They Don't Make Them Like That Anymore

I'm going to share a little bit of racing history here, though I have to be vague. The car pictured belongs to somebody who doesn't want the attention. He's a fan of old Hardtop racing, which was prevalent in the 1950s and '60s.

It's an old Coupe style body. It ran at a track in California. It was driven to a pair of championships by the same driver. The car has the same old paint job and hasn't really been upgraded since it ran some 50 years ago.

The current owner has taken it for a spin at the track, few times, though it's been close to a decade since the last time he ran it in an exhibition race.

There are nostalgia based groups all across the country that do this sort of thing. Some people restore old vintage Super Modifieds that were raced back in the 1960s and 1970s. Some people build replica cars.

Hardtops also have various groups across the country who restore old Sedans and Coupes that once raced here or there. Others find old cars and build replicas.

A lot of the racing that we see these days is more cookie cutter. What I mean by that is most of the cars are manufactured and look the same.

They have different body wraps, but you don't see cars getting painted and lettered the way they did back in the day. It's all body wraps.

The IMCA Modifieds and IMCA Sport Modifieds look pretty much alike. Same holds true for Sprint Cars. Back in the days when classes like Hardtops, Super Modifieds and Sportsman cars were the thing, you had all types of makes and models and different paint jobs.

Even the Stock Cars through about the mid 1980s had character. All of the cars didn't look alike, and I think racing back in those days was more interesting than it is now.

In any case, this car survived when most of the cars that competed against it got hauled off to the junkyard. There are probably a few cars sitting out in fields or barns someplace that people don't even know about.

To the right person in the racing community, they would be a treasured edition to their collection. This particular person has owned a few different cars that raced at one place or another back in those days.

I can't really say much more than that. I probably shouldn't have shared this little tidbit, but I don't think there's much harm in it.

Most people wouldn't even recognize what little I posted here, but fans of that type of racing will get a kick out of this little bit of nostalgia

Tweet