6 replies to this topic

[Frank S]

Bill Bean loaned me about fifty 8x10-inch photos from the early 1950s, principally taken at Carrell Speedway, all by his uncle, Dave Smith, a professoinal who was J.C. Agajanian's photographer. I've scanned and posted them all at FotoTime.

You'll see that many have been annotated in captions, but others are essentially bare of identification with regard to driver, car, or locale. I try to add incoming information quickly, and appreciate every bit, even tentative "facts".

I had a great time doing this project, but I'm happy to have the principal work done. Now it's back to work on the early 50s Torrey Pines snapshots.


Frank S

[Lotus23]

Frank, thank you so much for posting those wonderful b&w photos. I've just spent nearly 2 hours poring over them, and was able to add a couple of comments, in addition to purchasing several for my den wall.

What a treasure trove!

[Buford]

Very cool. Love the Hudsons. My parent's first stock car was a Hudson. Then one day some guys in suits showed up at the garage. They were from Nash. They said, "What would it take to get you guys to race our car." Our driver said, "Your cars are slow and ugly." They said, "What would it take to make them not slow." My dad said, "Probably us." They said, "That's why we are here." So we became the Nash factory supported team in the Midwest, and after that Studebaker, and eventually Ford. These pictures remind me of my childhood.

[HistoricMustang]

Frank, great moments from the past. There is something very special about visiting old speed grounds, either through photographs or perhaps in person.

Just wondering if anyone has a "modern" photo of the former track?

Henry

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by HistoricMustang
Just wondering if anyone has a "modern" photo of the former track?

There are a couple of recent shots of the site in the Art Evans book The Fabulous Fifties

[HistoricMustang]

Thanks David and not to take away from the thread but Art Evans has a new release simply called "Ken Miles".

Henry

[Even Darker]

An interesting set of photos, the pictures of the Jalopy racers raise some questions for me.

English stock car racing started on 16 April 1954 at New Cross stadium in London. From the very first meeting the cars featured heavy iron-work front and rear and contact was an accepted part of the action, with big fields of cars on 1/4 mile ovals, you had to move somebody out of the way to get past.

Many of the directions in the English sport were set by an American team that came over in 1955, Crawfish Cryder, Bobby Schuyler, Bill Irick, Neil (Soapy) Castles, Bobby Myers, Lewis (Possum) Jones and Pete Folse. The cars the US drivers brought over with them beginning the move away from stripped down "stock" cars to purpose built racers.

However, it has always been presented as quite a mystery how we happened to have heavy protection and contact right from the start when the sport was supposed to be based on US stock car racing. The historians of the support suggesting that the promoter Digger Pugh invented the format, perhaps having seen demolition derbies.

This is why the Jalopies interested me. They clearly have some heavy duty protection up front and presumably this wouldn't have been fitted (or allowed) unless it was expected to be used.

So does anybody know, did Jalopy racing feature contact? Is this the true parent of UK stock car racing, rather than the accepted explanation that it is the illegitimate offspring of a liaison between US stock car racing and demolition derbies?