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Smokey Was A Bear At The Track.
By Michael Smith
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Henry Yunick first saw the city of Daytona Beach, Florida from the pilot’s seat of a B-17 bomber during World War II. He knew right away that this was where he would want to settle if he survived the war, but what he couldn’t have guessed, was that he would establish “The Best Damned Garage in Town” and field race cars driven by men who would come to be legends in their own right.
The sport of NASCAR racing is unique in that some of its greatest heroes were in fact true-to-life heroes, having survived the crucible of war to return to a revitalized America to seek their fortune in a newly created organization for stockcar racing. Indeed, NASCAR’s first champion was the war-wounded Red Byron who won two of six races in the abbreviated 1949 inaugural season, and Joe Weatherly would survive combat in North Africa to become a NASCAR champion. Car owner Bud Moore earned five Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. Suffice it to say, NASCAR has had its share of honest to goodness heroes – those that came from what is now known as “The Greatest Generation” and Henry “Smokey” Yunick was one of those.
Smokey’s given name was Henry, although there appears to have been some doubt about that. (He earned the name “Smokey” when, at the age of 16, he raced in local motorcycle competitions, riding a bike that smoked something fierce.) “Actually, I don’t know my real name,” he once told an interviewer. “I think I know what my right age is. I operate off a birth certificate I got from a priest in Philadelphia. At that time, I was 16, and they said, ‘Your name is Henry, Howard or Gregory, take your pick.’ We decided my name was Henry, and we decided my birthday was May 25, and I decided I was born in 1923, and that’s what I used ever since.”
Like his own past, much of Smokey Yunick’s life would serve to confound those with whom he came in contact. He made a sport of flaunting NASCAR’s engine and aero rules, and for the last 20 years of his life, he barely spoke to Bill France, Sr., the founder of NASCAR.
Smokey joined the Army Air Corps early in World War II and flew B-17s in Africa, Europe and the Pacific, emerging from the service as a first lieutenant. Upon his return to the States, Smokey settled briefly in New Jersey, then made good on his wartime promise and moved to Florida where he set up a garage on Beach Street in Daytona Beach in 1947. In what was to become more a statement of fact than a boast, Smokey dubbed his shop, “The Best Damned Garage In Town.”
Immediately upon his arrival in Daytona, Smokey set about making a name for himself in local racing circles. His driver’s roster – even in the sport’s fledgling years – reads like a who’s who of the stockcar racing world. From 1956 to 1958, Tim Flock, Paul Goldsmith, Herb Thomas, Ralph Moody, Curtis Turner and Cotton Owens all sat behind the wheel of cars owned by Smokey Yunick. Several times Smokey’s cars took wins in the prestigious Daytona Beach-road course and he was the last car owner to win on the beach course with Paul Goldsmith steering to a five car length win over Curtis Turner.
Smokey’s skill didn’t end with the dirt and asphalt of NASCAR either. “Back in the old days,” Smokey once recalled, “I would’ve pulled my car to Indianapolis with a rope if I had to. That was the ultimate, to stand there on the starting grid on race day at the Indianapolis 500.” Smokey fielded cars in 10 Indy 500 races between 1958 and 1975, and he took checkers in the big race in 1960 when a car he prepared was raced to victory by Jim Rathmann.
To call Smokey Yunick a tinkerer is both right and wrong, in that it might aptly describe his personality, but it belies his skill as a technician. He built a 7/8th scale Chevelle that had inspectors at Daytona Speedway pulling out their hair and ushered in the use of templates that now strictly regulate the size and shape of cars that compete in the NASCAR series.
In another oft-repeated story, one of Smokey’s cars was taken into the NASCAR garage for a tear down inspection. The inspector’s were suspicious because Smokey’s car seemed to be getting far better fuel mileage than the other cars. With the fuel cell disconnected the inspection team informed Smokey that he had 17 violations of the NASCAR rules. As the story goes, Smokey climbed into the disassembled car – fuel cell still disconnected – fired the engine and said “Make it 18,” before driving out of the garage.
Smokey was the first person to take a close look at the chassis of racecars and to look at them with the notion of reducing drag. In 1962 Smokey rolled into Daytona with Fireball Roberts as the driver of his distinctive black and gold Pontiac Catalina. The other teams protested loudly when the car was taken out onto the track with the inside fender skirts intact. As one eyewitness remembered: “All the drivers and car owners were raising hell saying, ‘You gotta cut the fenders out.’” Smokey pointed out that the rules stated, “…you can cut the fenders out if you want to, and we don’t want to.” Fireball promptly went out and, with underside fender skirts intact, turned the first 150 mph lap at Daytona Speedway. Smokey then pulled the car into the garage and cut out the fenders. To the protesters Smokey replied: “According to the rules, you can cut ‘em out if you want to. It doesn’t say when.” He also pointed out that he hadn’t even been running his good engine. Smokey had the entire field psyched out that year and Fireball went on to claim the checkered flag in that black and gold Catalina.
Lou LaRosa, a premier mechanic who went on to turn wrenches for an up-and-coming rookie named Dale Earnhardt, got some of his early training in Smokey’s shop in the years after Smokey had gotten out of racing. LaRosa remembers his time spent in The Best Damn Garage In Town this way: “Back then, nobody got into his shop …being let in the shop was an honor. To do work for him was a double honor…on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, if you wanted to come back at six and work from six to twelve for no pay, that was the fun time. That’s when he’d do experiments and that was learning…Smokey was always into something…He’s a brilliant person, a fun person, an intelligent man, and I learned from him.”
Smokey closed his Daytona Beach shop in the 1980s but he continued to attend the occasional race at the local super speedway, though he disagreed with NASCAR’s strict rules. In the race day crowds, he would be immediately identifiable in his white, flattened Stetson hat and corn pipe. Sadly, Smokey Yunick succumbed to leukemia in May of 2001.
As the 2002 NASCAR season gets underway and the streets of Daytona Beach, Florida are once again filled with race fans, reveling in the thrill of Speedweeks, The Best Damned Garage In Town will be conducting the last of its garage sales to sell off the contents of what amounted to more of a laboratory than an auto shop. Visitors will be able to buy items used in the shop; seemingly mundane things like shock absorbers, blank invoices and old typewriters that have now taken on the mantel of historic memorabilia. Following the last sale, the garage is scheduled to close forever.
H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler remembered Smokey Yunick as “…perhaps the most creative racing mechanic of the 20th Century, who not only thought outside of the box, but way up in the ionosphere.” From 1956 to 1969 some of NASCAR’s greatest drivers drove in cars built and race-prepared by Smokey Yunick. They include: Bobby Allison, Mario Andretti, Buck Baker, Tim Flock, A.J. Foyt, Charlie Glotzbach, Bobby Isaac, Joe Leonard, Banjo Matthews, Ralph Moody, Cotton Owens, Marvin Panch, Fireball Roberts, Johnny Rutherford, Swede Savage, Herb Thomas, Curtis Turner and Bobby Unser. As a car owner, Smokey managed just 8 victories in NASCAR competition but the total doesn’t begin to tell the true story of a life devoted to innovation and experimentation. From the dirt of the NASCAR circuit to the excitement of open wheeled competition, as well as some time spent in Mexico running an early form of endurance race, it seems he excelled in any form of motor sport he chose to pursue; perhaps Indy racing was his favorite but NASCAR fans are the ones who owe him the biggest debt and the black and gold cars with their fate-tempting number 13 will always be remembered because they came from “The Best Damned Garage in Town.”
copyright 2001. Michael Smith
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