Race Card #82-Something Old....Something New

[LUKE'57]

Race Card #82-Something Old....Something New

According to my friend Greg Fielden's wonderful book series, "Forty Years of Stock Car Racing", the first racing '66 Fairlane came from the Wood Brothers. Fieldin reports," The Wood Brothers brought a radical Ford for Turner to drive. It was called a "Fairlane"-but it had a Galaxie front end. Nascar officials turned thumbs down on the car at the inspection station."

With all the "built from a box of tubing so-called "stock cars" that race today, this thing was almost street stock, well almost. What I found in an old SCR magazine confirmed what my ragged old memory was telling me about the car's attemped "coming out party". One of, if not the main or even only, reason it wasn't allowed to run was that the front tread width was wider than a stock street Fairlane.

With those teething problems corrected Turner and the Wood Brothers showed up two races later at the "Hickory 250" and Turner set the car on the front row and finished second behind that year's point champion David Pearson. Oh yeah, did I mention that race was on dirt? I've got the highlites on tape and watching Turner on dirt is something everyone who calls themselves race fans should experience at least once.

Here's my expression of what that little car looked like that day before Turner and that red clay took its toll. The decals were done several years ago by my friend Larry at DNL and you know he caught a lot of grief from me about them not being "correct" on "MY" hero's car. He was too far along on them before he showed them to me to change them so I let him slide. But just this one time. LOL He was doing some two car sheets and had David Pearson's Cotton Owens Dodge on the same sheet. Guess who beat Turner that day at Hickory to help clinch his first of three Grand National Championships.

By the end of the '66 season the "little cars" had begun to be the wave of the future with most of the teams having built "intermediates" and gotten most of the bugs worked out. Even the storied Southern 500 fell to the Bud Moore built, Darel Dieringer driven '66 Mercury Comet. Stock car racing's first "downsized" cars came along way before the Monte Carlo SS was turned in for the then new Luminas.

[JTRACING]

awesome build!! those Fairlanes are the best looking stock cars!, i like all the stuff in the background too!

[LUKE'57]

Thanks for the kind words and the germ of an idea. I like the "cluttered" look too but don't do it that often because I don't seem to think of it. I'm gonna make me a "set dressing" box with trailers, trucks and civilian cars and other little "flavor" bits so I can have them handy when I shoot some more pics.