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closeDale Earnhardt's first car? '56 Chevy, 'sunflower yellow'
LIZ CLARKE
Saturday, May. 24, 2008
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article appeared May 29, 1994, and was written by Liz Clarke, a former member of The Charlotte Observer's sports staff now working for The Washington Post, where she continues to cover motorsports. Her "first car" article was part of the inspiration for Scott Fowler's current offering in the Observer and on ThatsRacin.com and Charlotte.com.
That first car. We all remember it - from the year and make to the sound of its engine and the smell of the upholstery.
It was independence.
A barometer of cool.
It was everything.
That car was thousands of miles and a lifetime ago for stock car drivers in today's Coca-Cola 600 - but they remember.
It was the first thing they saved up for, swapped for, or worked off. A gift that bound father to son.
Something they built and rebuilt. The first thing they could make work. The first thing they could control.
Dale Earnhardt, racing's tough guy, remembers his first car as "sunflower yellow," with black interior, chrome wheels and white-letter tires.
"It was a '56 Chevrolet," says Earnhardt, whose father, Ralph, raced Southeast short tracks. "My dad paid $25 for it. No motor. Had the right side tore up on it. We put a new door on it and fixed it up like new. Dad built me an engine. It was a neat car."
Junior Johnson's was a ’36 Ford.
"I worked it out at a sawmill when I was about 13, 14 years old," says Johnson, a tough-nosed driver turned car owner. "I logged with a mule. Earned a nickel an hour.
"It was a two-door. Had a little trunk on it. I was kind of proud of it."
Harry Gant picked cotton to pay for his - a '53 Mercury that cost $600.
"It was a fast car," says Gant, 54. "A f-i-i-i-ne automobile. Everybody liked that car.
"When I was 14, 15, I started making pretty good money - $30 a week, $40," Gant says. "I had enough saved up to get that car by the time I was 16. It was green. Skoal green."
Richard Petty's was an old Dodge racer that belonged to his daddy, Lee.
"We converted it back into a road car," Petty says. "It had two carburetors - the whole deal. Sat about 2 inches off the ground. We lowered it. It had the wide wheels. A teenage car.
"I bought it from Daddy. Paid cash for the dang thing. He wouldn't let me have it on a loan."
Petty, who went on to win more stock car races than any driver in history, presented his son, Kyle, with a backyard full of teenage dreams.
"I'd just go out and pick one out," Kyle Petty recalls. "I drove a 1950 Plymouth to school for a while. A '33 Dodge to school for a while. A '69 Dodge Charger for a while. We just had cars sitting around. I never had your first car."
Bill Elliott swapped for his: $50 for his brother Ernie's '57 Ford, an ugly shade of green.
"It was just a rough ol' car," Elliott says. "I was probably 13. I remember I used to take the motor out and put it back in every other day.
"I used to go riding up and down the dirt roads wide open, like an idiot. It was a lot of fun."
To a 12-year-old Rick Mast, a dirt brown '65 Comet with three speeds on the column defined the universe.
"On Saturday nights my mom and dad would go shopping or to the movie, and I'd hop in that baby and I was gone," says Mast, who grew up in the Virginia foothills.
"I'd always go down dirt roads so I wouldn't get pulled over. I could go north as far as Staunton. I could go west almost to Clifton Forge. It was hard to go very far east, because that was the interstate.
"I rode it wide-open. Played the radio wide open, listening to Waylon Jennings and Alice Cooper. They were my people."
It's enough to make Brett Bodine feel sorry for kids today who don't grow up in the country.
"I had a '67 Plymouth Valiant - my field car," says Bodine, 35. "I lived on a farm, and before you had your driver's license, you had something you drove around the field.
"I had a quarter-mile dirt track laid out on the field, and when I was 13, 14 years old, I put a lot of miles on that car on a quarter-mile race track. I didn't care, as long as the thing would go. I'd slide it around, kick up a big dust storm. I learned to drive that way."
John Andretti was as meticulous about his '76 Monte Carlo as Bodine was wild about that Valiant.
"It wasn't exactly a teenager's hot rod, but it was my car, and I kept it immaculate," says Andretti, nephew of legendary driver Mario Andretti. "You'd lift the hood and it was better than the day it was bought."
"It had everything. I had to pay for it, too. My dad took about a 20-year note on it, and I gradually just paid it down. I sold it with 150,000 miles on it, with the original engine."
Darrell Waltrip went for style: A '53 flathead Ford businessman's coupe, black with a blue interior.
"It was a fine-looking piece," Waltrip says. "I went on my first date on that. There were a lot of firsts in that car. You can use your imagination."
Derrike Cope's did tricks. Son of a drag racing champion, Cope got his hands on a gutted-out dragster: a '57 Chevy with too much power for its tires and a line lock, which lets you lock the front brakes by pushing a button on the stick shift.
"You could do a burn out and be smoking, sitting in front of McDonald's," Cope says. "Lock it up, let the clutch out, spin the tires and never move.
"I wish I still had it. My brother ended up crashing it. It was all white, with a blue and red stripe on it. Black leather bucket seats, with a diamond tuck upholstery. God, it was nice."
For Terry Labonte, it marked an era: A 1966 Dodge Charger, traded in before he ever got his driver's license for a "hippie van" with custom paint job.
For Rusty Wallace, it marked the passing of an era.
"I built this really bad-to-the-bone pick-up truck,"’ Wallace says. "It was really super fast. Had a big old engine in it. It was a low rider - solid white - and it had a stereo system bad enough to blow the roof off.
"I built it with friends of mine at my father's garage. We'd load it, we painted it, we put trick wheels and tires on it and a big engine in it. Back then, the truck would run about 140 miles an hour.
"Then I got married, and really calmed down and I bought myself a real legitimate passenger car: A 1980 model Chevrolet Impala. The marriage car."