In 1951, NASCAR was just starting to gain traction around the country as a viable spectator sport. However the leagues leader, Bill France, was frustrated with the big wigs of Detroit. Even though NASCAR was dominated by cars from GM, Ford, and Chrys... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Thanks, Ryan. I knew Tommy Thompson, and met a lot of those old racers through my career. I've sent a feedback about this. Like to do a column on Frontstretch.com about it.
Ryan - Cool post ... the Bill Callahan article was a good read ... thanks for sharing! ... and being a "HEMI guy", couldn't resist posting this from the website: Tommy Thompson. First to win a NASCAR event with a HEMI engine. Thompson was a top-flight circle track racer from Louisville, Ky. He was a Chrysler enthusiast through and through, driving them on the road and campaigned them on the track. He even installed two Chrysler HEMI engines in his houseboat to blow off the speedboats on the nearby Ohio River. A successful businessman, Thompson ran stock cars, midgets and sprint cars as a hobby, primarily on local tracks. He also competed in three NASCAR events each year at Darlington, Daytona and Dayton, Ohio. In 1951 he heard about a big NASCAR 250-mile race scheduled for August 12 in Detroit, Mich., as part of that city’s 250th Birthday Festival. The race was to run on the horse track at the Michigan State Fair on Woodward at 8-mile. The posted purse was $5,000—a big number at the time. With that incentive, Thompson found the time to prepare a car for the race. He bought a brand new 1951 Chrysler New Yorker Club Coupe, powered by the new 331 cu.-in. “hemispherical” engine (HEMI, today), and headed for Detroit. In the race, the vastly-superior power of the HEMI engine enabled Thompson to run up front all day as challengers dropped by the wayside. On lap 226 he survived a crash with NASCAR legend Curtis Turner that ended an intense duel when Turner’s Oldsmobile had to drop out of the race. The powerful Chrysler then cruised the rest of the way to victory. Thompson’s victory was significant notice that Chrysler now had lots of horsepower, in addition to legendary engineering. The HEMI was on its way to recognition as one of the greatest engines in history. Thompson takes the checker to win the Motor City 250 at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit. Thompson cradles the race trophy, accompanied by the sales manager of Packard Motor Company. He presented Thompson with the Packard pace car. Thompson sold it for $5,000 as soon as he returned home. Chrysler took Thompson’s beat-up race car and completely restored it for him. Photos courtesy Peggy Thompson.
... and this from the website: Hemi power won NASCAR's Motor City 250 DETROIT – The first Hemi-powered Chrysler racing victory came in the company ’s own backyard on Aug. 12, 1951, at the NASCAR Motor City 250. Howard W. “Tommy” Thompson, driving a new 1951 Chrysler New Yorker powered by the 331-cubic-inch Firepower V8, won a wild, late-race duel with the legendary Curtis Turner. The two smashed into each other, damaging Turner’s Olds 88. Turner tried to take his steaming car to the end, but he had to give up, finishing ninth after leading 92 laps. Thompson led 58 laps on the one-mile dirt track near Woodward Avenue and Eight Mile Road in Detroit, finishing 37 seconds ahead of Joe Eubanks. The third-place finisher was six laps behind in a race where the average speed was just 57.5 mph. Thompson’s crew chief was Wild Bill Cantrell, the famous unlimited hydroplane pilot and winner of the 1949 APBA Gold Cup. Thompson, who won $5,000, made just three pit stops for fuel and tires in the four-hour, 20-minute race and never lifted the hood on the reliable Chrysler. The event was held on the Michigan State Fairgrounds horse racing track to commemorate the city’s 250th anniversary (the day in 1701 that the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed at Detroit). Thompson's Chrysler leads as the stock car racers skid around the horse track at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. It was a golden opportunity for NASCAR co-founder Bill France to put on his stock car extravaganza in front of the automobile industry, and the idea worked like a charm. Many auto industry executives got their first look at this new form of racing as more than 16,000 fans who were packed into the fairgrounds stands cheered for 15 different makes of cars. In 2006, at a car show held on the grounds of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich., Tommy Thompson’s daughter donated the Motor City 250 winner’s trophy that her father had won to the museum. At the presentation, she and Museum Manager Barry Dressel stood next to a 1951 Chrysler Saratoga Hemi. PHOTO: Richard Kavanaugh That car was painted like one that Bill Sterling had raced in 1951's grueling 1,900-mile La Carrera Panamericana, known in the U.S. as the Mexican Road Race. Sterling won the stock class and finished third overall behind a Ferrari. That race was one of the last long-distance events run over public highways and had been organized to celebrate the completion of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway, a massive road project desinged to link the Americas. It was run in multiple stages over a six-day period in November and traversed the length of Mexico. Cars came from all over the world to compete, and the event was particularly attractive to U.S. car manufacturers as a durability showcase for their cars. When the marathon finally ended, Sterling was just over 12 minutes behind the Ferrari 212 piloted by Formula One World Champion Alberto Ascari and 20 minues behind the winning Ferrari team car, driven by Piero Taruffi and Le Mans winner Luigi Chinetti. Sterling led five other Chrysler to the finish, including a Hemi Saratoga driven by Indy 500 star Tony Bettenhausen. Earlier that same year, in February, Mechanix Illustrated magazine's car tester, Tom McCahill, had taken a new Chrysler New Yorker V8 to the sands of Daytona Beach where he won the NASCAR Speed Week trophy as the fastest stock American car. In spite of the rough and sticky condition of the sand, and what he called a "stiff 25-mile quartering wind," McCahill managed to average 100.13 mph in his two-way run. Even though it had to propel a heavy car (McCahill's New Yorker weighed 4,250 pounds) with barn-door aerodynamics, the Hemi engine gave the big Chrysler excellent performance. The engine produced 180 hp, impressive in those days.
... and this video: <object width="640" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QDhP33alrcI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QDhP33alrcI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="505"></embed></object>
Thompson takes the checker to win the Motor City 250 at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit. The crowd control and the safety barriers were a little less "PC" back then. I wonder how good the promoters "public liability insurance" was. The last time I personally got that close to the action as a spectator was at a "street race" Good stuff Here
Balls to the wall pure agressive racing is what got all of us hooked on NASCAR back in the day. 58 cars on a one mile dirt track, have at it boys! Ladies in dresses, neckties and fedoras, belts and ropes on B-pillars and hood ornaments, great snapshot of early 50's racing. Thanks Ryan, and thanks HEMI32 for the additional stuff, esp. the footage of the Thompson/Turner melee.
"No, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a source of lively hood." Great post and even better comments. Thanks everyone. -W
Burly......... we have a local track here at Cuy County fairgrounds. My M.I.L had a bo that raced there. I was lucky enough to score her 8mm reels of 32 5-windows getting destroyed there ! By 1960 the racing at county fairgrounds was history. thanks for the post Ryan, And 32
Great old picture of the fairgrounds in Detroit. I remember as a kid they would broadcast the races on TV. All local racers I guess, no big names.
to bad this was before my day..... i am glad to see some of detroits history, esp in nascar i got to run on detroit dragway the last year they were open, kind of ment alot to me as my dad won several trophies back in the late 60's thanks for posting this info
Cool article! I'm always happy to see Detroit history. Check out my post. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=432795 Not the same event but, the photos were taken at the same fair grounds.
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