Street Racing Cars For Sale

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-speed/top-nascar-engineering-cheats
read all three pages, it's worth hitting the "Skip the ad" button.

Found on http://www.dogfightmag.com/blog

If you like this kind of thing, read more about Smokey's tricks http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-smokey-story.html

For a visual on how flagrant the cheating was, look at the side by side comparison of Jr Johnson's Galaxie http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-junior-johnson-made-1966-ford.html

or Richard Petty's 1968 Roadrunner http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/01/natl-assoc-of-what-cars-heres-another.html

For the previous post that had the information about this rare car:
http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2006/12/smokey-yunicks-boss-302.html

Photo from that amazing treasure trove of rare photos of the coolest race cars: http://magneticbrain.blogspot.com/

The video above and the vette below belong to Danny Reed, who has owned it since 1971

Above image from
http://www.corvetteactioncenter.com/forums/c3-general-discussion/107644-blast-past-apollo-12-1969-corvette.html



For more photos and the full story : http://www.vetteweb.com/features/vet1101_1969_chevrolet_astrovette_stingray/index.html

Crew of the Apollo 12 space rocket (Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, Al Bean) each receive a gold Corvette coupe with 427-ci engine.

Through a special General Motors lease program, astronauts were allowed to drive any car for a year for $1. Bean and his Apollo crew ordered matching Corvettes distinguished by the black "wings" and red, white and blue logos on the front fenders reading "LMP" for lunar module pilot.


Why did they have black rear fenders?

The article states that those cars and the lease program had been arranged by Jim Rathmann, in co-operation with Ed Cole. Rathmann owned a Chevrolet Dealership in Melbourne, Florida.

We know that the Gold & Black combination is typical for Smokey Yunick's cars. And Yunick was crew chief for Rathmann for three years in a row (1960 to 1962) at Indianapolis. When Rathmann won the 1960 Indy 500, his car, named "Ken-Paul Special", was blue. But in '62, he drove the "Simoniz Vista Special" (car #44) which was sporting Yunick's Gold & Black.

Thus the colors of these three "Apollo 12" Corvettes, in the most likely possibility.

CORVETTE NEWS Feb/Mar 1970 p.16-17 "The magnificent men and their flying machines". Large picture (courtesy of Ralph Morse - Life Magazine), showing the three '69 Vettes with Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Al Bean sitting on the T-tops.

One interesting detail in the text deserves a quote: "...Especially Pete Conrad. His checklist of things to do before the flight of Apollo 12 included a call to a friend in the Central Florida Region of the Sports Car Club of America to make sure that all systems were go for his SCCA competition license. Conrad was reported to have said: I'd sure like to have it when I get back from the moon . And he was obliged by being issued 1970 license number 12 in honor of the flight..."

http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-118283.html

Every astronaut had a Corvette of the day. Every one "made full advantage of the social opportunities".

Every one except John Glenn. Glenn drove a Hillman Minx, and lectured the rest about "keeping it zipped up for the good of the program". http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=258763

I didn't know it, but Nik did a post on these 2 months ago: http://carrosantigos.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/the-astrovette/ and thourougly explained the astronaut/corvette association, and far better than I could, Nik is a far better writer. His blog is in Portugese, but you ought to install Google toolbar if you haven't yet, and that is because it will instantly translate any website from another language to your own.

via: http://autoculture.org/?p=790 This was the car that Smokey was supposed to have driven off from tech inspection when they were pissing him off, and left his fuel tank behind... on the hidden fuel supply

Now that is straight from the May 1968 Motor Trend article on Daytona 500, referring to the qualifying

This is the 1964 Indy race car of Smokey Yunick, named the Hurst Floor Shifter Special... a momentary loss of traction caused it to run into a wall and never get into the race, Bobby Johns was driving
Via: http://forum.exile.fr/viewtopic.php?pid=157789

This is one great cool perspective of the Cyclone spoiler, and Smokey... my one-of-a-kind all-time car-guy hero

http://flickr.com/photos/27666849@N04/ is the flikr site, 27 pages of photos that are awesome...

Via: http://thegarageblog.com/

For more about Smokey: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/12/smokey-yunick-camaro-is-for-sale-again.html

The guy co wrote the movie, and had two tributes that most people wouldn't notice, and probably some I missed.

First the dad's Chevelle is a tribute to Smokey Yunick, it's Smokey's black and gold, and number 13... Smokey put that number on most or all of his cars. Second, the car Will drives in the beginning of the movie is a "strawberry douche Chevy Monte Carlo" tribute to "Larry the Cable Guy" from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie

1st source

Smokey Yunick once went to Daytona with a Chevelle, with the fenders covering the rear wheels. It gave him quite an aerodynamic advantage, but was going to make tire changing during the race a real problem.

Other owners complained, but Smokey pointed out that the rulebook said he could cut out the fenders if he wanted to, and he said that he didn't want to.

He ran with it, and the car qualified very high. As soon as the car qualified, he rolled it into the paddock, and started cutting metal from around the wheels.

Other owners complained.

Smokey pointed out that the rule books said he could cut them out, but didn't say when he had to.......

from http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-18185.html

2nd source

I belive it was the 67 or 68 Daytona 500 when Smokey Yunick entered a perfect 7/8ths scale Chevelle.

The car was lowered to the point that the tires were tucked up inside the wheel wells almost rubbing the sheet metal. The other teams ran with large cut-outs to clear the tires.

The teams all protested and NASCAR said there was nothing in the rule books saying the tires couldn't be tucked inside the fenders.

Smokeys car went out and easily won poll position. No other team could beat it during qualifying.

Prior to start of the race Smokey took a sawzall and cut the wheel openings to clear all the tires.

Again the other teams protested.

NASCAR said there's nothing in the rules that say he can't do that.

It was because of Smokeys 7/8ths Chevelle that NASCAR now uses templates to check body size and shape and wheel openings.

from http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-58834.html

The quintessential Yunick story has been retold so many times, and exaggerated so much in the telling, that today it’s almost unbelievable. The facts, if they can still be determined, are that Yunick showed up with a Chevelle at Daytona in 1967 for Curtis Turner to drive.

Turner won the pole, and the big manufacturers blew a gasket–a lone privateer wasn’t supposed to show up the factory teams like that.

The car blew up on the second lap of the race, avoiding further controversy, but when Yunick brought the car to the summer Daytona race, NASCAR inspectors, determined not to let their primary manufacturers be embarrassed again, gave Yunick a list of eleven mechanical items that had to be fixed before qualifying–which started in ninety minutes.

(Item #1, reportedly, was “Replace homemade frame with stock frame.”)

They removed the gas tank from the car, claiming that its non-exploding design was non-conforming. Yunick in exasperation told them, “Make that twelve items,” hopped into his tankless Chevy, and drove it back to its garage stall as the red-faced inspectors gaped.

The rulebook didn’t specify what kind of fuel lines the car could run, so Yunick had threaded eleven feet of 2" tubing through the frame, allowing it to hold almost a gallon of additional gas.

Within a week, the rulebook had been changed to allow only 5/8" tubing of a short length.

From http://www.gordonline.com/commish/020105.html and probably a dozen other sources.

From http://www.smokeyyunick.com/PressReleases/Reviews.pdf is a bit Smokey said after Earnhardt's death:
Yunick writes: “Moveable walls, concrete tracks, fueling by computer, air jacks ’stead of the 30 pound flying sledge hammers they use, mandatory retirement age, etc. When the hell they gonna get to doing something? Maybe after next ace gets killed? When they gonna get rid of the [deleted] restrictor plates and go to smaller engines? Don’t give me the [deleted] answer you can get killed in bathtub. It’s this simple: whoever’s running NASCAR has got his head up his [deleted].”

http://grantwcooper.com/smokey.html has a terrific tribute website, and so is http://www.legendsofnascar.com/smokey.htm

For more about Smokey: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/11/great-racing-photos-and-warbirds-and.html

Some of the fine artwork that Smokey performed on this 180 mph beast...

He took the starter, reversed the direction it pointed, reversed it's spinning direction, and mounted it next to the oil pan.... just to make room for the exhaust 4 into 2 into 1 hand welded collectors.

He took a wrong side / passenger side Australian steering box, and installed it in order to make room for exhaust on the opposite side from the starter mod I just mentioned.

For a better description of the tricks I just mentioned
http://www.trans-amseries.com/Drivers/RossMyers69Mustang.htm

http://www.ponysite.de/smokey.htm for more pictures

Now the conflicting info about this car is that one website says Vic Edelbrock owns and races it. Pictured here: http://www.trans-amseries.com/Drivers/VicEdelbrockMustang.htm is the formerly Follmer Boss 302. So, what's that about?

This website http://www.gordonline.com/commish/020105.html says Edelbrock owns the Smokey 302.... wonder why?

Though Smokey set several speed and endurance records with the car at Bonneville, with both a 302 cubic inch and a 396 cubic inch engine, it never won a race while Yunick owned it. It was later sold to Don Yenko, who did win several races.

A stock appearing Camaro, Smokey had acid-dipped the body panels and installed thinner glass to reduce weight, tilted the front end down and the windshield back for aerodynamics, widened the fenders, z'ed the front frame, and sucked the floorpan up to lower the car. The driprails were even brought closer to the body for a tiny aerodynamic improvement. Don't forget that the most common thing Smokey did to all his cars, was to streamline them for reduces air drag, all the underside was modified to reduce angles and flow air around flat spots. All of the aerodynamic things Smokey did are readily attributed to his experiences as a B-17 pilot, and the knowledge gained from airplane design and dynamics.