Automobile Racing: Stock Cars

AUTOMOBILE RACING: STOCK CARS

White Lightning

A competitive Indianapolis-type racer cost about $30,000 after the war. That was too much for a band of southerners who liked to build and drive race cars. They knew how to buy a heap at a junkyard and turn it into a race car for about $2,500. Their racers were called stock cars because they looked like passenger vehicles, and their competitions were originally called pasture races, because in the early days the drivers would gather in a farmer's pasture on Sunday afternoons to race. Most of the stock car tracks of the late 1940s were made of compacted clay, and many of the drivers had served their apprenticeship running moonshine liquor, 120 gallons at a time, from the stills where it was illegally made, to thirsty customers. Outrunning the law became a mark of honor among the moonshine drivers, and their outlaw attitude shaped stock car racing. The moonshiners were so prominent among drivers in the early stock car races that Atlanta passed a local ordinance prohibiting moonshiners from participating in automobile racing. One of the sport's treasured anecdotes was the story of moonshiner/driver Bob Flock, who was waiting to start a race in Atlanta in the late 1940s when he was spotted by a police captain who knew he hauled liquor. The captain ordered two motorcycle patrolmen to come at Flock from different directions on the track to trap him. Realizing his predicament, Flock sped off and gained enough speed on the third turn to jump the cyclone fence around the track and land in the parking lot. There he made his successful getaway, and two days later he turned himself in.

NASCAR

There were several stock car racing clubs after the war, the most successful of which was the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), owned by entrepreneur Bill France. He promoted late-model automobile racing, which employed cars that were no more than three years old and were supposed to be the same as cars purchasable in dealer showrooms. In fact, the cars of the time were not made well enough to race, and modifications were necessary for the track, but to spectators late-model racing offered the excitement of seeing competition among the car models they saw every day on the street and maybe even owned. Ford Motor Company saw the promotional opportunities NASCAR offered and became an avid early sponsor. France called his stock car races Grand Nationals, and he staged the first at the Charlotte Speedway on 19 June 1949. It was won by Glen Dunway, but when his car was inspected after the race, officials found that Dunway had attached brackets to the springs to make the car handle better in turns. He was disqualified, and second-place finisher Jim Roper was declared the winner.

Source:

Kim Chapín, Fast As White Lightning: The Story of Stock Car Racing (New York: Dial, 1981).