mikeyb
04-06-2005, 09:58 AM
http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/il/features/motorsports/fonty.flock/fontyflock1.340.jpg
The Chevy Small-Block Turns 50
By: John Pearley Huffman (editorsIL@insideline.com)
Date Posted 03-31-2005
NASCAR drivers back in 1955 didn't travel in private airplanes or retreat to luxurious motor coaches after a race. There weren't corporate suites at the tracks they raced on and there wasn't pavement on most of them either.
Back then, no one except NASCAR founder Bill France was getting rich and the Grand National division (which would evolve into today's Nextel Cup) ran 24 of the 45 events on short tracks in the Carolinas and Virginia.
Going into 1955, a Chevrolet had never won a race in NASCAR's six-season history. Chevys hadn't even been available with V8 engines since 1918 and the company's "Stovebolt" sixes were slugs. But in 1955 the company's new 265-cubic-inch "small-block" V8 promised to change that and Chevy decided to test that promise on the Grand National circuit where the cars were as close to stock as NASCAR could keep them.
After the sixth race of the season, Chevy's new car and new engine were winners.
Chevy's Big Gamble
The launches of the small-block V8 and the all-new '55 Chevrolets were simply the most important in the division's history. And they were a gamble.
Chevrolet had built its reputation on high value, but the cars were boring. They'd stutter-stepped into the exhilaration business with the 1953 Corvette, but that was a niche item; an experiment that, if it failed, meant little to the division and less to GM's bottom line.
The small-block V8, on the other hand, was going into Chevrolet's bread-and-butter cars and trucks. If buyers embraced it, Chevy would take on Ford in every mainstream market segment. If it failed, the division risked also-ran oblivion.
"I convinced management to put up a proposal to Chevrolet for racing," recalls Jim Wangers, who was working for Campbell-Ewald which was then and is still now Chevrolet's ad agency. "We asked for a $3 million budget and they gave us $3 million and they brought in Mauri Rose to lead it. And that's how it got off the ground. Our whole marketing approach was that we were going to prove to the U.S. market that we would build a V8 that would out-perform Ford."
The Engine and Car That Could
For the racing effort, Chevrolet had developed a "Power Pack" kit that put a four-barrel carburetor atop the small-block to boost output from 165 to 180 horsepower. And by the following spring it became a regular production option. On top of that, a special cam and other changes bounced the horsepower up to 195 in the Corvette. Chevy declared the Power Pack on its stock cars, but didn't mention the Corvette parts aboard.
Three-time Indy winner Mauri Rose chose the team of legendary mechanic/owner Smokey Yunick and driver Herb Thomas as the somewhat official factory effort. Thomas already had two Grand National championships in Hudson Hornets and with Yunick had won 12 races during 1954. But '55 Chevys were distributed to other teams as well.
Rose, Yunick and Thomas first raced the '55 Chevy at a short track event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early March of that year. To everyone's surprise, including theirs, they won that minor league event in the untested machine. Still, they wouldn't be quite ready for the March 19th 100-mile Grand National event on the half-mile dirt track in South Carolina's state capitol, Columbia, without an act of God or nature. They got one: It rained, postponing the race a week.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…
"A race which has generated as much interest as any stock car event ever staged here is scheduled to be run at the Columbia Speedway at 8:30 tonight if the weatherman cooperates," reported Columbia's newspaper The State its March 26, 1955, edition. "The extra week, if anything, has served to increase the attention and interest.
"For one thing, it gave the Chevrolet division of General Motors time to send a team of experts, headed by Mauri Rose, three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, here to supervise the running of its 1955 models…. With the combined experience and know-how of Thomas and Rose, this entry should be hard to beat." The story also noted that "the colorful Georgian" Fonty Flock would be racing a '55 Chevy entered by independent Frank Christian.
"Nevertheless," the story continued, "the odds still favor the proven class exemplified by the Chrysler, Oldsmobile and Hudson models entered…. The most notable entry is Tim Flock's 300-horsepower 1955 Chrysler. Flock won the 160-mile race at Daytona Beach in February with it, but this will be the first appearance of a passenger car of this power on a half-mile track."
The 26th was a frigid and windy Saturday night at Columbia Speedway, four miles down the Charleston Highway from the city's center, but almost 3,000 fans braved the elements and paid $3 to stand in the infield or $4 to sit in the grandstands. All the big NASCAR names of the era were entered: Lee Petty, Buck Baker, Junior Johnson and Jim Paschal in addition to the Flock brothers and Thomas. The total purse was $4,100 with the winner taking home a full $1,000. That was big money for racing in 1955.
Tim Flock's Carl Kiekhafer-owned Chrysler 300 proved as intimidating as promised and qualified for the pole. The big Chrysler took the lead when the race started and kept it through most of the race.
Then chaos ensued.
"A spectacular four-car pileup on the 132nd lap decommissioned the scoring system as Gober Sosebee rammed the official stand," reported National Speed Sport News (The State claimed it was a five-car incident on lap 140 — no one really knows for sure now). As the wreckage was being cleared, and amid the general confusion of wiping out the scoring system, Tim Flock entered the pits for tires putting Fonty Flock's Chevrolet in the lead.
Suddenly, Chevrolet was positioned to win a NASCAR Grand National race for the first time, which it did. Fonty Flock won the race going away, though the rest of the finishing order was in disarray. Herb Thomas' "official" Chevrolet entry finished a disputed 10th and Tim Flock's Chrysler 300 came in 5th.
The Adventure Continues
There would only be one more win for the '55 Chevy in Grand National that year when Herb Thomas took the Southern 500 at Darlington, then NASCAR's biggest event. Not the most auspicious start, but not a bad one.
As this is written (March 2005) Chevy has won 557 races in NASCAR's premier division — the two 1955 wins represent the total of the division's slight edge over archrival Ford — and 28 manufacturer's titles. Drivers ranging from Buck Baker in 1957 to Dale Earnhardt (seven times) and Jeff Gordon (four times) have won Grand National and Winston Cup titles driving Chevrolets. And except for a handful of cars in the '60s and early '70s, all those winning Chevys have had versions of the small-block V8 under their hoods.
Of course the small-block's racing success hasn't been limited to NASCAR. In fact, the small-block is the most successful engine in the history of racing, powering successful sprint cars, hill climbers, rally racers, land speed record streamliners, off-road trucks, on-track trucks, race boats…anything and everything that races, and it remains the backbone of both drag and stock car racing at virtually every professional and amateur level around the world.
And it all started 50 years ago, on a track that's barely even remembered now, at a time that seems very far away, and in a very different NASCAR.
<!-- end Primary Content --><!-- Footer content -->
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=105242
The Chevy Small-Block Turns 50
By: John Pearley Huffman (editorsIL@insideline.com)
Date Posted 03-31-2005
NASCAR drivers back in 1955 didn't travel in private airplanes or retreat to luxurious motor coaches after a race. There weren't corporate suites at the tracks they raced on and there wasn't pavement on most of them either.
Back then, no one except NASCAR founder Bill France was getting rich and the Grand National division (which would evolve into today's Nextel Cup) ran 24 of the 45 events on short tracks in the Carolinas and Virginia.
Going into 1955, a Chevrolet had never won a race in NASCAR's six-season history. Chevys hadn't even been available with V8 engines since 1918 and the company's "Stovebolt" sixes were slugs. But in 1955 the company's new 265-cubic-inch "small-block" V8 promised to change that and Chevy decided to test that promise on the Grand National circuit where the cars were as close to stock as NASCAR could keep them.
After the sixth race of the season, Chevy's new car and new engine were winners.
Chevy's Big Gamble
The launches of the small-block V8 and the all-new '55 Chevrolets were simply the most important in the division's history. And they were a gamble.
Chevrolet had built its reputation on high value, but the cars were boring. They'd stutter-stepped into the exhilaration business with the 1953 Corvette, but that was a niche item; an experiment that, if it failed, meant little to the division and less to GM's bottom line.
The small-block V8, on the other hand, was going into Chevrolet's bread-and-butter cars and trucks. If buyers embraced it, Chevy would take on Ford in every mainstream market segment. If it failed, the division risked also-ran oblivion.
"I convinced management to put up a proposal to Chevrolet for racing," recalls Jim Wangers, who was working for Campbell-Ewald which was then and is still now Chevrolet's ad agency. "We asked for a $3 million budget and they gave us $3 million and they brought in Mauri Rose to lead it. And that's how it got off the ground. Our whole marketing approach was that we were going to prove to the U.S. market that we would build a V8 that would out-perform Ford."
The Engine and Car That Could
For the racing effort, Chevrolet had developed a "Power Pack" kit that put a four-barrel carburetor atop the small-block to boost output from 165 to 180 horsepower. And by the following spring it became a regular production option. On top of that, a special cam and other changes bounced the horsepower up to 195 in the Corvette. Chevy declared the Power Pack on its stock cars, but didn't mention the Corvette parts aboard.
Three-time Indy winner Mauri Rose chose the team of legendary mechanic/owner Smokey Yunick and driver Herb Thomas as the somewhat official factory effort. Thomas already had two Grand National championships in Hudson Hornets and with Yunick had won 12 races during 1954. But '55 Chevys were distributed to other teams as well.
Rose, Yunick and Thomas first raced the '55 Chevy at a short track event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early March of that year. To everyone's surprise, including theirs, they won that minor league event in the untested machine. Still, they wouldn't be quite ready for the March 19th 100-mile Grand National event on the half-mile dirt track in South Carolina's state capitol, Columbia, without an act of God or nature. They got one: It rained, postponing the race a week.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…
"A race which has generated as much interest as any stock car event ever staged here is scheduled to be run at the Columbia Speedway at 8:30 tonight if the weatherman cooperates," reported Columbia's newspaper The State its March 26, 1955, edition. "The extra week, if anything, has served to increase the attention and interest.
"For one thing, it gave the Chevrolet division of General Motors time to send a team of experts, headed by Mauri Rose, three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, here to supervise the running of its 1955 models…. With the combined experience and know-how of Thomas and Rose, this entry should be hard to beat." The story also noted that "the colorful Georgian" Fonty Flock would be racing a '55 Chevy entered by independent Frank Christian.
"Nevertheless," the story continued, "the odds still favor the proven class exemplified by the Chrysler, Oldsmobile and Hudson models entered…. The most notable entry is Tim Flock's 300-horsepower 1955 Chrysler. Flock won the 160-mile race at Daytona Beach in February with it, but this will be the first appearance of a passenger car of this power on a half-mile track."
The 26th was a frigid and windy Saturday night at Columbia Speedway, four miles down the Charleston Highway from the city's center, but almost 3,000 fans braved the elements and paid $3 to stand in the infield or $4 to sit in the grandstands. All the big NASCAR names of the era were entered: Lee Petty, Buck Baker, Junior Johnson and Jim Paschal in addition to the Flock brothers and Thomas. The total purse was $4,100 with the winner taking home a full $1,000. That was big money for racing in 1955.
Tim Flock's Carl Kiekhafer-owned Chrysler 300 proved as intimidating as promised and qualified for the pole. The big Chrysler took the lead when the race started and kept it through most of the race.
Then chaos ensued.
"A spectacular four-car pileup on the 132nd lap decommissioned the scoring system as Gober Sosebee rammed the official stand," reported National Speed Sport News (The State claimed it was a five-car incident on lap 140 — no one really knows for sure now). As the wreckage was being cleared, and amid the general confusion of wiping out the scoring system, Tim Flock entered the pits for tires putting Fonty Flock's Chevrolet in the lead.
Suddenly, Chevrolet was positioned to win a NASCAR Grand National race for the first time, which it did. Fonty Flock won the race going away, though the rest of the finishing order was in disarray. Herb Thomas' "official" Chevrolet entry finished a disputed 10th and Tim Flock's Chrysler 300 came in 5th.
The Adventure Continues
There would only be one more win for the '55 Chevy in Grand National that year when Herb Thomas took the Southern 500 at Darlington, then NASCAR's biggest event. Not the most auspicious start, but not a bad one.
As this is written (March 2005) Chevy has won 557 races in NASCAR's premier division — the two 1955 wins represent the total of the division's slight edge over archrival Ford — and 28 manufacturer's titles. Drivers ranging from Buck Baker in 1957 to Dale Earnhardt (seven times) and Jeff Gordon (four times) have won Grand National and Winston Cup titles driving Chevrolets. And except for a handful of cars in the '60s and early '70s, all those winning Chevys have had versions of the small-block V8 under their hoods.
Of course the small-block's racing success hasn't been limited to NASCAR. In fact, the small-block is the most successful engine in the history of racing, powering successful sprint cars, hill climbers, rally racers, land speed record streamliners, off-road trucks, on-track trucks, race boats…anything and everything that races, and it remains the backbone of both drag and stock car racing at virtually every professional and amateur level around the world.
And it all started 50 years ago, on a track that's barely even remembered now, at a time that seems very far away, and in a very different NASCAR.
<!-- end Primary Content --><!-- Footer content -->
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=105242