REAL NASCAR

The start of the 2010 NASCAR season brings to the forefront a great degree of uncertainty as the sport comes off—in the words of Queen Elizabeth II—an annus horribilis that most folks around the track—perhaps with the exception of Jimmy Johnson--would just as soon forget.  While looking at history does not give us all the answers to our problems, I do think it might be helpful to look at similar times when NASCAR experienced serious downturns and where the very future of the sport was in question. 

Two periods immediately come to mind:  1957, when the auto makers—who had just entered the sport two years earlier—suddenly left NASCAR and 1967, when the sport struggled to come back from consecutive years of factory boycotts.  Today I’ll take up 1957, a year when NASCAR’s fall was even more precipitous than it was in 2009.

NASCAR experienced its most rapid period of growth in history in 1955 and 1956.  During the period, the sport grew well beyond its southern roots, spread throughout the country, and brought riches—at least temporarily—far beyond their imagination to many of its working class participants.  The explosive growth was fueled by the entry of Detroit auto manufacturers—particularly Chevrolet and Ford—who invested millions of dollars in the sport.

While Bill France, Sr. had long courted Detroit, it was the appearance in 1955 of a short, stocky, balding, cigar-chomping, ultra-competitive ball of energy by the name of Carl Kiekhaefer which served as the inadvertent catalyst to bring the automakers into NASCAR.  Kiekhaefer came to the sport as a way of promoting his Mercury outboard boat motors and find an outlet for his competitive urges.  In the process, the wild success of his Chrysler 300’s and Dodge 500’s--piloted to consecutive Grand National championships by Tim Flock and Buck Baker--unwittingly brought a free advertising bonanza to Chrysler and prompted a determined response—along with lots of money--by Ford and General Motors.

Both Chevy and Ford jumped in late in 1955 and fielded their first factory-backed cars at Darlington’s Labor Day Southern 500.  The victory by Herb Thomas in a Smokey Yunick-prepared  ’55 Chevy and the splash made by Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly in their Charlie Schwam Ford purple “Wild Hogs” brought the automakers in with a vengeance. 

By the 1957 season, Chevy had a $2.6 million budget for NASCAR and Ford was not far behind.  Indeed, Smokey Yunick signed a contract at the beginning of the season with Ford for $40,000 a year, a million dollar life insurance policy, free dental and medical care, a free Thunderbird, trucks and station wagons for his team, and dynamometers and other advanced equipment for his shop.  Ford even paid the expenses for his shapely young “traveling secretary.”

Life changed dramatically for others in the sport as well.  Top drivers were now flying to races, staying in fine hotels, eating steak at every meal, and drinking the finest bonded liquor.  Instead of hanging out with the bootleggers that he had partnered with to create NASCAR, Bill France now hobnobbed with Detroit bigwigs like Ed Cole of Chevrolet, Bunky Knudsen of Pontiac, Jacques Passino of Ford, and the legendary Harley Earl of the GM Styling Division.  As Richard Petty recalled after his father Lee signed a lucrative contract with Oldsmobile, “I would have been willing to bet. . . we would never have to sleep in the car again.”

In June 1957, however, the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) instituted a ban on all participation by its members in racing or race promotion.  As quickly as prosperity had arrived in NASCAR, it disappeared.

The seeds of the AMA ban had been sown even as NASCAR skyrocketed in popularity and became awash in Detroit money.  An era of carnage on the race track in 1955 where five top name auto racers—including defending Indy 500 champ Bill Vukovich—died in on-track incidents sparked a broad concern for safety.  The June 1955 tragedy at LeMans, France where Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes flew into the crowd killing over 80 people prompted even more alarm.  Many in the public—and in legislative bodies across America—became concerned about rising speeds on the highway as Detroit produced more and more powerful cars and promoted them through NASCAR. 

By mid-1957, Detroit could no longer stand the heat and instituted its immediate ban.  While Bill France and NASCAR tried to keep up a brave face, the sport was devastated.  All too quickly the Pettys were back sleeping in the car, drivers were eating “tube steaks” at the track concession stand and drinking moonshine, and Bill France was back hanging out with his old bootlegger buddies in North Wilkesboro, Hickory, and Martinsville.

While NASCAR struggled for a couple of years, the sport bounced back stronger than ever.  Indeed, in 1957, NASCAR and Bill France reassessed the sport and its assets and looked to its past to secure its future.  First, France pulled back on the rapid expansion of the sport and focused on his core constituency in the Piedmont South.  He cut back on races in Washington, Oregon, California, South Dakota, and Nebraska and promoted the bulk of NASCAR races at old standbys like Darlington, Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, North Wilkesboro, Martinsville, Hickory, Bowman Gray Stadium, Hillsborough, and Asheville-Weaverville.

France also shifted the focus of the sport away from the cars themselves to the deep talent pool of rowdy, good old boys attracted to NASCAR Grand National racing. Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, Buck Baker, Fireball Roberts, Lee Petty, and others could always be counted on to put on a show for the fans.

NASCAR and France also benefitted from the return of Junior Johnson to the sport—home from a stint in the federal penitentiary in Chillicothe, Ohio.  No one in this era—with the possible exception of Curtis Turner--drew NASCAR’s core cracker fans to the stands better than Junior.  As reporter Dick Thompson put it, Johnson “looks like a wrestler and drives like a maniac.”  The fans loved it.

Rebuilding NASCAR was not just a function of returning to the past in the late 1950s.  France and many of NASCAR’s top owners, mechanics, and drivers had glimpsed the good life and were determined to return the sport to the high level it had achieved before the factory ban.  They found back doors to Detroit and gradually brought the manufacturers back in.  Perhaps most importantly, Bill France risked his financial well-being and his ownership of NASCAR itself to construct Daytona International Speedway and usher the sport into a new era of ever escalating speeds and superspeedways.  By 1963, the sport was back bigger than ever and the bad memories of 1957 had faded.

Next week Part II – 1967