History Historic Stock Car Photos

Indy.....this is from our neck of the woods. Where the likes of Trickle,Marzofka,Refner,Marcis, and many other cut their teeth. I will be posting some more from this era that raced with him in the next few weeks.

 

Glad to hear that, lostspeedway. I loved those guys. And I loved our trips to Wisconsin with ASA. As I've said before, the only problem with racing up there for a weekend was that you had to walk real careful for a few days after you came home. If you fell down you were afraid you'd break your liver.

 

Yes Sir. Some things never change. It's still the same way now.

 

A COUPLE THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT :
Below is a photo of a couple cars that someone stated working on but never finished. #27 is a 58 Ford and the other is a 54 Chevy. They sat in a field just outside of Black River Falls Wi. for decades. And then just like that,,,,,they were gone.

 

sort of ot but anybody going to the Snowball Derby?? I am Debateing about carring a openwheel car..

 

A few pics from my personal surfing around the web collection....I can only take credit for liking them....starting with the worlds bitchenist Nova.....

 

and a tribute to my favorite race car driver of all time......
first pic is displayed front and centre in my shop....the way it is situated in the shop it looks like he's eyeing up the Chevelle....lol

 

Below is a Nascar Late Model Retro into a Vintage Racing Series Competitor. Ken Hutchens is the owner. This Retro made its Debut at the Oktoberfest Races in West Salem Wi. at the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway in 2010.


Below is the cut,strip,and rebuild



Time to hang the sheet metal. Notice the left over door skin hanging on the wall from Gary's Auto Body. Gary Kniseley did a lot of racing at the Black River Falls Speedway in the mid 60's


Lookin Great !!


At the Track in West Salem Wis. The Oktoberfest Races 2010 was the debut of the Darrell Waltrip's #88 Retro Vintage Racing Series Competitor.

 

That thing is COOL!
Any issues with wheelbases between the two cars??

 

OH YEAH! That's what I'm talkin' about!!! Do they need a fat old crippled PR man that works cheap?

 

bumpnrun ...the NASCAR Late was a 105" wheelbase..we just slid the rearend back to a 110"..moved the weight jacks,longer trailing arms and driveshaft. The tough part was making a rusted '73 Chevelle look like a '75 Laguna.

 

Bonner had BBARC on his cars but on the 57 chevy it stood for Bradleys instead of Bonners. The 57 was before Bonners racing time.. After SEDCO shut down Paul McDuffie and Bradley Dennis built the 57 chevy race cars at Atlanta Tune Up Service. I was told this a while back by Roz Howard a race car driver from the atlanta area. I hope this clears up a few things.. Bobby...

 

I hope I don't come across as sounding too much like a dumb-arse by asking this, but is this car a stock car or a modified? We have both stock cars and modifieds here in New Zealand but they're quite different to what you have, particularly the stock cars which are built as full contact cars, ie, they purposely hit each other, and so are more heavily armed.

But this car looks like many of the cars on the 60s-70s Vintage Oval Track Modifieds thread. And what was the difference between the two at this time, which looks early to mid 60s?

 

Further to my post above, this is NZ Stock Car racing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04sWpzcUPTc&playnext_from=QL&feature=bf_play&playnext=1

Full contact racing as you can see. The name is the same, but just about everything else is different.

 

that's awesome!

 

From the Black River Falls (WI) Speedway...Rapid Roberts Ramblin Rose. Driven by Bob Onstad in the mid 60's. Car was built by Don Scallen Sr. This raced against the likes of Dick Trickle,Marv Marzofka,Dave Marcis,Tom Refner,Moose Peterson,Gary Kniseley, and many others. BRF Speedway was a Quarter Mile flat track that ran from 1961 to about 1967. Although it was short lived, it was rich in history.

 

Depended on what part of the country you were from. This type of car morphed from what was called stockcars. This is a NASCAR modified from the southeast. One of the rules was the cars had to have at least partial fenders where as the northeast cars did not. Also they could have only a certain percentage of engine setback where as the northeast cars only had to have the engine in front of the driver. In the Kentucky, Indiana and ohio area anything using a stock type body was called a stockcar. We called modifieds anything with homemade frames and bodies usually with carburators and three quarter ton rearends, spindles Etc. Super modifieds usually ran with injectors, quick changes, six pin wheels, wings, Etc and started to look more like sprint cars.

In 1969 I ran a couple of races at Whitehouse Ky. and there was a 37 Chevy northeast modified with a 292 six cylinder. A car with a 57 Chevy frame , injected 327 and a Crosley body shoved all the way to the rear with the drivers head and rollbar sticking out through the roof. They were billed as Stockcar races but anything went as long as it had a stock type body. There was a 59 Thunderbird convertable with a 430 Loncoln that was said to be an old NASCAR. A couple of 55-57 Chevies with no front fenders or hoods and big blocks in the front seat. Also a car with a 57 Plymouth frame and a Hemi where the driver should have been with a 52 ? partial Plymouth fastback body. They were still called stockcars in this area but would have been modifieds in the northeast.

The only full contact on purpose cars I know of here is the demolition derby cars. I have watched some of the races from your country and England where the cars are called bangers. It sure is a different and exciting type of racing where destruction is the name of the game. Wrecking is expected. Here We don't deliberatly try ro tear up our equipment. Even in our figure eight races the idea is to win the race without destroying the car.Allstarracing

 

In the USA in the 60s, things were changing a lot around the race tracks. Racing was very much a contact sport, though it was growing up a bit by then. Delibertly crashing someone into a wall was usually not a commonly accepted move, though it happened at times.

Tracks around the USA mostly had different rules and many had several "classes" of cars they raced. Some areas of the country may have had a few tracks with rules that could allow a class or two of cars to compete at those tracks, but often the classes and rules were different at most tracks. Rules at most tracks tended to be regional.

Or, let me put it this way, within 60-70 miles of my house there was at least 15 tracks, some paved some dirt, that raced on Friday, Sat, or Sunday. There may have been 5 or even 6 of those tracks that any particular car could race at under the rules, but each track may had had some specific rules covering the car age or the level of performance. At some tracks, your car may fall into different classes depending on how it was built. Since you couldn't be 2 places at the same time, you picked tracks you ran better at on a given race day. Some tracks were a bit rougher then other tracks, and the lay out of the tracks were all different, a car may handle good at one track and not so good at a different track, and some drivers didn't adapt well to some tracks.

There was one track in our area that was a small short track. It tended to be hard on cars, but the racing was good and the track paid well. If you raced only there, you tended to build the car a bit tougher. One of the other tracks had long straights and wide open turns. It required a fast car and was pretty easy on the bodies. Cars built just for that track tended to be light high power cars. If you raced at both tracks, the car was built somewhere between the two extremes. The cars that raced east of where we lived were different then the cars that raced west of us, and both of those were different then the cars that raced south or north of us. If you had a hot car, sometimes you could haul it a 100 miles from home and fit into the rules at some track and really kick some butt, or have your butt handed to you.

There were a few racing organizations that had consistent rules in a large area or nation wide, but they were few. Gene

 

Hey Allstarracing, I tried PMing you about something, did you see the message?

 

In my Northeast upbringing that is a Modified....

 

Hey guys, thanks for the explanations. The youtube footage I listed above is from whats known as a Teams event. Basically, it comprises two teams of four cars. They have to race over a given number of laps, and either the team with the first car across the line or the team with the most points gained from their finishing positions wins. So each team has runners and blockers; the runners try to win the race, the blockers try to eilimiate the runners. It can be pretty spectacular.

But thats not typical of most stock car races here. The NZ championship is held over just one meeting of three races, and the driver at the end of the three races with the most points wins. So you need a fast car. Drivers contract to different clubs around the country, and so if a driver has done poorly in the first couple of races and doesn't have a shot at the title, he'll try and eliminate drivers from other clubs who're doing well on points, to help their own club mates. It can be pretty spectacular.

The engine size limit is quite small, just over 240ci, which I think was first introduced in the 60s when a lot of guys were running Flatheads. But now they run quad-cam Toyota and Nissan V8s, plus the Fords and Chevys etc, and they're getting over 500hp from them. The cars are bloody expensive too, despite the beating they get. But it is quite different to what you guys have there. Which is why I asked the question.

So if I was looking to try and find an old Chevy coupe like the car above to restore, should I be searching for both stock cars and modifieds, given there are a lot of similarities throughout different areas?

 

Vintage racing retro
NVRA
http://www.nvraracing.org/
is going to have A Grand National Division next season.
Illinois Vintage racing http://www.illinoisvintageracing.com/index.php
has some good looking full body cars & Fast as Heck.

Hey Potts Looking for few more photo of this car, I thinking about painting the old merc this way. need to know the back half color.

 

Great picture!! I'll have to tell Tom Reffner of this H.A.M.B. web pages! Edsel racer the picture you put on 6-17-10 the 77 car is the Below brothers, I think that how you spell it. One of the men on the picture is my wifes uncle we think. We are going to try to get some more photos from her aunt. Her uncle ran a hemi coupe back then. And I own the last Blue Knight of Tom Reffners, I saved it from going to the junk pill by one day. The winnest Back car will live again. The Backs are my wifes relation.

 

wow,some absolutely fantastic pic´s and history in this thread!can´t believe I just browsed thru 194 pages...

 

That shot was taken at a Modified / Sportsman race at Trenton – that was a northeastern modified.

 

Ray was 1 of my Favorites >>>>.

 

James, if I remember right the back half was a yellow color. Maybe Frank can help. The Mercury would look good in that scheme.

 

i think it was school bus yellow back with white front and red #s deasy used this color scheme except the front was black

 

The picture is of Trenton as you say and some of the southern cars ran up north but Hendricks ran a lot of NASCAR races at Martinsville Etc. My point was usually the northeast modifieds had less rules than the southern type I.E. no fenders required and a lot more engine set back. Also NASCAR mandated the interiors had to be sealed from the engine and gas tank compartments. Some of the northeast cars had barley floor boards under the driver. Not all but most of the rules seemed to be more lax. That is why most of the southern modifieds had the original or most of the original firewalls. Where as a lot of the northeast cars the rear injectors were back at the a pliller. Also the southern cars most places had to maintain a stock wheel base . That is why the southern cars look more stock dimensioned than their northern counterparts. The northern cars started to scoot the bodies and engines back long before the southern cars. There are pictures on the H.A.M.B. modified site showing nort and south cars running together in the sixties and seventies and you can notice the differences. Suttle but noticible. Both types are my favorite cars as for inovation and engineering. the northern cars progressed faster than the south because of the difference in rules. Coupes at Syracuse and such are the boss. Allstarracing

 

Yes the back half was yellow but I think signal yellow or Dupont Industrial yellow.. Isn't this the Paul McNear car? Ray crain built three painted like this. Butterball drove one and I think Bob Miller got hurt in one when the cage collapsed after being hit directly in the drivers door at the Sportsdrome. He still wanks with a limp. This maybe the same car as I seem to remember McNear didn't race for a while in this era for health reasons and Miller might have been substituting for him. A long time ago and memmories are fuzzy. Allstarracing