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

Here ya go- Race Of Two Worlds-- Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8PiSTxlwE&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cr4frROeRo&feature=relmfu

 

Spike,
Wayne Woodward had to be the biggest theif you ever knew. His father could not hve been dead a week when he stole his old racing wovies from his mother. He got big bucks from a famous museumto restore a Indy roadster that he claimed he had and attemted to gather up some floor sweeping that he claimed were the car. when they found the pile he was long gone with their money.

 

He was working as a body shop manager at a Chevy dealership in Allentown, Pa. and had a shop of his own on the side. The story was that he was fired from the dealership for charging parts to them for his own body shop. Another rumor was that he had cashed some insurance checks for repairs to cars at his shop and then took off with the money.
Seems like Wayne wasn't one of the good guys.

 

His father's name was Brice I believe and the films in question were some of the best and rarest of early racing that ever existed; especially of early dirt tracks. I never got to see any of them myself but those that did were amazed at how good they were. It would be interesting to find out whatever happened to them. They would be in great demand by historians today.

 

Its really tough to find out more about his dealings!!! I also heard thgat he stole the car which belonged to URC big wheel Bill Bauer. That would take some really large ones; Bill had many friends in the right places. And he was a very decent member of the sport.

 

Is Wayne Woodward also the guy who got a court injunction against the Indy 500?

 

Tell us more about the Indy 500 and the court injunction. When, whatever, never heard about that.....

 

Not really my area of interest and I don't know what the involvement of this Woodward character had in it, but when the girls were fussing and fueding over their stupid CART vs USAC shit in the late 70s CART filed a court injuction against USAC for not letting them enter the 500.

 

I heard that Woodward had like five cars entered in the 500 that year; problem was that most were owned by other people, from what i was told. That was part of the arguement, but there was more to it.

 

Anybody know where to get a Stapp or Grant King spring front nose and hood? I know Speedway has Edmunds and a Beck spring front.
Thanks

 

I hate to talk bad about anyone BUT I never heard anything good about Wayne Woodward, from people on both coasts and all points in between

 

I could give you a list of over 100 racers that have personally had terrible stories to tell about Wayne. Just think about how many folks that I do not knowwho had run ins with him. He ran the Mighty Mouse sesco for Billy Meiss my friend, I have the car nowso he knew me well. I welcome many folks to see my stuff. I told him if I ever saw him near my place I would tear his throught out. At a vintage meet one time leading in an old sixty he blew the hoses of and ran two extra laps with the checkered flag and had that motor making noise for a half hour after the show. He brought me a comeplete sixty late. I always wondered where he stole it.

 

Rootie - Thanks for the films. OABGM - Thanks for the story. I love those old roadsters - especially on the high banks! I imagine the cars went over by boat? I wonder if each car had at least one rep with it for the trip - just to keep the other guys from "digging" around too much. I'll bet those Italians would have flipped if our guys had shown up with some sprints and ran on dirt. You have to hope that our boys not only got great Italian chow and wine, but some good ole Italian love, too.

 

BZNEIL, you should try Ralph Pruitt @ Iron Curtain Motors, he will have anything you need...717-347-7554

 

Yes, I'm sure they went by boat. There was over 2 months between pavement races in 58 so they had plenty of time to get them there and back. I believe that most stuff that gets shipped by boat has to be well crated or put in conex's so I doubt there was much snooping going on.

I've read several accountings by Sachs, Rutt etc. about the Monza deal and one thing they all seemed to mention was the high regard that racing drivers were held in. In Italy (and Europe in general) auto racing was truly a national sport and the drivers were held in about the same esteem as, for example, baseball players were over here at that time.

 

There are pictures of the cars being craned off the ship. Didn't appear to be boxed for transit.

 

After the 58 Monza race Ruttman stayed in Europe trying to get F1 rides. Had a local guy supposedly arranging to get him rides, but didn't get him much, except at the 58 French GP at Reims. Along with Phil Hill and Carrol Shelby he drove a Mazzy and finished in 10th I believe.

 

That must have been in 1957. In 1958 the cars were apparently shipped by air. I talked to an old mechanic that told me he and some others rode in a cargo plane with some of the race cars on the flight overseas for Monza in 1958. He said that he specifically remembered the Belond laydown car being one of the cars that he flew with.

 

That Wayne Woodward stuff is really interesting....would make a great book, or at least it's own thread on the Hamb....

 

For Easter

http://www.johnstarkeycars.com/pages/articles/articles_15.html

 

Actually it was the FIRST Monza race in 1957 that Jimmy Bryan won two of the three legs, 63 laps per leg, at Monza. Troy Ruttman won the final leg with Bryan second. Bryan was in the Dean Van Lines roadster and Ruttman in the John Zink roadster and while practicing for the race Bryan lost the wad of money out of the pocket of his driving uniform while circling the oval at 177 mph. I remember looking at a photograph of Bryan, with the race car parked on the apron, and he is climbing up the banking getting his money back.

 

Maybe in 58 it wasn't a group thing and the individual owners shipped them over any way they wanted.

 

Could well be what happened. The guy I talked to was with the Jim Robbins car that Sachs drove. And he said that there were several cars on the plane although I never bothered to ask any details. However, most cargo planes in 1958 weren't all that large anyway so unlike today there was no way that all of the cars could have been shipped together.

 

Here's another story I heard that kind of sums up Wayne's character. When CART first went to Mexico City at the end of 1980 they needed all of the cars they could get so Wayne put together a deal for a Mexican driver. And all of the CART teams met somewhere in Texas so that they could all travel together to avoid highway bandits which were a problem even then. But when the teams started to go through customs the Mexican authorities wouldn't let them cross the border because the paperwork for several of the teams (including Penske and Patrick according to the story) listing all of their cars and spares hadn't been properly notarized. The whole caravan was stopped at this point and it looked like they were going to be held up long enough to be late getting to the race. Out of nowhere comes Wayne telling Penske's team and everybody to give him their forms because he was a notary public and could fix everything. Of course, he wasn't a notary at all. What Wayne did was to pull out an old silver dollar that he carried around and using a ball peen hammer he embossed the forms with the coin and put his own "notary" signature on the forms. Some of the car owners had been called and were appalled at what Wayne had done but since they were running out of time they went along with it and the paperwork was resubmitted to the Mexican border officials who, amazingly, then approved the forms and let the CART caravan cross the border. At least in this case Wayne had saved the day.

 

BZ,I'm working on getting some info from Andy Stapp about a nose and hood for my Stapp or Stapp copy, Andy's helping on ID ing mine wether it's one of his Dads or a copy...................................Rich

 

Small [price to pay for all the people Woodward screwed up , not mention the bad name he gave the sport!!

 

I will second that recommendation.

 

This is the Tail that I used on my restored Beck Sprint car. It was from a Champ car and at the time I had no info regarding it so I resized it to the sprint car. I was reading a book about dirt champ cars from the 30's up to 1982 and found that # 17 was the number of the Smith Speed Shop Champ car. This tail was from that time period and from what pictures I have found they used the same type of script. If this was from that car I should have hung it up on the wall and found another tail. The #17 car has a ton of history by it self. If anyone has any pictures of this tail It would be greatly appreaciated. I know that Steve Kinser was one of the last drivers to drive this car in 1982.

 

Thanks! I will Ralph Pruitt a call. Rabs32, let me know what you find out. Thanks for the info.

 

Something for you here
http://www.indianaopenwheel.com/showthread.php?t=27613