OT & Long / International Motor Sports Hall Of Fame - Talladega AL

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: OT & Long / International Motor Sports Hall Of Fame - Talladega AL
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Brian Sullivan, Powell WY on Monday, September 24, 2012 - 11:28 am:

Visited the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame yesterday. It is in Talladega, AL.

To keep on topic, given the threads about Faultless and Mercury speedsters lately, thought I would share a couple of photos.

Also to keep this on-topic, the reason I visited was mostly due to information on the Internet saying they had at least a Mercury Speedster, as well as another Fronty powered racer.

What I found instead was that it should properly be called the "International Motorsports If You Are Interested Mostly In NASCAR since 1948 Hall of Fame". In fairness, they did have some limited open wheel stuff, some limited Indy relics, but nothing of note. Certainly nothing strictly relating to early Twentieth Century racing as I had hoped.

I went to the front desk. Asked whether they could look at the exhibit listing to tell me where the Model T Mercury was. She looked at me like I was from Mars. Oh well, so much for Google search.

I will go ahead and share a couple of photos for those of us interested in vintage racing. My post here is to tie to the subject of safety and racing safety evolution. We will work newest to oldest so you can see evolution a bit.

Wreck

The photos above are of two NASCAR cars from the 1990s. The one on the left, Dale Earnhardt won the Dayton 500 in it. Neil Bonnett crashed this chassis, renumbered, with the results you can see above. As many of you know, both Earnhardt and Bonnett were killed in racing/testing (but not in this wreck of course). What killed both was not a failure of car structure, but of other factors relative to impact absorption. With Earnhardt, the lesson from his death was restraining the driver's body in better ways; in Bonnett's death it was impact absorption relative to crash barriers that was the lesson. But you can see from the black car, the structure of the car sure did its job.

The one on the right is an even more extreme example. This car was crashed in 1990 at Bristol TN. Supposedly, the driver Michael Waltrip was actually laying on the track when the car came to a rest. View this wreck at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzxcuV5rmA4

You can see the relationship of car structure relative to racing environment in that example as well.

Moving back, this next photo is of the driver compartment of the Richard Petty 43 car in which he won the 1974 championship. Note the lack of padding and the squirrelcage blower!



Moving back a few more years, here is Buddy Baker’s 1969 Dodge Daytona Superbird.




That steering wheel astonished me. Imagine the pain if you hit that thing with your chest… oh wait… you would probably not feel a thing. This car was the first to break 200 MPH in NASCAR.

Couple more photos and I will be done with this overly long thread. I was also very disappointed how lopsided the ratio was of Chevy/Dodge powered cars v. Ford at this museum. This and a mid-1970s Torino were the only ones of note:



As the former owner of a 1962 Pontiac, this second one was a bit of a shrine for me. It is Fireball Roberts 1962 Catalina. I apologize for how dark this is, but you can barely make out the fact that the door panels are still installed, as well as the dash chrome!! Buy 'em on Monday, race them the next Sunday.



The oldest car I saw was a 1952ish STUDEBAKER powered open wheel racer. Yes, I know about Hudson, but was surprised that someone was using a Studebaker power plant. The body structure, exposed fuel tank and system, lack of driver protection, etc. show design principles that you can extend back all the way to 1920s racing. For more information, I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to view this thread on Ford Barn:

http://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3723&showall=1

I was really disappointed overall, but only because it did not meet my search efforts. But as a more general museum, it was worth the 12 bucks for sure.

(BTW, I got to ride at 170 MPH yesterday at Talladega. Yes, it was as cool as you would think it would be. So far this year, I have had the opportunity to take laps on the Daytona, Atlanta, and Talladega tracks. Livin’ the dream. In each case, I told everyone who would listen about my 1922 racer project, its amazing 22 HP, and awesome 35 mph top speed. They all look at me like I am from Mars as well.)


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