comes to fruition, but I will be staying in the Porsche family, but I just can’t tell you where yet.

Crew Chief Eric: No spoilers.

Sabre Cook: No spoilers yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Sabra, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions.

Thank you. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered thus far?

Sabre Cook: All of my social media and anything you wanna learn about me and my partners@sabracookracing.com. And, uh, you can subscribe to my newsletter and go check out my YouTube channel. Whatever you wanna see is all found in that one convenient location.

Lauren Goodman: And that’s wrap our conversation with the incredible Sapr Cook. An inspiring force in motor sports who proves that talent determination and technical expertise are a winning combination, both on and off the track from her early days in karting to competing on the global stage. Sabre’s story is one of resilience, innovation, and relentless passion for racing.

If you wanna keep up with Saber’s journey, be sure to follow her on Instagram at Saber Cook, Twitter at Sabra Cook and Facebook at Sabra Cook Racing, or find at mor website, saber cook [00:39:00] racing.com.

Crew Chief Eric: With that Sabra, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix. I have to say you’re making all the right moves.

You are a great role model for aspiring drivers, and hopefully they will heed your advice. From this episode, and we wish you continued success in the Porsche Cup series or whatever’s going on with Porsche. And let’s manifest it right now, shall we? One day Lama. And when that comes to be, we hope to have you back here for an evening with a legend episode so you can talk about your experiences at lama.

Sabre Cook: I look forward to it. It’s gonna happen. I’m gonna see you guys. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll make it happen one day at a time.

WIMNA Promo: Women in Motorsports, north America is a not-for-profit organization that began in 2022, known as WIM A. It is a community that focuses on advancing, connecting, and enabling. Its many partners, including industry executives, drivers, team members, OEM, sponsors, tracks, and more. MNAs Women and Drive [00:40:00] Summit continues its mission to bring together motor sports professionals.

This unique event offers new pathways for individuals to explore career opportunities, discuss current industry challenges, and provides mentorship and resources for future growth in the industry. Wi Imna welcomes all who share their passion for Motorsports. And if you’d like to stay informed about Wi Imna and the Women and Drive Summit, be sure to log on to www.womeninmotorsportsna.com or follow them on social media at Women in Motorsports Na on Instagram and Facebook.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.

We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also [00:41:00] through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit stop, minisodes and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators.

Fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Episode Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Meet Sabre Cook: A Force in Motorsports
01:50 Sabre’s Early Racing Journey
04:05 Balancing Racing and Education
07:46 Applying Engineering to Racing
15:43 Sponsorship Challenges and Successes
18:05 Women in Motorsport: Progress and Challenges
19:07 Comparing F1 Academy and W Series
21:50 Joining Porsche Cup Racing & Development Program
27:49 Generations of Porsche Drivers
32:04 Advice for Aspiring Drivers
37:40 Future Plans and Shoutouts
40:32 Closing Remarks

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Learn More

Porsche brought Sabré Cook and Margie Smith-Haas together

Sabre became the first woman to race in Porsche Carrera Cup North America in 2023, launching Porsche’s female development initiative. With support from legends like Lyn St. James and Patrick Long, she’s thriving in the world of production-based racing. “If you can be fast in a 911, you can be fast in anything,” she says.

As mentioned on the episode, check out this video from Porsche featuring Sabre Cook and Margie Smith-Haas. Porsche most recently did a YouTube and Instagram ‘Taking the Wheel with Sabre” Cook and Margie Smith-Haas (March 2024) as part of Women’s History month, check out “Legacy takes a lap: inspiring the next generation of women racers.“

Her transition from formula cars to the famously rear-engined 911 was challenging – but transformative. “It’s engineered wrong,” she jokes, “but it makes you a better driver.”

About this Series

Break/Fix’s “Women of the Autosphere” Series

Truly remarkable work being done by gifted and talented women in so many different careers and we’re dedicated to celebrating all of the diverse women in the Automotive and Motorsports Industries. Be sure to check out more episodes from this series!

Hosted by Lauren Goodman – the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at Revs Institute in Naples, Florida. She is passionate about the history of women in motorsport and the preservation of historic cars.

Sabre didn’t start racing cars until she was nearly 23 – a late start by industry standards. Without family funding, she had to master the art of sponsorship, learning that success off the track is just as critical. Her advice? “It’s about telling your story and helping someone meet a need. Business is made of people, and people need emotional justification to support you.”

She’s seen progress in gender equity, too. Women now receive 4–6% of global sports sponsorship dollars – up from less than 1% just a few years ago. Programs like the W Series and Porsche’s Female Driver Development Program are helping shift the narrative.

Sabre’s advice for aspiring female racers? Know that motorsports is a lifestyle, not just a job. Build a strong team, commit fully, and be ready to work harder than you ever imagined. “Trying to do it all alone doesn’t work,” she says. “Surround yourself with people who believe in you.”

Sabre’s future is still under wraps, but she promises to stay in the Porsche family. Her ultimate dream? Racing at Le Mans. And if her track record is any indication, she’s well on her way.

Support Women in Motorsports North America

The following episode is brought to you in part by Women in Motorsports North America, a community of professional women and men devoted to supporting opportunities for women across all disciplines of motorsport by creating an inclusive, resourceful environment to foster mentorship, advocacy, education, and growth, thereby ensuring the continued strength and successful future of our sport.

Women in Motorsports North America is a not-for-profit organization that began in 2022. Known as “WMNA,” it is a community that focuses on Advancing, Connecting, and Enabling with its many partners, including industry executives, drivers, team members, OEM sponsors, racetracks, and more.

The Women with Drive summit continues its mission to bring together motorsports professionals. This unique event offers new pathways for individuals to explore career opportunities, discuss current industry challenges, and provides mentorship and resources for future growth in the industry.

If you’d like to stay informed about WIMNA and the Women with Drive Summit, be sure to log on to www.womeninmotorsportsna.com or follow them on social media @womeninmotorsportsna on Instagram and Facebook.

Guest Co-Host: Lauren Goodman

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

The Living Legacy of William S. Jackson and the Society of Automotive Historians

Gran T

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October 14, 2025

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The Living Legacy of William S. Jackson and the Society of Automotive Historians

In a world where automotive history is as much about culture and community as it is about engines and sheet metal, few have shaped the story like William S. Jackson. Bill’s journey intertwines hot rod clubs, hill climbs, the golden age of automotive journalism, and the founding moments of what would become the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH). His reflections stitch together the tapestry of America’s vintage car movement—and offer a front-row seat to the birth of an institution that preserves the spirit of automotive memory.

Bill Jackson’s love affair with automobiles began at Penn State in the 1950s, where his black Ford hot rod and later a Jaguar XK120 led to active roles in local car clubs and SCCA racing events. But his impact truly accelerated when he transitioned into journalism, becoming editor of Antique Automobile Magazine and later spearheading editorial roles across Classic Car, Bullhorn, and World Car Guide Magazine. His writing didn’t just document machines—it championed the people, places, and moments behind them.

During the fall meet in Hershey, Pennsylvania in October 1969, a group of enthusiasts gathered in Jackson’s office at the Antique Automobile Club of America. Their mission? To establish a national body that would nurture and preserve automotive history. That gathering birthed the SAH, and Jackson—then already a publishing veteran—was at the center of it all.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Jackson’s tales are humorous, poignant, and brimming with historic gems—from mock fire departments formed to secure museum insurance, to meetings fueled by dreams and stacks of brochures. He reminds listeners that automotive history isn’t just collected—it’s lived. Each anecdote is a testament to how dedication and community spirit can build enduring institutions.

Spotlight

Like most of us, William S. Jackson, became involved with automobiles at an early age. During the early 1950’s, he was a member Penn State University’s hot rod club, and in the mid-50’s he was racing in SCCA events with a Jaguar 120-M and some Morgans. After his military service, he completed his degree at Penn State and began a lifelong career in journalism. His editorship of major vintage car clubs magazines during the 1960’s and 70’s gives Bill credit as one the founders who launched the then-fledgling “old car hobby” turning it into the vibrant community and economic powerhouse that it is today.

Bill is a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians, founded in October of 1969. And during the Annual SAH Awards Banquet in 2023 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Bill presented his Auto-Biography to the banquet audience, including his recollections of the early days of the SAH; and the following recording was made by Bill, from that same script, in 2024.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Meet William S. Jackson
01:28 Early Days of the Society of Automotive Historians
04:33 Founding Members and Their Contributions
07:43 Bill Jackson’s Career in Automotive Journalism
10:07 Significant Contributions to Automotive Publications
11:35 Personal Stories and Reflections
17:12 Conclusion and Acknowledgements
17:49 Sponsor Message and Closing Remarks

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they get that job or become that person.

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Like most of us, William S. Jackson became involved with automobiles at an early age. During the early 1950s, he was a member of Penn State University’s hot rod club, and in the mid 1950s, he began racing in SECA events with a Jaguar one 20 M and later some Morgans. After his military service, he completed his degree at Penn State and began a lifelong career in journalism.

His editorship of major vintage car clubs, magazines during the 1960s and seventies gives bill credit as one of the founders who launched the then fledgling old [00:01:00] car hobby, turning it into the vibrant community and economic powerhouse that it is today. Bill is a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians, founded in October of 1969 and during the annual SAH Awards banquet in 2023 held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Bill presented his autobiography to the banquet audience, including his recollections of the early days of the SAH, and the following recording was made by Bill from that same script in 2024.

William S. Jackson: When I was approached by SAH past President Bob Barr and friend, and SAH, board member Dean Nelson, to be the speaker at our annual awards center in October, 2023, we ended up having a conference phone call and discussed what I might talk about.

We quickly discarded the idea of a serious automotive history topic, but rather address my history with the SAH. As it appears, I am the last one living of those who are in attendance [00:02:00] at that October 11th, 1969 gathering in my office in the then small national headquarters of the Antique Automobile Club of America, from which I produced the bimonthly edition of antique automobile for the club.

For historical accuracy. The photograph taken on that occasion was taken with all those attending outside the front doors, which led to both the Hershey Museum and the A A CA headquarters. It was located at the western end of the old Hershey Arena, an ice hockey arena that then the home of the Hershey Bears American Hockey League team.

How did the founding group get there? In the spring of 1969, friends and fellow automotive historians, g Marshall Nall of Newark, Delaware, and Richard b Brigham of Marietta, Georgia, had corresponded regularly on various automotive history subjects and commented on the need for a national organization, which [00:03:00] would bring together and expand, as well as give some organization to the field.

As a result, they decided to mail a questionnaire addressing the subject to about 75 of their acquaintances with similar interests. The results were very positive and even included the suggested name, the Society of Automotive Historians. My own response was printed in that first reorganization newsletter, number one, in which I ventured quote, I think this is an idea, long overdue.

We are still in the first generation of the automobile in this country. Yet if we do not glean this history within, at most the next 10 years, it will be in some part lost forever. In that letter, I also offered my office at Antique Automobile Magazine as a possible location for a first meeting to organize the society.

This during the Antique Automobile Club of America’s Eastern [00:04:00] National Fall meet in Hershey, the second weekend in October, a letter from Marshall Nall followed first noting I was pleased to receive your letter of the application with check for membership in this society. Was the first received. He then went on to say they were accepting my invitation and the initial meeting of the society was set for 10:00 AM Saturday, October 11th, 1969.

The meeting was held and resulted in the photograph being taken outside the entrance to the Hershey Museum. Of all those, attending the inaugural event past President Bob Maher has asked me to report what I know of each. I’m going to go from right to left as I know more about those on the left of the photo.

First, Glenn r Bachelor, a student of automotive history, and one of those working on what we simply called the list as we tried to identify all of the early automobile manufacturers [00:05:00] in America. Richard b Brigham with his wife Grace r Brigham, truly one of the co-founders of the Society. Guy p Sealey Jr.

And Charles W. Bishop. Two more of the early researchers on the American auto industry. G. Marshall Nall, the other co-founder of the Society, Herman l Smith from Canada, and a researcher on American cars manufactured in Canada. Bruce Baldwin, MOS of Madison, Wisconsin, who attended but never joined the society.

Bruce was the builder of the MOS safari car, but also the mo’s ostentatious sedan. He was there at my invitation showing an early race car at the A-A-C-A-B. Next John m Peckham automotive artist and graphic artist who designed some of the early SAH membership brochures. John paintings, one of a Mack truck, char Blank was included in John Monte’s [00:06:00] history of Mack Truck and paintings of a cord model eight 10 sedan and a Model j Dusenberg Boattail Roadster, which was never built.

Gordon B’s design appear in our book Rolling Sculpture. Then Henry Austin Clark Jr. Creator of the Long Island Automotive Museum in Sandy Hollow, New York, and builder of one of the largest and most inclusive automotive libraries and early literature collections in the country, two semi-truck loads when he went to the Henry Ford Museum following his death.

I could regale you with OTE Clark stories for the entire evening, but I’ll tell you just two. When OTE built the Long Island Automotive Museum, he immediately applied for fire insurance only to be told by several insurance companies. His museum was too distant from any fire company protection to qualify for coverage not to be deterred.

He applied for and received a state charter for the [00:07:00] Sandy Hollow Fire Company. Having a red model T Ford Coop chief’s car, an early American France ladder truck, and an early motorized pumper. He was immediately in inundated with calls and catalogs from companies wishing to sell him equipment, et cetera.

He got his fire insurance and ordered one chief’s badge and 50 captain’s badges. He then received a call from the badge company stating that, aside from the city of New York and the city of Los Angeles, it was the largest order for captain’s badges. And where was Sandy Hollow, New York wife. Rosemary and I are captains in the Sandy Hollow Fire Company, but that’s another story.

Secondly, when I was named editor of Antique Automobile Magazine in 1962, I was contacting all of the automotive writers, photographers, artists, historians, and libraries seeking their ideas and help. One I wanted to meet was [00:08:00] Austin Clark. I knew he was going to attend the a a c annual meeting in Philadelphia and planned to meet him there.

I was going to wait till after the annual banquet and speak to him. Then thus, I waited and waited and they were turning down the banquet room lights and he still had not emerged. I went in looking for him. It was the 50th anniversary year of Dodge and the Chrysler Corporation had reproduced the first Dodge brochure and one had been placed at every seat at the banquet I located Austin, making the rounds of all the tables, picking up all the Dodge brochures that had been left.

When he saw me, he simply said They’ll be paying me $5 a piece for these in a year or two. You’re Bill Jackson, and what can I do to help you? That brings me down to the last guy on the left in the picture, yours Truly, at the time, I was in my eighth year as editor of Antique Automobile Magazine for the [00:09:00] A-A-C-A-A stretch.

That was to end in June, 1970 when Rosemary and I purchased the nearby Hummelstown Sun Weekly newspaper and printing firm, changing it to the sun, quote, covering Hershey Hummelstown and lower DA county. However, it was not the end of my automotive magazine editing years as just months after purchasing the Sun.

The Classic Car Club of America came calling and I became editor of their classic car magazine for the next three and a half years. In January, 1980, I took over as publisher and managing editor of Bullhorn, the magazine for the Veteran Motor Car Club of America, which I produced for about next two years.

Other automotive publication contributions include my column Old Car World, which I did for the old competition Press and Auto Week from 1964 to 68, was Vintage car editor of World Car Guide Magazine, also 1964 to 68, [00:10:00] and did articles and photos over the years and Road and Track Motor Trend and Automobile quarterly.

Books thanks to Friend and longtime, SAH Secretary Charlie Bets, who was series editor. I did the Lincoln Continental, 1940 to 48 for an English publisher in 1967, was a contributor to the American car since 1775, published in 1971, did Rolly Sculpture, a designer, and his work with Gordon m Burrick, published in 1975 with a second edition in 2008.

A chapter on British car manufacturer, auto carrier AC in rural bertia when British Sports Cars Saved the Nation by John Nicholas in 2017. Activities in SAH. Due to other obligations I had, I never sought a position on the board of directors nor officer. As about the only Hershey area resident member, myself and [00:11:00] wife Rosemary were responsible for making arrangements for the SAH Annual Dinner and Awards presentation for the first 10 years, taken us from the Hershey Italian Lodge to the Mill Street Inn, and on to the Hershey Parkview Banner.

As our membership attending grew, also the printing division of my newspaper, the Sun printed some of the early SAH brochures as designed by John Beckham and edited by the secretary Charlie Betts. I could keep you here all day telling stories about the many SAH contributing members, but I’ll limit it to just two.

In June, 1970, when I was leaving the editorship of antique automobile and purchasing this son, a man by the name of Chester Krow visited my office explaining he was a publisher from Iola, Wisconsin and was planning to start a new publication dedicated to the auto history and collecting hub working title old cars.

He offered me the [00:12:00] editorship and invited Rosemary and I to visit Iola, giving us plane tickets to Green Bay where he picked us up and drove us on to Iola. We spent two days there meeting those who would be on my staff and touring the vast sprinting plan. We considered it, but the move to rural Wisconsin plus the bank’s approval to buy the Hummelstown sun led us to turning it down.

Mr. Raey was disappointed and asked me, where am I going to find another journalist that knows old cars and the hobby? I then told him I had been corresponding with this young man in Massachusetts who was producing a small, regional old car publication, and I thought he might be the answer. His name, David Brownell, and the rest is history.

Dave guided the creation of old cars, even enlisting Henry Austin Clark Jr. To write a column and oh yes, he also served a term as president of SAH. Secondly, you have to go back to [00:13:00] 1960. When Rosemary and I returned to Penn State for our master’s degrees in journalism, we were a small class and all got to know each other.

At the time, I was still active in Sports Car Club of America, hill Climbing, and the central Pennsylvania region. One of our class members was a girl who was majoring in theater arts and minoring in journalism. She had seen my 1957 AC Bristol Sports car, and it had stirred some interest, so we invited her to a party at our resident, which was mostly for our sports car friends.

She came and was totally fascinated by the cars. Fast forward to her graduation with a job lined up in New York City with a theater publication, which folded shortly after she got there. Thus, she went to the New York Times classified ad section and saw ad for a research assistant at a new automotive history publication.

Remembering how she had liked our car friends. She went for an interview. [00:14:00] The person running the ad was l Scott Bailey, and the research assistant he was seeking was to help him at Automobile Quarterly. The young lady got the job and thus began her fabulous career in auto automotive history writing, including the editorship of aq, the young lady’s name.

Beverly Ray Kimes, who also, like Dave Brownell, served a term as President of SAH. Of course, I take full credit for their mutual success in the automotive writing field and leadership of SAH. But how did I arrive at the position as Editor of Man Automobile Magazine? Like most likely all of you, I started as a car guy, booked on hot rods in the late 1940s.

This turned into a black lowered DRO three quarter race, engine 51 Ford, which went to Penn State with me where I became president of the Penn State Pacers, the only national Hot Rod Association chartered club [00:15:00] at a college east of the Mississippi River. Then I discovered sports cars and went Sports Car Club of America Road racing in 1955 with a 54 Jaguar XK one 20 M Roadster, and did that until I got drafted in June, 1957.

I found my career as a journalist in the Army as sports editor of the Eighth Infantry Division newspaper, the arrow. This prompted Rosemary’s and my marriage in 1960 and had our return to Penn State for master’s degrees. I conned my thesis committee into letting me do mine on the history of automotive journalism in the United States.

I did most of my research in the vast library of early publications at the Swaggart Museum in Huntington, pa. There. I met William e Swaggart museum owner and a board member of the Antique Automobile Club of America, one cold winter afternoon. When I was doing research in his archive, he visited and sent something like, [00:16:00] you really are dedicated.

How would you like to be editor of Antique Automobile magazine? I answered in the affirmative, and he just simply said, oh and left. Fast forward a little over a year later when I had been hired as editor of the Union County Journal weekly newspaper in Lewisburg, pa. My phone rang one night, and upon answering, the caller said, this is William Swagger.

Well, would you. I replied, would I what Mr. Swaggart? His irritated response was, would you like to be editor of antique automobile? Story was Editor l Scott Bailey had left the editorship of antique automobile to start automobile quarterly. This without much notice. As the A A CA board had pondered where they would find an editor.

Mr. Swaggart told him my story, and the board agreed to have then president Mail and patent and vice president for publications. Jordan Norton interviewed me. Long story short, I got the job as a part-time [00:17:00] position for the next six years, growing into a full-time job in 1968 with the stipulation I moved to Hershey and work out of a a CA national headquarters.

There you have it. While Rosemary and I sold the sun in 2007, we both still write for it as to SAH. My only contribution these days is providing material for editor Rubin Verde at the SAH Journal. Case in point, my article, what’s your autobiography in the March April issue in which I hope other SAH members will follow up with stories about a favorite car or automotive history happening.

So much. Thanks for listening, and I’d be happy to answer any questions.

SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. [00:18:00] The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.

And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little [00:19:00] as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit stop, mini SOS and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators.

Fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Though Jackson never sought titles or board positions within SAH, his behind-the-scenes contributions – from hosting annual banquets to printing early brochures -were instrumental. Today, his voice still echoes in the pages of the SAH Journal encouraging others to share their stories and preserve the narrative of car culture.

Jackson doesn’t just speak about history – he embodies it. His life reminds us that automotive storytelling is a collective endeavor, best told by those who lived it and loved it. If this presentation resonated with you, explore more of the Break/Fix Podcast and consider getting involved with the Society of Automotive Historians. After all, preserving automotive heritage starts with listening, learning, and telling the story forward. Because #everyonehasastory.

Become a member of the SAH!

The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH) is dedicated to the preservation and study of automotive history. It was founded in 1969 by people who shared a passion for automobiles and their historical significance. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

Photo courtesy of the SAH; by Michael Furman

From its inception, SAH has fostered research, documentation, and publication of automotive history by bringing together scholars, collectors, and enthusiasts. To learn more – or become a member – be sure to check out www.autohistory.org.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

A New Era for Michigan Motorsports

Motorsports

William Ross

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October 13, 2025

0

Michigan’s motorsports scene just got a major upgrade. The Motorsports Gateway Drivers Club has officially launched soft-open operations on its newly completed South Circuit at Motorsports Gateway Howell – marking a thrilling new chapter for driving enthusiasts across the region.

Unlike traditional track communities that hinge on property ownership, the Motorsports Gateway Drivers Club flips the model. Here, membership unlocks unlimited access to a purpose-built 1.7-mile, 13-turn road course designed with driver development in mind. Whether you’re chasing lap times or refining your technique, the South Circuit offers a safe, dynamic environment for open lapping, coaching, and exclusive member events.

Located in Howell, Michigan – just off I-96 – the track is the first phase of a 273-acre motorsports-anchored mixed-use district. And it’s just getting started.

From Vision to Reality: Development Timeline

The journey to this milestone began in winter 2023 with land clearing and grading. By fall 2025, the South Circuit reached operational status, paving the way for Drivers Club members to hit the track. Here’s a snapshot of the development timeline:

Winter 2023: Land clearing begins
Summer 2023: Grading completed
Summer 2024: Sub-base laid; vertical garage condo construction begins
Fall 2024: Asphalt paving begins
Summer 2025: Safety systems installed
Fall 2025: Soft-open sessions commence

Additional features under construction include a clubhouse, paddock, rentable garages, a vehicle service center, and livable trackside garage condos – creating a full-service motorsports lifestyle hub.

Turns 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8
Turns 3, 4, 5
Turns 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Turns 12, 13

Designed by Experts, Engineered for Growth

The South Circuit was crafted by Driven International, a UK-based design firm renowned for its work on Formula 1-level tracks. With ~140 feet of elevation change and a half-mile straight, the layout challenges drivers to master threshold braking, throttle control, and vehicle rotation. “The goal was to create a track that delivers a thrill for drivers of all levels,” says Jordan Dier, Head of Business Development. “Every element was intentionally crafted to help drivers gain a competitive edge.”

Building a Community, Not Just a Circuit

Beyond the asphalt, the Drivers Club is about connection. Brittnee Dier, Head of Business Operations, emphasizes inclusivity and growth: “Our members come from all backgrounds, united by a shared passion for performance and personal growth. We’re committed to expanding the sport and making sure everyone feels welcome.”

And as always, membership has it’s privileges… Drivers Club members enjoy:

Unlimited seat time
Free group coaching sessions
Daily guest and family benefits
Transferable/resellable memberships
Access to exclusive events and experiences

Whether you’re a seasoned racer or just discovering the thrill of performance driving, the South Circuit at Motorsports Gateway is ready to welcome you. With its world-class design, unlimited seat time, and a community built on passion and inclusivity, this isn’t just a track – it’s your new home base. Come experience the future of Michigan motorsports, where every lap is a chance to grow, connect, and ignite your love for the sport. And if you’re looking for the perfect vehicle to really enjoy laps at Motorsports Gateway, don’t forget to reach out to me at The Exotic Car Marketplace, and we’ll find that perfect ride!

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

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GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

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#44 Thalin (SWE) / Bergman (SWE) – Pro class (European rounds
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