green corvettes / race cars bad luck?

yeah....you know I WAS THINKING, I DID BUY A GREEN '95 CHEVY pickup and that truck was nothing but bad luck....and I bought it brand new. Broke the rear-end, truck slid out of my old girlfriends driveway into traffic in a winter storm, and I got busted in that truck for doing "something" with said exgirlfriend earning me a night in the hopkinton jail...I forgot all about that truck until now...i guess its all relative and whom you ask.....

 

About 1973 I helped a buddy turn a pretty nice '65 Mustang 2+2 into a dirt track car. Dark green metalic. 1st feature race he slammed into a car stalled against the rail rupturing the fuel cell and burned it to the ground.

No injuries, but his next car was orange. LOL

I'm not superstisious but have heard the green race car thing in different forms over the years. The 'stang was the only personal experience I have with the "curse".

 

Earl, That also applies to Dark Brown Corvettes. Dosn't matter how low the millage.

 

Is there an award, for bringing back the oldest post ?

 

my uncle race cars in the 70's and the first car he ever had was a green one. they har***ed him at the track because that was a tabooed color for them because the first driver that was killed on a track was driving a green car and he did have his shares of problem that season. not sure if that was true but so many at that track believed it or maybe the story was the first person killed at that track?. anyway we painted his next car after that yellow and he had gained so many friends overnight on the track and fellow drivers helped him so after that he never had a green car for the track.

 

Most times people make their own bad luck.
If I see a storm of bad luck coming, my instinctive reaction is to outrun it.

 

I was told when I was a young biker that green equals death because military motorcycles were green.

I'm going with that. But I'm only a little s***ious not supers***ious

 

Has anyone noticed this thread was started January 19, 2009. How much Bad Luck Green has happened to HAMB members since then? Zero for me, but then I happen to like Green. Bob

 

My paint scheme for the Anglia I'm building.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts.

 

You cannot make good or bad luck.

Luck is chance, uninfluenced by the direct intent of mankind.

Chance, when influenced by the direct intent of mankind, is called fortune.

You can indeed make your own good fortune, or misfortune.

 

How about Harry Luzader’s 32 coupe g***er. It won a lot of races and is still around.

 

Didn't seem to hurt the Kawasaki Racing program.

 

Our company colors are green and gold. No not because of the packers which technically is green n yellow but they call it gold for some blind reason. Our trucks were always imron green in the old days with gold rims and stripes, the color of money. We won't talk about how many blackcats we have running around outside here otherwise it might freak out the Ouija believers.

 

Didn't bother Lotus/Ford or Jimmy Clark Winning the INDY 500 in 1965.

 

Only time I have ever heard that supers***ion was in dirt track racing. I painted a buddies outlaw sprint car and we talked about that.

On that note, this was my dad’s green corvette before he painted it maroon…. It was wrecked a couple times when it was green.

 

My LSR race car has a 6 cylinder for power and I won’t allow a #6 pool ball on the shifter because it’s green…

 

With a name like "Irish Jack Murphy", green is my lucky color. A lot of the rods I've built were semi-flat black with green accents/accessories/rims...and I've had a blessed life. I'm one lucky, green lovin' suma*****. No bad luck here.

 

Hello,

We were the fortunate folks on the West Coast to see the record breaking “Green Monster” in the Summer of 1959. But, does the color green make it not so compe***ive or give off bad luck?
Lion's Dragstrip 1959
Information from 1959:
We saw the Green Monster #11 at Lion’s Dragstrip during July of 1959. They had traveled West to showcase some runs on various West coast dragstrips with Lion’s Dragstrip starting it off.

In the June 1959 edition of the Drag News Weekly paper, this large adverti*****t was shown.

Note: nice old bit of history from the Midwest...

Being upstart teenagers, we were into drag racing of all kinds. When we were told that Art Afrons was bringing the Green Monster out West to Lion’s sometime in 1959. We could not miss this event. The anticipation was tremendous. We were going to be able to see an aircraft powered motor in a race car going fast!!! Even our dad was intrigued. We were fighting for a front row position on the spectator’s side low fence. That was a ring side seat for us.

The two brothers standing with some teenage friends. Our dad in his suit and Dobbs Hat in the lower right of the photo.

The first thing we all saw was the largest 4 wheel trailer (90% of trailers were two wheel tilt trailers at the time) ever seen in our location at Lion's Dragstrip. This Red, heavy duty trailer was towed by the Light Blue Ford Pickup truck all across the USA. Everyone stopped what they were doing and came to the viewing area to see this “cool” race car run.
in the crowded pits getting prepped...
The first thing everyone noticed was that it did not have a lot of quickness off of the line and took a while to get moving. But, moving it did, sounding like the airplanes that flew over our house from the Long Beach Airport, on the way to Catalina.

If I had a zoom lens, the movies would have been life size. But, we adapt with what we have. It was a great place for an all day stay, as our 58 Impala was right behind us. A full cooler of my mom’s great cooking. But, it was still a short walk to get those famous, "Lions Pits" hot dogs and drinks.

Green Monster at Lion’s Dragstrip July 1959

The Green Monster was an unusual set up, not anything like all of the other dragsters that were racing during this time period. It looked like a pure homemade race car. (it was) The sound was like an airplane because it was an Allison v-12 airplane motor. It did go by in a flash and not as loud as the top FED + racers of the time. (Sidewinder, Kenny Lindley/Don Hampton, H&H Garage Lefty Mudersbach, Dragmaster, etc.)

"Number 11 was probably the best running of all the cars, but by the time of its performance, aircraft-powered dragsters were relegated to the exhibition cl***ification."

Real sound from the Green Monster: “the latest in original sound from 1959 Afrons Allison powered race car”

Afrons Allison Sound:


Jnaki
The starting "fire up" took up almost the whole 1/4 mile, but it was in front of all of the spectators, in anticipation...

No one was disappointed, although we wanted the race car to instantly go super fast. It started out with the firing up of the airplane motor and then slowly rolled out of the starting position. Then it took off like an airplane on take off at the nearby Long Beach Airport, except this one was going straight on the level dragstrip…

But, Number 11 Green Monster was the fastest, quickest, and most decorated of all of the long line up of Green Monster race cars built. No, the color green was not a hinderance… YRMV

NOTE:

These two Corvettes weren’t affected by the green paint… either…So Cal sporty car fanatics…

 

Le Mans ***igned colors to country of orgin. Italy: red, France: blue, UK: green. Bentley and Jaguar enjoyed a lot of success with cars painted British Racing Green...

The rumor about green motorcycles being bad luck (as I was told a long time ago) was if someone died from a motorcycle crash, the bike was painted green. Of course 90 thousand Harley 45s were painted O.D. green for WWII.

I suspect its all just supers***ion based on coincidence.

 

Perhaps. But one can tempt fate. The US Navy considers it bad luck to launch a ship on Friday the 13th and they didn't allow women onboard submarines until a few years ago for the same reason. I don't know about opening umbrellas inside, toasting with water, doing laundry on New Years Day, changing the name of a boat, putting a hat on a bed, gifting a knife, whistling indoors and re-painting bikes green but why tempt fate?

It may not sound very intelligent, but I believe in luck, both the good and bad varieties. I have been known to do bit of casino gambling, and I know a lucky streak when I see it. I also have seen coolers employed by the casinos to limit such events. I have a tendency, though, to believe in things I cannot see or prove, the result of 18 years of private education. Not very scientific I know, but what harm does it do? My mother p***ed but I still don't step on cracks, lest I trip and fall.

 

Correlation is rarely causation.

Humans evolved because some of our ancestors correctly ***embled incomplete data into a sign of danger. Others survived because the ***umption of danger was incorrect.

Correct, or paranoid, produced the same success.

 

You can ****yze until you are paralyzed but, in my case, I was informed about the color green being bad luck for Harley's 60 years ago. I have believed it for all this time and have never been down. I'm good with the supers***ion.

 

My brother and I back in the 70's, also tempted the racing Gods with our green race car. I wasn't content with just green, so, I put number 13 inside a 4 leaf clover.
Oh yeah... eventually the car got wrecked, but, so have many of the other non green race cars we've had since.

 

Green goes back to the early days of sulky racing (trotters). If a young horse broke stride (DQed), they would say he was too green. It stuck when the internal combustion contraptions can along....

Hey, it could be true, maybe.

 

interesting knowledge!!