Race Car Stuff

In a recant article in USAToday, they wrote about 10 car museums to revive your interest in cars. In reading the article I was somewhat familiar with almost all of these places. So I thought I would say something about them.

1)Petersen Automotive Museum
Los Angeles - http://www.petersen.org
This is probably the premier auto museum in the country according to most people. My knowledge stems from the Shelby and Cobra focus on parts of the museum. The museum rotates exhibits with regularity, so if you have seen it before, it will be different next time you go. If you are in the area, this is one not to be missed.

2)National Automobile Museum
Reno - http://www.automuseum.org
This is the old Harrah’s Collection, trimmed down, better organized, displayed and maintained. At one time Bill Harrah had the largest collection of cars in the world. After his death, the car collection business was not a great one to be involved in. So many of the lesser cars were auctioned off to maintain the collection. Today the collection itself is part of history. Worth seeing, but it has been critisized for not having many “great” cars. But what one considers great is not what another person considers great. I do wish the entire collection was still together, just to pay tribute to someone who so loved these cars. It has been said that he coveted each and every car he bought, no matter how average it might have seemed to some.

3)Harold E. LeMay Museum
Tacoma, Wash. - http://lemaymuseum.org
Another collection that was the largest private collection in the world at a different time. But the timing was better for this museum, and it is still mostly together. There are some fine quality cars, and the collection itself is also a piece of history.

4)Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village
Dearborn, Mich. - http://www.hfmgv.org
The collection brought together in honor of the man who put us all on wheels. Henry Ford changed the world more than any one individual on the planet, for better or worse. This is an American history museum with a transportaion and manufacturing focus. There are so many notable artifacts of history that you can’t begin to mention them all. To the racing fan there are some of the first race cars including the first Ford, Old 999. There is of course the first Mustang prototype, and the first production Mustang, and the last Mustang (and last car) to roll off the old Rouge Manufacturing Assembly Plant Line. There is the bus where Rosa Parks refused to get up, Kennedy’s assasination Limo. The Rouge assembly plant is part of the museum, probably the largest machine in the world. Just literally amazing.

5)Montana Auto Museum
Deer Lodge, Mont. - http://pcmaf.org/auto.htm
This is actually the one museum on this list I don’t know much about. I know it was built on an old prison facility, and it is rumored to have a great collection of 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s muscle cars. Maybe I should make the effort sometime.

6)Auto Collection, Museum of Science & Industry
Chicago - http://msichicago.org
Again a great museum of American history and industry, with a special focus on their great car collection. I tend to think of this Museum for its space exploration collection, but I guess it has expanded the car collection. It does have Craig Breedlove’s Spirit of America land speed record car.

7)Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum
Speedway, Ind. - http://indianapolismotorspeedway.com/museum
Indy has become the world racing capitol (with the exception of the 2005 US Grand Prix). The history of all sorts of racing is focused in this museum. There is the first Indy 500 winner, along with many more current winning cars. A tour of the museum also includes a tour of the most famous race track in the world, something not to be missed. Imagine the names that have crossed the yard of brick at the start/finish line.

8)The National Corvette Museum
Bowling Green, Ky. - http://corvettemuseum.com
As the name implys, this is the Mecca of Corvette’dom. You can arrange to have your new Corvette picked up from the museum floor. They will build your car in the plant adjacent to the museum, and put it in display. Then you get to drive it off the display and take your baby home. Needless to say one of every Corvette of significance is in this place.

9)Eastern Museum of Motor Racing
York Springs, Pa. -
This is the Northeast museum of racing. The unique oval track racing that exists in this part of the country is on display here, along with a sampling of vintage cars from other disciplines of racing.

10)The Owls Head Transportation Museum
Owls Head, Maine - http://ohtm.org
This is also a transportaion museum. I know of Owl’s Head as a place with a notable lighthouse (something else I sort of pay attention to), but they have a really nice museum to all forms of transportaion. For me, they have the second well known Mustang pre-production prototype. This car is one of he significant pieces of Mustang history. Their focus is on very early automotive history. Some very significant. They have one of the 8 or so Stout Scarabs which is the predecessor to the modern day min-van.

Of course I think a couple were left out that should be included. So watch here for a feature on the displays and collections that I think should have been included. If you visit any of these places, I would love to hear what you though about it.

The “flying” Ford Anglia used in the Harry Potter films has been stolen from a film studio lot, police said on Friday.

“For those who have not seen the Harry Potter films, this is the car that flies in the movies and is very well known,” a police spokesman said.

More: Harry Potter Car Stolen

Wonder how long before it shows up for sale on Ebay?

The past Saturday I planned to travel out to Virginia International Raceway and meet up with some of my old friends that I get to see occasionally, the Mazda Sports Car Club of North Carolina. When I got my first RX7 a few years ago, somehow I stumbled on their internet mailing list. I managed to get on the list and got to know these guys. My first experience with RX7 mailing lists had been what the RX7 people refer to as “The Big List”. My initial (and short lived) impression of the big list was the primary subjects related to stereo intallation and who was the biggest jerk. I had recently bought a new car that I knew very little about, I needed to know how to keep it running. The MSCCNC guys seemed like a bunch of guys that had RX7’s and Miatas and discussed what they needed to keep them running properly and take them to various track events. I knew I would fit in OK with these guys.

Long story short is that they accepted me into their group, even though I lived in Virginia, not NC. I guess that was OK since their big events seemed to center around Virginia International Raceway. So I would meet up with most of their members from time to time at VIR. That and the mailing list, which was mostly replaced by their forum, and we all became pretty good internet friends with a common interest.

They had in the past put on various social events that I wanted to attend, but the usual family and life issues kept me from driving 4-5 hours for these events over the years. But their 4th (or was it 5th or 6th) annual RBQ event was planned for VIR. I was extremely busy at work lately, but forced myself to take the refreshing break. The plan was I would drive the 3.5 hrs from my SE VA home and meet them at the gates at VIR adout noon on Saturday. Sounded good.

I leave at the time to get there with a little time to spare. The drive was very plesant, exactly what I needed to wipe the clutter from recent work pressures out of my head. Gas prices are high everywhere. The day before I fill up my car at $2.29/gal (best I have seen lately) with good ole Citgo regular (advantages of a normally aspirated rotary that loves lower octane). On the drive out gas prices area about $2.50+- everywhere, until I get to South Boston VA and I see all the stations have $2.29, cool, I’ll stop there on the way back home. Other thing I notice is that it is cold!! But I have prepared, with multiple layers of shirts and a jacket.

I get to the track and see several Miatas and RX7s already waiting. I get out and meet Johnny and his wife Karen and 2 of their RX7s, Princess and Tiffany. Princess is a sweet 10th Anniversary Edition, and Tiffany is a really nicely preped TurboII. So we all wait and discuss the fact that it is colder than everyone expected. After a short wait, which gave us all time to get to know each other, Ashraf shows up with the tickets. He is hugely appologetic about his caravan of 10-20 cars taking so long, but we weren’t that worried. He didn’t plan on the slower traveling speed of a caravan (something to learn for next time). Hey, it gave us more time to BS about the RX7’s.

We all get in, uneventfully, but almost everyone missed the opportunity to take parade laps around the race track. This of course didn’t bother me any, but I guess some of the guys really wanted to do this. We meet inside the track at the semi pre-determined place, park, and admire each others cars. With these sorts of events I enjoy the cars, but I feel like I have seen one of everything there is to see sometime. I enjoy the people, socializing, etc. Guess I am getting old.

After the basic set up of the grill, tents, tables, etc. I get to wander around the paddock area. I always feel at home in a paddock at a race track. This is where I bellong, not worrying about work now.

SCCA races have changed somewhat since I was driving. I think the changes are all for the better. These changes are because of the entrants and the grass roots movement, definately not because of the SCCA national office. I feel like the national office has tried to push entrants into cars like the SCCA Spec Racers and National events, but most of the entrants populate the IT classes and flock in large numbers to the regional events. People do this because they love to race. The overwhelming majority realizes that this is not going to be their stepping stone to replace Michael Schumacher when he retires at Ferrari. There is still room for both, but I have always felt if the focus was on the “regional attitude” that there would be a better selection for finding a path to the pros for the few with the talent and desire.

I walked back and enjoyed some more visiting with the Mazda club guys. They are a great bunch. I met many people, some of which I was aware of from their online presence, others I was not. One of the guys there it turns out works at the same Navy base where I work, but he considers himself a MSCCNC member. Small world sometimes.

I then make it over to the “Gallery” which is a beautiful barn on the grounds at VIR where they have some great vintage sports cars for sale. I have had special interest in Lotus (and other varieties) Super 7’s lately. They had a nice example of what was claimed to be a Lotus, but I did have my doubts as to the authenticity. There was of course the VIR pace car which is a Cobra Daytona Coupe replica. I have seen 3 of the 6 original coupes over the years. I do like them. Also there was a kit/pre-assembled car that uses a fiberglass body and Miata parts. It looked fairly nice and was very reminescent of many of the old sports racers from the early 60’s. There was lots of nice hardware there.

The feature race of the day was a 90 minute enduro for club racers. This was mostly made up of IT cars, and the SCCA Spec Racers. There were Spec RX7’s, IT7’s (don’t ask me the differance), the IT classes (S, A, B, C), and Spec Miata. There were about 90 cars that were taking to the track in this race. It was a huge field. One of the MSCCNC members, John Uftring, was racing in this race with a co-driver. I wandered all around the track and spectated from every point of view. We were a Mazda club people watching and more than half of the entry was either an RX7, Miata, or RX3-4. This was quite a bit of fun for the Mazda club.

The action was constant with that many cars on the track. Our friend John (or his co-driver, Joedy) became the meat in the Miata sandwitch about half way through the race, with enough damage to not be able to continue. The early leader was a second gen RX7. I am not really sure who won each of the classes, but the race was exciting.

Afterwards the club memebers fired up the grill and food was being prepared. Lots of food, lots of talk about apex seals, blow off valves, rotor housings, etc. Great time was had by all. There was a nice little surprise on the drive home. The gas stations on South Boston had lowered their gas prices to $2.19 during the time I was at the track. So I filled the RX7 to the brim, and had a plesant drive home.

Here are my my rather poor quality pictures from the event:

MSCCNC RBQ

Enjoy.

Anyone into racing is aware of vintage racing. Even the most casual race fan has seen coverage on Speed Channel and other places showing vintage Jaguars, prewar Bugatti Grand Prix cars, early Mustangs and Camaros running typically on road courses across the country. There have also grown various groups promoting Nostalgia Drag racing in which older dragsters, funny cars, and pro stocks have been dug out of the barns, returning to the race track. This is a wonderful thing in that it gives all of us a quick glimpse into an era gone by. The video footage of race cars from the 50’s and 60’s is so rare, and our memories have faded from when we might have stood just behind the guard rail at Marlboro or the half mile at Richmond watching our heroes manhandle these beautiful cars with a driving style that just does not seem to exist in the modern day ALMS prototype

So when vintage racing of any type first developed it was typically some people who found old discarded race cars that had been sitting out in barns. These people loved their memories and wanted to resurrect them in some way. Chances are (back then) these cars were acquired for next to nothng. I saw the old Junie Donleavy NASCAR car that had won the Dover race at an auction that could not get the starting $1000 bid. It eventually sold for $650. This was typical. These people found these old cars and rebuilt them with loving care. Since it was a race car it just was not fitting for them to live solely in garages and display floors. So why not turn them into a racing museum.

This was a great thing, we had these people who had put sometimes years of sweat into these vintage cars. For that reason the early years of vintage racing was a handful of events around the country that were hugely popular. The rules were such that passing was only allowed in safe ways on the race track. It was allowed on the straights with no heavy dicing in the turns to protect the cars. The rules were such that the cars had to be prepared to rules that existed when the car was originally raced. Since tires had developed greatly, there were tire rules that required tires with similar adhesion to the tires that the cars was raced on when it was built. This was great.

A realization came true at this point. One was that many of these old cars were just not very fast. The truth is that a good well driven econobox that was used in Showroom Stock SCCA racing was indeed faster than a beautiful sounding Alfa Romeo from the 50’s. I once heard Pete Vack describe this as similar to finding out that your favorite blonde bombshell actress was indeed a lesbian. To me that seems a good analogy.

But the seeds for the future were planted. Vintage racing became a victim of its own success. The first thing that happened is that the old race cars behind the barns disappeared. Everyone was searching for one. Racing back in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s was not as popular as it is today. So in all honesty, there just weren’t as many cars out there as there were people looking. Laws of supply and demand made it so that the cars started becoming valuable. The old outdated formula car that once might have sold for $1000 in running order was now worth $30,000 or more. This in itself was not a huge problem, but the cars started going from someone who spent years restoring a car to someone who bought the car, wrote a check to a restorer, and got the old rusty hulk out on the track the following year.

This was all still good and well because the owner still typically had a sizable investment in the car when it hit the track. Rules were still requiring old levels of preparation. One of the early rules changes that was made for well intended reasons found its way into the game. This change allowed the old rare parts to be replaced with something more modern and available. The intent was to replace the part with something as similar as possible to the rare part. This eventually morphed to using the latest most modern and best parts. These modern parts were now probably more expensive than the rare non-replaceable parts they replaced. It seems like the well intended rules change was being taken advantage of by racers who wanted competitive advantage.

This was supposed to be a moving museum… but it is called Vintage RACING. We can understand how the business person who spent their entire life competing against other businesses, why they might be more interested in putting effort into making their car finish ahead of the others. This is understandable when one considers the parameters.

Then comes one of the early seeds that manifested itself. Vintage racing limited passing in turns. So the races became drag races down the straights. If you had a strong engine, passing on the straights was easy, and they couldn’t pass back in the turns. This became a race of professional engine builders. Building the engine out of old vintage parts didn’t happen anymore. Now we used all new stuff inside. The rules and gentlemen’s agreements made it so that as long as the engine looked like it was period correct, it was fine. Modern technology was growing inside a vintage looking shell. Everything inside was modern and as top notch as possible. The engines were stroked and bored as much as possible. The engines now were producing 30-50% more power than the engines were back in “the day”.

The popularity of vintage racing now started to hurt itself. Everyone wanted in. Everyone wanted to race, and dozens of sanctioning bodies sprang up all over the place. People started running replicas of one sort or another to where very few of the cars on the track had ever been raced back in “the day”. The show looked like something from the past, but it was becoming modern technology with a 30-40 year old skin stretched around it.

At this point one has to wonder why these people don’t just race in a modern racing series. The answer is really found when you watch something like the Barrett-Jackson auctions on TV. What cars are popular at these auctions. I think many are realists in that they realize the skill of modern professional drivers, but in a vintage car, it is easier to buy yourself near the front. This is a good thing in itself. The problem begins to happen when the desire to win comes in the mix. The truth is - this is racing. Racers are competitive. Unfortunately the point of vintage racing must be just the cars, not the ego of the drivers.

The cycle has started. The tires today had tremendous adhesion compared to tires available in the 60’s. Vintage used to require hard compound street tires. But that progressed to very sticky racing tires. The added adhesion has required rules changes to allow beefing up of suspension parts, chassis, and drive train parts to accommodate the added horsepower and the added adhesion. Now the cars corner much faster than in the old days. This means that in an accident they are going to hit things harder. So we need upgraded safety features. You can see where this cycle is going. If you took a good race car from 1965 and poped into a time machine, it would be lapped a couple of times every race.

All of this came to a head this past summer at Road America. There was a huge crash at the start of the Group 6 race which consisted of Cobras, Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs and Jaguars. Stories of what happened are different, but bottom line is that racing egos pegged the meter and some mistakes were made. Fortunately nobody was killed, but there were some significant injuries and god only knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of damaged race cars.

What can be done about this? I think vintage really needs to have some stiffer limits in place. Today we know what the horsepower of the cars from the vintage eras were. We need to have the power limited. Dynos are usually at the track these days. We can make it so the cars can be put on the dynomometers and limited to roughly the mount of power they had back in the day. That way the racer can use the readily available parts, but limit the power to what they had back then. In addition make the tires hard and roughly of the levels of adhesion they used back then. I think these two rules changes would have a great positive effect on vintage racing. It is afterall something that we all want to see. I don’t want it to go away, but then again I don’t want to see all these beautiful old cars destroyed, and I really want to see nobody injured or worse.

Whatcha think?

Vintage racing accident from Road America

Someone was lamenting to me recently about the demise of the carburetor and the fine art of tuning them that will slowly become a thing of the past. It made me think, I love muscle cars with those lovely Holley four barrels. Tuning one well takes someone who really knows what they are doing, an artist with a screwdriver, fine sense of smell, and far better preception of color than I have to properly read the plugs. Back in the 70’s and 80’s every amatuer race that I would attend had several cars with good old simple carburator problems.

Since those days the street cars had to meet ever toughening emission standards. The carbs to meet those standards were true works of art when they worked properly. But a later model emissions carb had hundreds of small parts that all had to work in harmony to satisfy the government mandated sniff tests. Let one or more of those small parts get out of sync and your beauty became a beast overnight. Take it to the typical mechanic for tuning and it usually left in worse condition than it arrived. I am not being unfair to the mechanics, these were complicated devices that needed someone to spend time becomming an expert on their workings. Most mechanics would make better pay by using that time replacing steering linkages, shocks, and exhaust.

But along came cheap electronics and various revisions of electronic engine controls. In very short time the car industry had completely abandoned carburetors, and mechanics became code readers and sensor replacers. The EFI system now tuned itself as you drove, as long as all the sensors and actuators were working properly.

Fewer and fewer people knew the fine art of tuning carbs. But a strange thing happened. The older cars we used to drive every day, with all those lovely carburetors, quit becoming day to day utilitarian transportation. They progressed over to being collectable, or vintage, or weekend fun cars. They went from tools of our life to the true art forms they deserved being.

It is just a natural thing. As time passes newer things replace older things. Just because cars were invented and became the utilitarian mode of transportation, doesn’t mean there is not an appreciation for the horses that they replaced. The horse made the migration from a day to day utilitarian tool to being something for pleasure, something to be appreciated, something very beautiful and artistic in many ways. Overall it is better for horses to be treated the way most of them are today, rather than pulling wagons, and moving people in muddy streets every single day.

I see older cars in the same light. I have a 40 year old car that has become a family heirloom. It has a carburator. At one time I drove the Shelby GT350 every day back and forth to college. My daughter is named Shelby. Watching that car 4 wheel drift through a curve on a race track is something to be appreciated. The car will never be sold, it is cared for far better than it was when it was my tool to get to classes in college. Never mind that it wants to drink 95 or higher octane gasoline at the rate of one gallon every 15 or so miles. The kids will need to know how to rebuild the Holley carb that feeds it when they become the keepers of the family treasure. Maybe that is why the oldest daughter’s RX7 has a carb. She needs to know this skill.

But I don’t expect to take the Shelby to my typical “Joe’s Garage” for a tuneup. It becomes a labor of love, rather than a similiar repair on a 30 degree night when I needed the car the next morning so I could take a calculus exam that I also needed to study for, instead of fixing the carb.

So…. I think things get better as they move from tools to our appreciated art forms. I don’t think tuning a carb is a skill that will ever be lost. It is like the horse trainer today. People still train and take care of horses. They probably do it better on the average than people who trained and took care of horses back in 1850. I think you may have to search more for the expert to tune the carb on your 60’s muscle car or my dughter’s carbed RX7, but the people you find will have refined this skill to an art form and you will be able to count on quality results.

This past week I had decided that it was time to blow the dust off the old family Shelby GT350 and take it to an autocross. The Shelby had not been driven in anger in more than a year (keep watching this site for history of this well known car). So we started early as the car needed simple tune up type things. For a car nearly 40 years old that has spent most of its life on an autocross course or race track the car is in amazingly good shape. I gave the car a once over with all the critical nuts and bolts. Everything was fine with only a piece of the clutch linkage bothering me. It is amazing that simple tuneup parts are still available for a relatively unique car. It has a 289 HiPo engine, which has a unique distributor. These are fairly rare, but the nearby auto parts sources still had all the basic tuneup parts. Granted you get strange looks these days from a 21 year old parts counterperson when you ask for 2 sets of points and a condenser. But when everything was aquired the tuneup went as expected. The car runs with a sound that nothing modern can duplicate. Such wonderful music to my ears.

So we get everything together load the car on the trailer and get ready to go to the event. During this process as I manuvered my Expedition to hook up the trailer, I totally lost the brake hydraulics. I later found the problem to be a hardline that had a manufacturing problem. A weld had penetrated too deeply and it chose now to fail. I am just glad it was while I was creeping around and not going down the interstate. But fortunately we can just use Mom’s Expedition and tow the trailer.

For those of you who don’t know, my Mother is now 66 years old and is a retired SCCA Club Racer. She spent years racing (another story comming up later about this) and now still loves the occasional autocross, as she feels up to it. Well in all fairness it has been a while since I had seen Mom so excited about anything as running this car on this particular weekend. Mom had been sort of down recently and had been trying to convince me that she really didn’t want to autocross anymore. She gets in these pessimist moods often. But as the event was approaching I could sense her excitement, in spite of her efforts to hide it.

So we get to the site. It is a huge hovercraft landing site on Little Creek Naval Amphibous Base in Virginia Beach, VA. I have run here often, but I can see the excitement in Mom’s eyes as we arrive. As usual the Shelby attracts lots of attention everywhere it goes. Most of the people here don’t know of my Mustang heritage, they only know me as some old guy that races an RX7. We easily get through the registration, tech, and the important catching up with old friends.

The event has a little smaller turnout than most events at this site. But that is OK, it gives everyone more track time. The tires on the Shelby are about 4-5 years old and not the hot setup in autocross tires (Kumho V700 Victoracers) at this time. There are a couple of late model Mustangs, one of which is totally Cobra R-ized. So I figure me and mom will be competing each other for last place. No biggie, this car is so much fun to drive, who cares where you finish.

Other cars of note in attendance include George Bowland, many time AM champ and legitimate rights to the title “Fastest Autocrosser in the Country”. It is great to see his winged wonder run. There is a large turnout of racing karts. This is unusual for this area, but it is a trend we hope to see more of in the future.

When I line up for my first run, I am getting the usual jitters. As soon as I dump the clutch I realize I haven’t run this car in a long time. First shift to second the clutch linkage I am concerned about fails. I can still work the clutch but it is a pain. So I decide to run the rest of the course in second, rather than a more desirable shifting first to second as needed. The car gets ahead of me on one of the 180 turns and I manage to spin it out. I have really forgotten how to drive this car. So I collect myself and re-learn how to work with my old friend. From this point on I improve on each of the runs, and I am feeling slow, but old memories are comming back.

After my runs I don’t hear any of my times, but don’t really care, as I know I am going to be very slow. But the car was such a rush. It also got great responses from the other entrants. All the old timers were happy to see the old car out again. The others had never seen the car were wondering why someone would bring out such a collectable car. Of course to me it is where the car belongs.

Mom got her shot later. She made her runs in an uneventful style. She would have liked to have been able to shift the car more, but she loved it. She was a little slow as well, but ended the day completely sattisfied. We both felt like we were at home for the first time in a long time. It was a wonderful day that could not have been better. Well it might have been better if I had won, but …. Oh wait.. the results have been posted and the times I never checked were better than I expected. I won ESP with the old car. WooHoo!!!!!

Thanks Cameron for the pic. To see the rest of his pictures from the event click here.

Just a quick intro I guess. I am Calvin. I have been involved in racing in one way or another for as long as I can remember. When I started racing it was unusual for people in the age range of 15-17 to be racing, but I was at that time. This was the early to middle 70’s when performance cars were a bad word. We had just gone through the environmentalists revolution, and the first round of a “gasoline crisis”. The enviro-wackos had run a media machine and managed to lead the American public down their path to emission regulations choking the performance cars to nothing more than image cars that relied on what memories of what they had been a few years before. The majority of what was left of the performance car world was pushed away by the gasoline lines and increasing prices of the early 70’s. Bottom line was the performance car enthusiasts at that point were very few and far between.

I even sort of strayed away from being a racing enthusiasts at this point. The NASCAR races for that year were shortened by 10% as a symbolic gesture of conservation. High octane gasoline was disappearing from most pumps, making the leftover high compression engines from the ’60’s undrivable. Through all of this I still loved race cars, but I was also growing other interests as well. That was until one day I found an autocross at a parking lot near my house. It was the old GEX lot in Portsmouth, VA. I was about 13 at the time.

I rode my bike home, told my Mother (also a racing enthusiasts) and we went back and watched the event the rest of the day. Back then autocross was entirely local, mostly British sports car and small sedans. The format was everyone got two or three runs, consisting of a small road course set up on which each run consisted of two or three laps.

Wow!!!! This looked cool to a 13 year old. Autocrossing was very much a secret at the time. So it was not well known even in the dwindling car enthusiast world. The general attitude of the autocross community at the time was that they were an enemy of the powerful groups. If they kept the events relative secrets, the events could continue under the radar. So there was no public promotion, no national sanctioning body, etc. The one thing that was public at the time was the typical venue. At that time most states had Sunday closing laws of one sort or another requiring most retail stores to be closed. The obvious available sites were department store and mall parking lots. The country was far less litigous at the time and these sites were readily available.

A typical Sunday autocross drew a huge crowd of spactators. There would at times literally be a thousand people watching some of the events. 98% of the cars at an event were street cars, and most of the people running really didn’t seem to know that much to making an autocross car go fast. Looking back it was a great promotional opportunity that was probably not realized by so many people.

My Dad was in the Coast Guard and out on ships from time to time. Mom and I started traveling the “circuit” as spectators. We had a Bronco and a Ford station wagon. Neither was even an acceptable autocross car. So we watched the events, got to know some of the entrants, and basically got accepted into the community. Mom and Dad were trying to get a car they could autocross. Mom’s aunt had a Mustang convertible she was geting rid of. My parents knew nothing about imported cars, they were also Ford people. No other brand of car had ever graced our driveway, nor was it going to. So the Mustang was the obvious choice.

Next time I’ll get into the first few experiences on the autocross course.

Part II (click here)