Adding to Bob's comments about the first Mudd Buss. On the first night at Canandaguia, Alan lapped the entire field with the exception of the second place car, Will Cagle. That was a 35 lap race.....This happened to be during the short time that I worked at Troyer Racecars. I can remember going out to a small bar afterwords for "a few". I believe it was called the Log Cabin. Ofcourse we ended up partying like rock stars. The car had run a little hot the first night and there was much work to be done. Ended up being an all nighter after closing the bar and then going back to Tico Conley's house to install a bigger radiator. Mike Hillman Sr. was the crew chief. We showed up at the "Wheels" the next day too late for practice. I can't remember if it was a heat race or the consi where we got wrecked on the first lap. Being a brand new car there were no spare parts. The welder cobbed a bunch of parts together for the car, borrowed a bunch of stuff, Alan took a provisional and started at the rear. Without a lap of practice, he won that race too.
On the technical side.......Gary Balough had shown up at Syracuse the fall before with the "Batmobile". Over the winter, DIRT answered with a bunch of new rules putting limits on, among other things, all the body dimensions. The first Mudd Buss was built to the letter of the rules. In hindsight, I am surprised there weren't more cars built like it. As far as being the end of the "backyard" cars, that had already occured. Howard Conkey of Show Car fame and Dick Tobias were already doing a great business at that time......It was Kenny Weld and Gary Balough who first brought aerodynamics into play at Syracuse the year before............kt
