A Mini History of Racing in Minnesota Number 6 in a Series By Harvey West Modified Stock Car Racing...If you could make a time-traveler out of a present day collector of old cars, and put him into the grandstands at a Minnesota dirt track about a half-century ago, he’d probably have a heart attack. If he found himself at Twin City Speedway, Rex Speedway or other bull rings in this state, he’d be seeing gutted ’32-’34 Fords banging fenders, flipping and bouncing off walls. You have to remember, at that time those cars were clunky beaters that nobody wanted anymore. After four grim years of war with no new cars to be had, there were waiting lists for shiny new vehicles, even if most of them were really face-lifted 1942 models. Our family was lucky; my dad bought one of the sleek-looking ’48 Studebakers.  I’m not aware of any pre-World War II stock car racing in this state, although it did exist elsewhere, especially in the Southeast. Most Minnesota racing in those long-forgotten days consisted of yearly visits of the sprint cars to the State Fair and various county fairs. The familiar weekly programs that have become standard fare for today’s oval track fans didn’t exist here. Crystal Speedway opened after the war, soon followed by Rex Speedway near South St. Paul. These rather primitive venues hosted the modified stock cars, which sometimes shared the weekly programs with the track roadsters described in an earlier article in this series. The fields were dominated by Fords, with ’33 and ’34 models tending to be the favorites. Even in those early days, rodders were starting to snap up the ’32 models for street rod			purposes. By the mid-fifties, ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes were popular choices, and other makes occasionally appeared in the fields, but generally were also-rans. The primitive transverse spring suspension of the Fords worked best on these tracks. Rules varied from track to track, and often the engines had to be visually stock. Hot cams, overboring, porting and relieving were standard practice, and multiple shocks, stiffer springs and reinforced hubs were employed to ease the punishment inflicted by the rough tracks.  Safety equipment consisted of war surplus aircraft lap belts, although roll bars had begun to appear. Doors were chained or roped shut, since they had the tendency to pop open during flips, which were frequent. The smarter drivers replaced the stock fuel tank with a sturdy Jerry can or other container. Fuel cells didn’t exist, nor did flame-resistant clothing. T-shirts and jeans were generally the driving uniform of choice.  In the fifties, Twin City Speedway introduced jalopy racing. These old cars were oval track versions of showroom stock. All a driver needed to enter was a helmet (sometimes a football version) a seat belt and an old beater. Grassroots racing at its finest. The fields were huge. I recall seeing starting fields of over 40 cars. Every conceivable make of car showed up at these events. I remember a Graham coupe which won several times. This car came with a supercharger as stock equipment, which gave it a good shot down the backstretch. By the sixties, supermodifieds began to appear at area tracks. These usually had narrowed and shortened pre-war coupe bodies, and were powered by robust postwar overhead valve V- History, continued on page 4		LOL Board of Directors Regional Exceutive Greg Youngdahl Home (507) 332-0297 gregy@deskmedia.com Assistant Regional Executive Rob Woolston Home:(651) 739-7837 Robert.Woolston@Unisys.com Secretary Shannon Murphy Home: (612) 798-3575 blueflagger@yahoo.com Treasurer Mark LaBarre Home: (651) 407-7293 mlabarre@usfamily.net Members at Large John Daniels Home: (612) 377-8403 j.danielsjr@all.net Doug Dill Home: (612) 925-1731 Doug_Dill@Yahoo.com Chad Lemmons Home: (651) 688-7976 John Niemi Home: (651) 766-8027 captmayday@aol.com Randy Van De Loo Home: (612) 729-1949 randy@winning.com LOL Web Page: http://www.scca-lol.org LOL Hotline: 612-885-6888

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Tonneau On-Line	September 2001	Page 2
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