That's the style rig Petty used until 1976. Somewhere I have pictures of Petty's first Semi, which he debuted at Daytona in 1976.
I'm responding to post 582 from Billybobdad. The Daytona charger in your post belongs to Joe Machado who painted it to look like Neil " Soapy" Castles race Daytona. Joe is a winged car fanatic and good friends of Neil. Joe along with myself and some friends drove back to Talladega in 1975 just after I got out of the Navy to watch the Talladega race. It was rained out and postponed a week so we missed it. That was the race that Tiny Lund was killed in.
This photo was taken at the Asheville/Weaverville NC track in March of 1957. 98 Marvin Pach 22 Fireball Roberts 87 Buck Baker 47 Jack Smith 8th qualifier is Joe Weatherly 4th and 10th qualifiers are factory Mercurys the 3 black 57's are factory Chevrolet racecars !st,2nd, 5th and 8th qualifiers are factory Ford racecars The 6th car in the outside row is Bill Morton ,100, of Church Hill TN. All of this information was told to me by his soon about 6 week ago.
Hope this one hasn't been posted before. Speedy Thompson on the beach/road course in 1955. From the number and logo, I'd say this is one of the Fish Carburetor cars...
here is a drawing i did of my dads ol starliner, i worked from a very damaged b/w photo..the pic was taken at the iowa state fairgrounds in 1960
I understand what you're saying, but I have no problem with someone making a comment. I miss Dayton, too. Although to be honest, it wasn't progress but a lack of success that shut down that track. Now it's a landfill.
A late notice. I just learned that Ray Callahan of Pekin, Ind., the founder of Bullitt Chassis, passed away in April. RIP.
I hated to hear that, John. My first late model was a Bullitt, and Ray and Brett were very helpful to me.
He was a good friend. He was the mechanic on Gerald Dixon's cars at the old Fairgrounds in Louisville, and I used to stop there often when I was a newspaper editor in Salem.
Roy Jr. - VERY happy to hear from you. Your father was a great friend and a terrific driver. We'd be honored with more photos of him. I remember when the Newmans and Roy switched to the '62 from the famous '58 Chevy, but I thought it was '64 when they changed the body. Thanks for the correction. Now that I think about it, that was in the years when we were offering a "new car" bonus in the feature payout, and everybody was converting when they could find a new body. If I recall correctly, Buddy Ward had a '61 converted to a '62 the year before, and everybody else was upset because it still had the "sun porch" '61 roof.
Awesome thread I just spent about 2 hours looking through it all. One famous picture that comes to mind I didnt see though was one I saw on some infomercial on these NASCAR DVD's of old nascars stories told by the greats..... I'm not sure when it was, where it was, or who it was but it was a black and white of a guy out running the flipping car he was just thrown from, apprently he walked away pretty much unscathed.....anyone know what I'm talking about or have a copy of the picture.
The Jalopy Journal
