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

Roy??? Were waiting?




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Rieder built a midget that was awesome. It was #81 Nokie Fornoro won more than his share of ARDC features with the car.

 

will tell ya next time I see ya it's a long story about Tom Carnegie mispronouncing PANCHO's name on the PA at the Speedway, also Calling him Dana, (Pancho's brothers name) and the televised awards banquet after the 500 one year

 

Spike,
If you send me your address on my private message board, I will send you a copy.

 

Joe;
Im doing that now; thanks much; people like you make me very proud to be part of it even if only a small part..
Racers are the greatest, bar none!

 

according to Steve Stapp this is Hatfield PA. and was also he and his wifes first date, her exact words were "he flipped for me on our first date"

 

Roy;
Thats a good one; very brave lady. Was she from CA., the Indy area, or this area around Hatfield?
BTY, McElreath was lucky to escape his wreck that night! That Offy was partly out of the chassis when it stopped.

 

I got to meet McElreath last march at Lloyd Rubys funeral, class act.

 

Just returned fom the Vintage Sports Car Clubs 75th annivesary hill climb at the prestigious Prescott venue.This race track is owned by the Bugatti Owners Car Club.Cars must have been built and raced 'pre war'....and this really is a big bucks type of event.....but what did I see in the pits,a good old American sprint car....this thing ran hard,and showed the way to some very expensive cars.The guy did not know a great deal about the car and bought it because it qualified for entry.I think it was running a modified model B Ford motor,and I recognised the 40 Ford brakes...what a cool car. The little Austin runs a supercharged 750cc motor and pulls about 130 bhp....hope my street sprint has a little more room...

 

Racer5c-

on another forum RFTP, they have asked where this car came from before going to Tulsa. You told me , but the braincell got misfiled

 

It belonged to my step dad John Capels, He built it at Grant Kings shop, if you notice the cage is taller than a standard King Car. Their are a few other changes that my step dad made that aren't as obvious It was a very succesful car, in 1978 PANCHO Carter won 2 of the 4 races it ran in finished 4th and 9th in the other two. in 1979 their were only 3 races, he ran 4th 6th and 3rd in it. 1980 there were 8 races they had 2 seconds a third, won at Springfield, 12th at Williams Grove, and two 5th place finishes. Bill Vukovich jr. drove it also, and I am not sure if anyone else did before it was sold To Lloyd Stephans for Ron Shuman to drive. Josh the frame from that car is the one we saw at John Godfrey's shop Dunno if you remember but I was sure it was the car, my step dad went out there a month or so later and talked to Godfrey and it was that car, oh yea Josh the mag I tried to get you to buy came out of that car.

 

From the sixties out west
aXe

 

another from Kearny Bowl also known as Airport spdwy.aXe

 

Dean Holden was great in Hardtops and even better in midgets .died to early of a Brain tumor
aXe

 

Does anyone have information on this sprinter? It was owned and driven by Ted Young from West Milton, PA. Ted's partner with the car was Terry Gonzales who owned Gunzey's Mobil Station in West Milton. Ted drove the car at Selinsgrove and Port Royal in 1971 and possibly 1972. Around 1972 they removed the engine, trans, and rear from the car. The car then sat outside next to Gunzey's Mobil for a time prior to the car being sold. Gunzey's Mobil Station is now a car repair garage and is painted tan. I would appreciate any information regarding who may have purchased the car, or if anyone remembers the car running after 1972.

FYI, Dave Calehuff owned and drove the car prior to Ted Young (same blue color and # 87). Dave rolled the car at both Selinsgrove and Port Royal. The photo sequence of the Port Royal accident appeared in "Stars and Cars" 1970 edition.

Thanks for your help.
Al

 

Speedrome 87...Munchkin...with a respectable finish from racer5C
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq18ZL300p0&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div

 

Damn Munchkin

 

I lettered the Miller-Radtke Special today.. Mike Whitney (Richcraft Mike) and I spent all last week building and fitting the hood and hood sides. (Without the car!) It leaves for B-ville Tues..

I wish them luck.

JD

 

Roy, the Munchkin was my favorite midget. We used to park in Speedway at the home of the Fedorchaks.
What made that car so fast and wasn't it outlawed?

ZOOOM

 

Tony Stewart owns it now and still races it and wins.

 

There are actually a few of them, he even had a long track version that he ran at IRP it was very light, it had a ton of offset, it had a very low c/g, I only said damn munchkin because if he wouldn't have been there that night I woulda won a nationally televised race. Fedorchek is/was a real smart guy, the first time he unloaded it at Speedrome, everyone in the place was laughing at it, everyone except me, I told em laugh now cause you won't be laughing very long, it really looked like a little supermodified if you didn't get drawn into looking at the boxy body work. If I remember right him and Mike Streicher built some a few years later for other customers too, I know Fedorcheck sold a few on his own for sure.

 

Thought you might enjoy this story about the FINAL race at the Joliet Stadium -- Bruce


One Last Ride For A Legendary Race Track
by Mike Kerchner — last modified 2009-07-28 05:49
MILWAUKEE

What started as a casual conversation during a ride to a Chicago Blackhawks game last winter has led to the return of midget auto racing for one final time to Joliet (Ill.) Memorial Stadium.

The Joliet Park District built the 10,000-seat stadium in 1951 for high school and college football. The following spring, the first midget race was run at the facility. Racing became a Saturday night tradition at the quarter-mile paved track (cinder covered with dirt until 1964). Dennis DeVea won the stadium’s 427th and final midget feature Aug. 30, 1986.

This fall after the final football game is played, the pavement track and the grass football field will be torn up and replaced with a new Olympic-style running track and an artificial turf playing field. Joliet Catholic, Joliet Junior College, the University of St. Francis, several youth programs and a semiprofessional team, the Joliet Buccaneers, play football games at the stadium.

On Sept. 11-12, the United Midget Auto Racing Ass’n will sanction the last auto-racing event ever at the famed facility. The event will include midgets, but a full list of divisions will be released shortly.

A lot has changed since DeVea’s victory in the landscape of midget racing in the Chicagoland area. Gone are traditional tracks like Sante Fe Speedway (Hinsdale) and Raceway Park (Blue Island). UMARA became the area’s sanctioning organization in 1987, putting an end to the colorful reign of Bob Tezak, founder of the famed UNO card game. The series now runs regularly at Grundy County Speedway in Morris, Ill.

Jim Anderson (2008 UMARA champion), Joliet Park District President Dominic Egizio, Mike Guglielmucci and UMARA announcer Joe Kirkeeng began discussing ideas on the way to a Blackhawks game. At first, the idea was to run a midget one last time around the track for a publicity photo. Discussions continued and now the track has been approved by K & K Insurance to host one last weekend of racing.

“It’s so great. I grew up there watching my father’s cars compete and my mother ran the concession stand. I now live only one mile away from the track. I can’t wait to finally race on the track,” said Anderson.

The facility is one where you can feel the history and see what midget racing was like 60 years ago when so many tracks were built around football fields. The stadium gives the current generation a small idea of what the sport looked like when running at such venues as the Rose Bowl, Chicago’s Solider Field and the Polo Grounds.

Past feature winners at the track read like a who’s who of midget racing.

“It’s a rare chance for a whole generation who haven’t seen or raced at the track to have one last race at the famed track,” commented Bill Fries, UMARA public relations director. “The event should have something that will appeal to every fan. We have a lot of special guests and events planned for the two days.”

Today’s midgets will be very entertaining to watch on the quarter-mile track, along with the battle for what will be the track’s final feature winner. Many drivers who have been retired for several seasons are currently searching for rides for the event.

I’ve been at the final events at Ascot Park (Gardena, Calif.) in 1990, two years earlier at Baylands Raceway (Fremont, Calif.) and Hales Corners Speedway (Franklin, Wis.) six years ago, to name a few.

It’s only fitting this historical venue gets the send off it never received 20 years ago.

 

Regarding Ted Blair's championship car, it was the former Vargo Special in which Dick Linder, Van Johnson and Hugh Randall were all killed. A Kurtis 4000, formerly Belond Special and then Traylor Special. Blair campaigned it with URC as a sprinter in 1965. Carried it to races in a converted school bus. Blair's two previous sprint cars both used Chrysler engines; I believe the champ car-sprinter also had a Chrysler. I only saw it at one champ dirt race, at Syracuse, I think. As I remember USAC wouldn't let it run. Apologies for quality of photos below, all from very tired 8 mm movies of URC shows. I only shot movies in 1965. Blair is sitting on the tire in the fifth photo.

 

The pictures of the old "Vargo Special" in its later incarnation were kind of eerie to me. Gus Linder(*icks brother) achieved his fame driving a sprinter
with that number,painted in the same graphic style. I do not believe he is aware of the champ car numbered this way. I wonder whatever became of the car after these photos were taken? John S.

 

CornGrower, the #907 looks terrific. You did a fabulous job. What record/speed are they going for?? What class does that car go into??
mlight9.

 

The whole deal is very eerie to me! As a teenager i spent some time hanging out at Jakes farm and shop. As each fatal happened with that car, we all got kinda paranoid.
Then one day i was told that Jake took the torches to that frame, cut it up and buried in the big pasture behind his shop!
I did race with this "Blair" car at Bedford, PA. Wimpy Ervin drove it that day. It was painted that same red, but had no numbers; go figure!

 

Tom Bigelow leading the field at the Iowa State Fair 1965:

 

Those are some interesting headers on that car.