Will we ever see more manufacturers?

Recently a story and photo appeared on Facebook showing David Pearson on his way to victory in the 1966 NASCAR Grand National race at Bridgehampton Raceway on Long Island, New York. He was about to put a lap on independent driver Larry Hess of Salisbury, N.C.

Hess was driving an AMC Ambassador.

Pearson, of course, is a Hall of Famer, one of the greatest NASCAR competitors of all time. Hess drove in 27 events over two part-time seasons and three one-or-two-race years. He had three top-ten finishes, all miles behind the winner (nearly 80 miles behind for a 9^th-place at Charlotte).

Nearly all the comments about the post focused, not on the Hall-of-Famer, but on Hess and his #44 Ambassador.

In 1966 there were only three different manufacturers racing in the Grand National/Cub series (Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors), but there were seven different makes of car racing more-or-less regularly: Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Dodge, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile.

The last Chrysler had recently exited, a Thunderbird would show up in a few years, and Buick had some good years ahead as well. Hess, though, added a fourth manufacturer (the long-departed AMC), which got people’s attention and still does today, as evidenced by the Facebook post.

NASCAR understands that lure of more competition among manufacturers, but it’s having problems enticing newbies to the table, in part because the engine isn’t one anybody puts on the street anymore, and because the car isn’t Ford, Chevy, or Toyota, anyway; it’s a NASCAR.

Seems to me that the Daytona suits backed themselves into a corner.

But I’m not here to complain. (OK, I AM here to complain, but I’ll stop, at least for a while.) Instead, let’s retreat into the comforts of seasons past and talk about the world of racing when you could see just about anything in the pits.

NASCAR’s first race for its new Strictly Stock Division (later Grand National, then Cup) featured nine different makes of car. Jim Roper won in a Lincoln after Glenn Dunaway’s Ford (partially owned by NASCAR founder Bill France) was disqualified for not being “strictly stock.”

Also in the field were Hudsons, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Chryslers, Mercurys, Kaisers, and a Cadillac. Curtis Turner and Lee Petty drove Buicks, and Buck Baker was in a Kaiser.

Later that season, Plymouth, Nash, and Studebaker would join the party.

By 1951, drivers also were trying out Pontiacs, Chevrolets, Dodges, Packards, Henry Js, and even a Tucker . . . well, sort of.

Joe Merola brought the Tucker, one of only a handful ever made by that ill-fated company, out at Canfield, Ohio, and again at Rochester, N.Y. Suspension issues kept the Torpedo (Tucker’s informal model name) from taking the green flag at either race.

Still, you’ve got 10 to 15 different makes of car racing, with somewhere around eight or nine different manufacturers represented.

Unless you count electric car start-up companies, we don’t have nearly that many U.S. manufacturers left, but we have plenty of imports (most with manufacturing plants in the U.S.), so opportunities exist.

Speaking of brands from outside the U.S., NASCAR welcomed them to the party back then as well, especially on road courses. In 1954, the International 100 (the first NASCAR road race other than Daytona on the beach-road course) was run on a temporary track at the Linden, N.J., airport. The field included Jaguars, Austin-Healys, MGs, Porsches, and even a Morgan (which, then as now, is made partially of wood). Al Keller, a driver respected for his ability to drive just about anything, won the race in a Jaguar, the first and only NASCAR GN/Cup Series win for a “foreign” make until Kyle Busch put Toyota in victory lane at Atlanta in 2008.

There was another road race, Riverside’s first GN/Cup event back in 1958, that had a good international presence, with a pair of Citroens in the field, along with a Renault and – my all-time favorite – a Goliath (an obscure and long-gone German company). That car finished 27^th, 43 road course laps behind, but Goliath actually advertised afterward that it had finished first in its class at the race.

Lest you think that non-U.S. makes were only welcome at road courses (and have forgotten Jack Ryan’s Porsche and occasional appearances by an Austin Mini and an Alfa Romeo on the Grand Touring/Grand American Series ovals in 1968), let’s turn the time machine back to June 21, 1953, and one of NASCAR’s major schedule stops at the time, Langhorne Speedway in Pennsylvania.

Langhorne was a regular presence on the GN schedule through much of the 1950s (and was the fourth race ever run in that 1949 first season). In 1953, it was on the schedule three times, twice with “normal” races, and once on June 21 for the International 200.

A field of 38 cars took the green flag that day, and Dick Rathmann, driving a Hudson, led every lap, finishing four laps ahead of Lee Petty’s Dodge and nine laps in front of third-place Jim Paschal. That means the cars farther back were even farther behind, but the “internationals” didn’t do too badly.

Dick Allwine, who had qualified fourth, finished sixth in a Jaguar, albeit 16 laps behind. Legendary open-wheel driver Nick Fornoro made his only career GN/Cup start and finished eighth in a Porsche, just ahead of New Yorker Billy Oswald in another Porsche.

All total there were six Jags and eight Porsches in the field, along with a Volkswagon (in 1953, that would have been a Beetle, right?) and – cue the James Bond music – Steve McGrath in an Aston-Martin.

McGrath, by the way, was a great midget driver, and for three of the years NASCAR tried to have its own midget division, he was its director.

If I had been one of the announced 17,000 people at Langhorne that day, I suspect I would have thought it pretty cool to have an Aston-Martin (and the Jags and Porsches) racing with the Oldsmobiles, Hudsons, Dodges, and four other American makes on the grid.

And I would definitely feel that way today if Honda, Nissan, Hyundai/Kia, or somebody else started showing up. I just think it makes the races more fun.

I’ll note here that, while it wasn’t Cup racing, NASCAR also welcomed international makes to most of the races run for the Grand Touring/Grand American Series events from 1968-72 on the Daytona Speedway road course. That included several events run at night. Besides lots of Porches, those races attracted Fiats, a Cooper, a VW, a BMW, a Volvo, and a Datsun (before it changed to Nissan).

Frank’s Loose Lug Nuts

This isn’t NASCAR, but one of my fond memories of international race cars was I the mini-stock division at Virginia Raceway (now Bill Sawyer’s Virginia Motor Speedway) near Saluda, in Eastern Virginia.

In the early ‘70s, we had bought a Saab 99, perhaps the most fun car I’ve ever had to drive, although not the most fun to keep on the road. We bought it from a tiny dealer in Norfolk or Virginia Beach, and the chief mechanic there was racing one of the older Saab 96 models in the Virginia Raceway mini-stock division. We loved cheering for him, and he was pretty good, usually able to finish ahead of everyone else in the field, save one car.

It was a Volvo.

My guess is that there may not have been another track in the U.S. where two Swedish cars – different makes – battled for the championship. (It happens in Sweden all the time.)

(Cover Photo Credit – This one shows up all over the place, and I have no idea of its origin. Might belong to Getty now. This one found here)