Column
By: Brandon Reed
Cool Cars Race Through History
Usually when you think of NASCAR, you think of big American made cars tearing around the racetrack, with monster V8 engines pushing out tons of horsepower.
But actually, there have been some surprising cars to turn up over the years that many people would look back on and say, “You’re kidding me.”
Here’s a look at a few surprising entries from over the years.
For example, as has been pointed out before, Kyle Busch’s win at Atlanta for Toyota might have been the first for a non-American manufacturer in NASCAR’s so called “modern era,” but it wasn’t the first win for a foreign nameplate.
That distinction goes to the late Al Keller, who piloted a Jaguar in NASCAR’s first road course event, at the Linden Airport road course in Linden, N.J., beating out Joe Eubanks in a 1951 Hudson.
You see, back in the 50s, Big Bill France wasn’t necessarily opposed to having foreign cars run on the big circuit. In fact, he ran several races that welcomed these cars into the sport.
That means there were some pretty interesting entrants, to say the least.
For example, look at some of the cars that were entered into the first event at the famed Riverside Raceway, which was a road course in California.
While the top 17 finishers were all in American made iron, a look at the results show a pair of French built Citroens finishing 18th and 19th on the field, driven by Bill Jones and Ralph Roberts, respectively. Then a little further back, there sits a Renault driven by Hylan Micka. So the foreign car make roots go a lot further back.
But maybe the neatest of all the foreign cars to compete in NASCAR had to be at Langhorne Speedway in Pennsylvania in June of 1953.
In that race, Philadelphia native Dick Hagey entered a Volkswagen Beetle in the event. Hagey’s number 18 Beetle qualified 32nd in a 38 car field, and plugged right along in the 200 lap event to finish 19.
Not bad for a four cylinder with less than 40 horsepower!
It was Hagey’s only Cup event, and the only time a VW Beetle has ever competed in NASCAR (unless you count Herbie The Love Bug in that movie a few years ago).
But it’s not just the foreign makes that are interesting. Sometimes it’s an American made car that you wouldn’t have believed somebody would have put on a race track that makes for a memorable moment.
That brings us to Canfield, Ohio, and a 200-lap event on May 30, 1950.
There was nothing overly special about the race. There were Oldsmobiles, Fords, Mercurys, even a Nash and a Kaiser on the starting grid.
But there was one very special, and extremely rare racer on the grid. It was Joe Merola’s number 12 Tucker Torpedo.
Let me type that again so you can read it a second time. I’m not kidding. Joe raced a 1948 Tucker, one of only 50 cars ever manufactured.
For those not in the know, the Tucker is a very highly sought after automobile by collectors. Its builder, Preston Tucker, was run out of the automobile business by the “Big Three” auto makers because, to be blunt, his car was just too darned good. It had safety innovations that were light years ahead of its time. When the government shut his plant down, Tucker had built only 50 of the futuristic looking cars.
So the idea of one being on a half-mile dirt track is amazing, to say the least.
But the Tucker’s introduction into NASCAR stock car racing was short lived. Merola broke a right rear axel, and the car never completed a lap.
It’s believed that the racing Tucker was later lost in a warehouse fire in Florida, one of the few not to still survive.
So next time you hear the TV commentators talking about how unique it is to have Toyota on the race track, just remember Dick Hagey’s Beetle, and Merola’s Tucker. We’ll never see cars that cool on the track again.
•Brandon Reed is a reporter for MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. Contact him at brandon@mainstreetnews.com.
