Red, White and Blue 442

from Muscle Car Mania -- Nostalgia May 2020

Drag Racing

Focus On My Family

By Heather Ziegler

By HEATHER ZIEGLER

It was the 1970s, the beginning of the end of the popularity of those beautiful machines we called “muscle cars.” At least that is my opinion as I have lived long enough to observe the auto industry’s idea of vehicle development.

I grew up in the age of baby boomers, when cars and trucks were made of steel and chrome and glass, not plastic and composite materials.

Open the door on any of the favorite muscle cars of the 1950s through 1970s, and you knew you were entering a solid machine built in the good old U.S. of A.

My experience with the muscle cars began when I was barely a teen. It was when my older brother Herk drove one of the most sought-after vehicles of the time — the Chevrolet Corvette. He acquired the 1968 L-88 Corvette by trading a new MGB he was not happy with due to engine issues.

The convertible Corvette had one of the biggest engines that were made for racing as opposed to street driving. Although it became too impractical when he married, the same car today has been known to sell for $760,000 at auction. There were only 300 to 400 made by the manufacturer with that size engine. I was happy to just sit behind the wheel as he instructed

Red, White and Blue 442 Turned Heads

me on shifting gears.

Those early experiences provided me the basic training of driving a stick shift, a talent sorely lacking in the youth of today. The art of driving anything other than a vehicle with an automatic transmission is akin to asking a teen today to operate a rotary phone.

Anyway, by the early 1970s, I had been exposed to various vehicle transmissions via the expanse of muscle cars of the young men in our community. Each of the muscle cars, trucks, vans and even motorcycles that graced the streets of the Ohio Valley brought their own personalities along with their drivers.

You could tell who was about to enter the Burger Chef or Elby’s parking lot by the roar of the engine about to turn the corner. And those custom paint jobs and modified motors turned heads, too. Whether it was the jacked up Dodge Charger, sleek Pontiac GTO or tricked-out Volkswagen Beetle, you knew who was coming down the street.

Motorcycles with exaggerated pipes — from the popular Sportster to the full-grown Harley — held their own place of popularity among the muscle car generation.

In 1973, I was looking down the aisle of matrimony. Taking me there was my future husband who recently purchased what would be our “family” car. No, it was not a station wagon (I rode in enough of those in my youth!). It was a red, white and blue custom-painted 1966 Oldsmobile 442.

The 442 refers to a four-on-thefloor, four-speed transmission, four-barrel carburetor with dual Photo Provided This 1966 Oldsmobile 442 sports a custom paint job as shown by its owners Heather and David Ziegler in 1973.

exhausts. And it had the sweetest sound as the transmission slid smoothly from first to second gear and so on.

It was a grand feeling to sit behind the wheel and feel the power of that man-made machine. It was an easy-riding vehicle despite its tendency to want to fly as opposed to having its wheels planted firmly on the ground.

At least that’s what I experienced while driving it to the laundromat or to Foodland. That straight away on National Road between Washington Avenue and Wheeling Park just begged for me to open it up and hit fourth gear. For the record, I never got a speeding ticket in that vehicle.

Like any muscle car of the era, especially one that saw modifications, there were some problems. The day of our 1974 wedding, the groom was under the vehicle repairing a leak of some sort. It was salvaged in time for the walk down the aisle.

When our wedding party left the church, there was a procession of muscle cars. Our 442 led the way with groomsmen and guests driving several gorgeous Corvettes and other notable machines. It was a memorable day and time in the lives of people and cars.

As time and necessity said we should give up the 442, our style of vehicles ranged from green Ford pickups to the original tiny canary yellow Honda Civic.

But we will always have fond memories of that Oldsmobile 442.

Driven To Destiny

love of classic cars leads to new business for Belmont family

By JENNIFER COMPSTON-STROUGH

Andy Mistak was almost born in a Corvette, so it only seems natural for him to spend a great deal of time acquiring, restoring and selling classic cars.

Mistak and his family own Belmont Classic Cars, located at 41834 Stenger Road in Belmont. The dealership opened in 2017 after years of personal classic car collecting by Andy and his wife, Dana, both of whom inherited their love for the vehicles from their fathers. Andy’s dad was a “huge Corvette fan,” according to the company website, while Dana’s father shared his love of Mustangs with her, setting up an iconic Chevy vs. Ford debate.

Mistak said he wasn’t sure why his dad decided to take his mom to the hospital in a Corvette when she went into labor with him, but they barely made it to their destination on time.

“From there, I’ve tinkered on old cars ever since,” he said.

He also credited a local business owner, Vic Goff, with teaching him a great deal about automotive repairs. Goff owned and operated a service station in Belmont. The business closed several years ago and Goff and his wife, Sondy, have since converted the building to a home that they still occupy.

“Vic Goff helped me a lot growing up,” Mistak said. “I spent a lot of time in his garage when it was open.”

Mistak “kind of got away” from working on cars after he graduated high school and went to work. He got into Motocross racing for a while, but he gave that up when he and Dana started their family. They are the parents of three grown sons, and each plays some role in their classic car business.

As his family grew, Mistak got back into restoring classic cars.

He started by finding, buying, restoring and reselling a Corvette. As time went on, his hobby expanded and he began to move “probably more cars than I should,” and decided to start an official business, launching Belmont Classic Cars with about 10 cars available for sale online.

Things picked up quickly from there, and business is still booming. Mistak said even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, BCC sold five cars over a span of eight days.

The real challenge now, he noted, is keeping the business stocked with inventory. He often travels locally and throughout the country seeking vehicles to restore and resell. He said the South is a “good hunting ground.”

“We try to buy cars that are ready to go or close to it,” he said. “If I find something that is highly desirable, we will restore the

interior and I farm out the paint work. Sometimes we do a bit of customization.”

Mistak prefers to sell cars that are “close to the way they came out of the factory.”

Speaking of desirable, Mistak has one car in his inventory that is a rare find indeed. It is the 10th Corvette that was made in 1954 — the second year of manufacture. During the Corvette’s first year, 1953, only 300 were built. So, according to this vehicle’s VIN number, it is the 310th Corvette ever made. And it still has its original paint, top and interior.

Mistak also has a 1967 Corvette that he has no intention of parting with. After he had heard about it being for sale locally over a period of three or four years, he finally decided to go take a look at the car.

“I knew when I walked into that lady’s garage that car was going home with me,” he said.

That Corvette 427 has a 435 horsepower engine and only 26,000 original miles on it. Mistak said as soon as he got it home, he started getting phone calls from a collector in New York who offered to pay quite a bit more than he had invested. Mistak decided, though, that he wanted to keep the car. He has since had it painted but kept the original interior. He said he has only put about 12 more miles on it since he acquired it for his collection.

Running the business, though, isn’t just about buying and selling classic cars. Mistak said it’s also about nostalgia. Even the shop’s logo - in a shield shape reminiscent of an interstate

marker - takes people back to a simpler time.

“There’s too much information that flows today,” said Mistak, who turns 50 this month and left his job with Murray Energy Corp. in April 2019 to focus on the auto dealership and the family’s cattle farm.

Mistak said the shop is filled with items from the past, not just with classic cars. He said visitors can “look for at least an hour” at items on display at the dealership, including old soda machines, pedal cars, advertising signs featuring neon and more. Some pieces are original and in untouched condition, others have been restored, and still others are reproductions.

“We get tons of people who come in who just want to look,” Mistak said. “They can share stories (about cars they remember) for three or four hours. It’s just a good time listening to them.”

Each family member plays a role in the business. In addition to Andy and Dana’s efforts to stock and run the shop, their oldest son, Drew, takes photos of the vehicles in the inventory when he is in town. Middle son Devon shoots videos for the business, which goes hand-in-hand with his work in marketing in North Carolina. Trey, the youngest of the three brothers, handles website and Facebook development for the shop.

Each son also has a classic car of his own.

“They definitely have an appreciation for them,” their dad said.

Mistak added that he is always looking for classic vehicles to add to the store’s inventory. To learn more about the business or to send a message about a classic car you might want to sell, visit the shop’s website at belmontclassiccars.com.

On the Road With EL CAMINO EL CAMINO “Cruck” Still a Classic Today

By MIKE JONES

When my wife was little, a Chevrolet El Camino came rolling down her street while she and her father were unloading groceries from the family car.

Wide-eyed and wondrous about this strange-looking car that had a truck bed instead of a trunk, she eagerly asked her dad what it was that had just driven through their neighborhood.

“That’s the most useless car ever made,” her dad quipped as he picked up a couple of grocery bags and walked to their house.

Years later, I let out a hearty laugh the first time I heard this story told, even though I harbored a secret at the time. To me, the Chevy El Camino is the coolest classic muscle car - or should I say “cruck?” - to ever roll off the assembly line.

My love of the “cruck” came the first time I saw one while visiting family in South Carolina. Understandably, they’re more prevalent in the south with mild winters and no road salt to tear up the underbody.

My uncle had a 1981 El Camino Conquista edition with a black body and silver trim on the roof and side skirts. The way the contrasting black and silver colors streaked down the roof around the beveled rear glass and into the bed immediately caught my attention. It looked so sleek and, well, weird.

It was already a “classic car” by the time I first saw it in the early 2000s. But I soon became fascinated with the style of vehicle that had long past its heyday when Chevrolet retired the brand in 1987.

While the final version of the “Elkies” looked like a Frankenstein experiment with a Chevy Malibu gone awry, middle generations in the late 1960s and early 70s were full-blown muscle cars with a truck bed that hauled more than just cargo.

But before all that, the El Camino — which means “the road” in Spanish — began as an answer to Ford’s increasingly popular Ranchero.

The blue oval gang released the Ranchero in 1957 using the chassis from its station wagon line, and it immediately caught the attention of a hybrid crowd that didn’t want a huge pickup truck, but still yearned for the versatility for outdoor labor.

Two years later, Chevrolet answered the call with its own

version.

Both brands came straight out of a late-1950s greaser movie with their intricate headlamps and huge, swooping fins stretched to the rear of the bed.

Sales for the El Camino, however, were stuck in neutral and Chevrolet discontinued the brand in 1960 after just two years on the market.

Ford continued along with moderate success, prompting Chevrolet to reintroduce its version in 1964.

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This time, though, rather than targeting suburban families who couldn’t fit all of their kids in just the front bench seat, these new “crucks” would ride the muscle car wave into the late 1960s and became a hit for young drivers with newly-minted licenses.

Big, souped-up V-8 engines coupled with the Super Sport badging and a Chevelle nose made the El Camino an instant classic when the third generation rolled out to consumers in the late 1960s. Ford followed along with variations that moved it from a Fairlane-styled body to the sporty Torino.

At its muscle car peak in 1971, General Motors launched a clone version of the El Camino from its GMC truck brand, calling it the Sprint.

But the muscle car era effectively ended that year when new federal emission controls and fuel mileage recommendations designed to improve the environment sapped power and performance from brand new hot rods.

General Motors produced the most El Caminos and Sprints with its all-new design released in 1973, selling nearly 72,000 between the two styles. But production steadily declined over the final 15 years for General Motors until a little more than 16,000 El Caminos and GMC’s Caballero -— the replacement for the Sprint — were sold their final year in 1987.

Ford pulled the plug on the Ranchero nearly a decade sooner in 1979.

The El Camino nearly made a comeback when rumors persisted in the late 2000s that General Motors planned to launch a new version under the Pontiac nameplate. But that option evaporated when GM announced in 2008 it would dissolve the Pontiac brand as the Great Recession took its toll on manufacturing giants.

By then, my uncle in South Carolina had sold his 1981 El Camino, which briefly assuaged my hunger for an “Elkie” of my own. A couple years later, though, he bought a 1972 El Camino with an engine that rumbled and snarled behind the SS badge on the grill. Since then, he’s bought a couple more — one of which is a “parts car” for the others — and he still tinkers with them on the weekends.

That helped to reinvigorate my love of the “cruck” and has sent me on my own quest for my dream classic car: a black and silver 1987 El Camino Conquista edition.

So hopefully some day soon, I’ll be rolling down the street as people snap their heads around to give me bewildered looks.

They may think the El Camino is ugly and useless, but I’ll feel like I’m driving the coolest classic car ever made.

Muscle Car ‘Aero Wars’ Helped Lead to Popularity NASCAR’s NASCAR’s OUTLAW ROOTS OUTLAW ROOTS

By MIKE JONES

Stock car racing was born out of moonshine bootleggers outrunning officers of the law on country roads in Appalachia.

When you type “Junior Johnson” into Google, the first word that appears next to his name in the search bar is “moonshine.” The wily, silver-haired driver who eventually turned into a championship car owner cut his teeth by running shine as a teen in eastern North Carolina for his bootlegging father.

While he was never arrested while making those moonshining runs, he eventually was charged by federal authorities while working at his father’s still in 1956.

He served nearly a year in a federal prison in Chillicothe, Ohio.

However, Johnson was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan three decades later.

Johnson, who died in December at age 88, honed the skills he learned on those mountain roads in North Carolina to become arguably the greatest NASCAR driver never to win a championship.

And he did it all legally on sanctioned tracks in the newly-formed National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

NASCAR began as an outlet for many moonshiners and car enthusiasts like Johnson who wanted to test their mechanical and driving skills against the best in the Deep South. Big Bill France Sr. organized a ragtag group of drivers and promoters in late December 1947 at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla., overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Just two months later, they held their first official race Feb. 15, 1948 streaking down Daytona Beach’s pristine sandy shores and making a hairpin left turn to head back on the smooth pavement of State Route A1A. Red Byron won that first race.

Over the next decade, NASCAR bounced around short tracks — both dirt and paved — in the southeast. In this Feb. 18, 1979, file photo, Bobby Allison, left, stands over Cale Yarborough after a collision between Yarborough and Bobby’s brother Donnie on the last lap of the Daytona 500 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla. Donnie was leading the race until the collision with Yarborough. The 1979 race was instrumental in broadening NASCAR’s southern roots. Forty years later, it still resonates as one of the most important days in NASCAR history.

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The construction of the famed Daytona International Speedway with its impossibly high-banked corners on both sides of the 2.5-mile track brought a new era of speed to racing in 1959.

With bigger and faster tracks like Daytona and the even meaner Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, drivers could really test their cars and courage.

While moonshiners helped to launch stock car racing, the muscle car era of the 1960s and early 70s is what really revved NASCAR’s engine and made it an American icon.

The car wars took off in the 1960s when manufacturers quickly realized that success in motorsports could translate into dollars at the dealership. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” became a popular catch phrase.

And these manufacturers went to great lengths to best each other by poaching drivers or teams to use their nameplates, or by fudging their street versions to make them faster on the track.

And nothing epitomized that need for speed than the “aero wars” of 1969 and 1970.

Ford fired the first volley in 1969 with the Torino Talladega that had a rounded snout and “fastback” trunk. Its sister company, Mercury, produced its own version with the Cyclone II, which won the 1969 Daytona 500.

Chrysler countered later that spring with the Dodge Charger Daytona. With its nose

sharpened like a bullet and a giant wing on the trunk, the car dominated the field in its stock car debut during the inaugural Talladega race in 1969. In fact, the Dodge Charger Daytona was the first car in NASCAR history to record a 200-mph lap when Buddy Baker did it at Talladega in March 1970.

The success of the Daytona prompted Dodge’s sister division at Plymouth to roll out the Road Runner Superbird in 1970.

The designs were so successful, in fact, that NASCAR banned the winged vehicles before the 1971 season after its competitors complained that the cars weren’t being sold in mass quantities to the public. Due to their limited street production, the Daytona and Superbird are some of NASCAR’s most iconic and sought after classic cars available.

It was also the beginning of the end of the muscle car era as strict emission rules began to choke performance.

NASCAR remained a regional sport for most of the 1970s until it exploded in popularity with the running of the 1979 Daytona 500.

CBS broadcast the race live and in its entirety for the first time ever, and a massive blizzard on the East Coast kept people inside to watch from green to checkered flags.

They were treated to an iconic finish when Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison smashed into each other on the final lap, crashing in Turn 3 before either could reach the finish line.

As Richard Petty took the checkered flag, a fight among Yarborough, Allison, and his brother, Bobby, was captured live on television for the nation to see the emotional side of the sport. It’s considered by many as the most important event in NASCAR history, and paved the way for the sport’s popularity.

Over the past five decades since the muscle car era, NASCAR reached new heights and became a national sport. But the cars became mostly forgettable during that time as manufacturers decided to promote four-door family sedans rather than sporty coupes.

However, with the recent entries of the Chevy Camaro and Ford Mustang to NASCAR, maybe a new era has begun for American stock car racing to return to its muscle car roots — without the moonshine. Cale Yarborough (21) drives side-by-side with Lee Roy Yarbrough, both in Mercurys, as they enter the third turn with three laps left in the Daytona 500 NASCAR auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Feb. 25, 1968.

The Shelby Cobra. Is it a muscle car? Yes and no. Is it a sports car? Yes and no. Is it fast as all-be?

Unequivocally, yes.

Carroll Shelby, an international race car driver who drove the fastest and most expensive cars of the 1950s and early ‘60s — these were the Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins and Jaguars — decided in the early 1960s to come up with a car that took the handling and looks of the top European racing machines and add to it good, old-fashioned, dependable American V-8 horsepower.

What he came up with remains a thing of legend, and one of the most expensive cars on the antique sellers’ market: the Shelby Cobra.

According to the Shelby website, “Shelby’s idea became reality when he learned that AC Cars in Great Britain lost the engine supplier for their Bristol sports car. Shelby contacted AC Cars and told them his idea.

They were enthusiastic and told him to reach back out when he had an engine manufacturer lined up.

Shelby proposed his sports car to Ford Motor Co., (which) liked the idea of offering a sports car that would go head-to-head with the Chevrolet Corvette. Carroll, always the racer, explained his ambition to race Cobras against Corvettes in the USA and against Ferrari in Europe. He wanted to win the World Manufacturer’s GT Championship that had been the sole property of Ferrari since its inception.”

Shelby American came along in 1962, and the first Cobras were equipped with the Ford 260 and then the Ford 289 engines.

This setup became very successful for both Ford and Shelby, winning races across the globe against some of the world’s fastest models.

According to carrollshelby.com, “The Cobras dominated Corvettes in North America, winning races coast to coast. ...

“On July 4, 1965, the Cobra (in roadster and coupe form) won the World Manufacturers’ GT Championship, as the team soundly defeated Ferrari. ‘Hey Little Cobra’ ‘Hey Little Cobra’ Song-Worthy Shelby Packed A Big Bite

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Shelby American is the only American vehicle manufacturer to win the prestigious championship, before or since.”

Shelby also worked with Ford starting in the mid-1960s to upgrade the performance of the Mustang.

The first Shelby Mustang, the 1965 Shelby GT350, reached a top speed of 130 mph.

According to CJ Pony Parts, “the 1965 GT350 was equipped with a 289- CID K-Code engine, which churned out 306 horsepower, a full 35 hp more than it would have been able to produce prior to modifications. The GT350R bumped it up to 360 horsepower, an absurd number for the time, especially when coupled with the car’s light body.”

The GT350 models continued in 1966, but that year the Mustang name was dropped.

The 1967 Shelby GT350 was the featured car in the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds.” That car, known as “Elanor,” is considered the top performer among the 1960s-era GT350s. The Shelby GT350 was produced through 1969.

The model saw a resurgence in the late 2000s with the Shelby GT500, Shelby himself worked with Ford to redesign the model for the modern era.

That has continued today, as Ford has the 2020 Shelby GT500, which is among the most powerful Mustangs ever built, with more than 700 horsepower.

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