The one VFW ad here mentions, "Will a Jaguar beat a stock car? Answer Saturday night."
I very well remember that race, or at least part of it, and have written about it on this forum before.
You see, promoters were much more inventive back in the '50s, coming up with all sorts of twists to the normal racing program. Some of these stunts were stupid, but some added genuine interest to the show.
This was one of the better ones.
Popeye Vincent was the first local driver I recall to have cut down a coupe to about half it's height, creating a "bug" for stock car racing. Later most of the field evolved to bugs.
The low Vincent machine was naturally compared to the low-slung sports cars of the day, like the Jag.
Well, seemed Towandian Stan Patten, an engineer at Dupont, had a Jag.
The VFW called upon him to race it against Vincent's stock car in a special match race.
In that race, the stock car behaved as expected but I still remember that Jag bounding through the corners. Seems the Jag's highway suspension just couldn't smooth out the ruts. I swear, seemed like that Jag fender was jumping four feet off the ground.
I don't recall who won, but am pretty sure it was the 180 of Vincent.
Another memory sparked by those ads ... the ticket prices at the VFW, I believe originally $1.10, then hiked to $1.15, and finally $1.25. My old man was beside himself over what he saw as those outrageous price hikes. But then you have to consider that a good job only paid about $100 a week at the time.
The ads stir up other memories too, though the years may have clouded my accuracy: Earl Zimdahl drove the immaculate 68A, Roger Fish drove the sharp red and gold 76A or 77A with Lucky Cornish, and -- oh yeah -- those Lemans starts.
They were another stunt that enjoyed a brief popularity along with Australian Pursuit Races, train races, etc. Just as at Lemans, drivers lined up across the track from their cars, ran to them and jumped in. Sometimes they had to secure what passed as safety equipment back then, other times crew members were allowed to help, and then they roared off in the several-lap race. It was a screwy as a hot dog race, another pretty silly event, though laughable.
