Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Big Bill France and the Birth of NASCAR: A Legacy Forged in Grit, Vision, and Loyalty

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Big Bill France and the Birth of NASCAR: A Legacy Forged in Grit, Vision, and Loyalty · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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Bill France and the Origins of NASCAR by Buzz McKinn.
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Buzz McKim, formerly historian at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North
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Carolina, is a distinguished figure in the motorsports world and a much sought
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after speaker at motorsports gatherings.
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Buzz served as director of archives for the International Speedway
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Corporation and as coordinator of statistical services for NASCAR.
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He is the author of The NASCAR Vault, an official history
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featuring rare collectibles from motorsports images and archives.
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Buzz's Legend of Racing radio show is a hugely popular forum
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for enthusiasts of the sport.
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Buzz was also our keynote speaker for two prior Argettsinger Symposiums.
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Buzz's presentation explores the racing career of NASCAR's iconic founder,
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Bill France, and the origins of NASCAR in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
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Big Bill's exploits are legendary and his captivating and sometimes
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overwhelming style belay his extraordinary contribution to the evolution of
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professional motor racing in America.
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Buzz's presentation is a deeply informed and sympathetic portrayal
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of the man and his accomplishments.
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Our next presenter really doesn't need any introduction,
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particularly here at Watkins Glen.
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Welcome back, Buzz McKim, who had a great effect on NASCAR
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history, been the historian at the NASCAR Hall of Fame museum.
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I've been involved in more books and more productions than I can even think
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of, and it even paints race cars.
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That's how I got started.
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And also it was a very important role in the archives of NASCAR.
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We're going to be talking about an interesting topic,
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one that always is a little...
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Interesting to hear about from different perspectives.
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And that is Bill France and the origins of NASCAR.
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Buzz, it's yours.
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Take it away.
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Yeah, I, uh, headed up the Archive Department at Daytona for a number
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of years and then went over to the NASCAR side and was the Director of
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Statistical Services for a while.
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And then I was able to go to Charlotte and become the historian for the
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NASCAR Hall of Fame when they were just breaking ground, basically.
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So it was my job to go out and find all the items that...
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We're in the hall.
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That was like three years of nonstop treasure hunting.
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And, uh, that was really, really cool.
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But today we're going to be talking about Bill France and the founding of NASCAR.
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It's hard to imagine how one person can have such an effect when you think
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about how big NASCAR is and what they started out with William Henry Getty.
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France was born in 1909 in Washington, DC.
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He came from a line of bank clerks.
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His dad liked the name Getty because it meant strength and power.
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And ironically, Bill turned out to be six foot five.
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He loved motorcycles, he loved racecars, he wanted to drive in the Indy 500,
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and he was kind of a black sheep of the family because of that, and that
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he wasn't following the family line.
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He decided he was going to do it his own way.
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H.
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A.
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Branham, in his book, Big Bill, The Life and Times of NASCAR founder Bill
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France Sr., wrote about heritage of the France family, and it says here,
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Big Bill seemed appropriate, indeed, when viewed within the context of
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his ancestry on his mother's side.
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His eighth great grandfather lived life large, to say the least.
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That was James Graham, the fifth Earl and first Marquise of Montrose, known in
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Scottish history as the Great Montrose.
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So Bill was directly related to the Great Montrose.
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So people were expecting great things out of him.
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Now Graham, in the 1600s, he was a Scottish nobleman and a
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soldier who fought for Charles I.
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As the English Civil War developed from 1644 to 1646, and again in 1650, he was
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renowned for his spectacular victories.
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Taking foes by surprise via superior battle tactics.
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Now he must have really pissed off Oliver Cromwell that he was fighting with.
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Because he was known for being beheaded by military dictator
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Cromwell's troops in 1650.
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And not only was he beheaded, but his body was cut into four parts and
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sent to four major towns in Scotland.
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So he really got under some people's skin.
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Ten years later when the monarchy was restored following Cromwell's death.
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King Charles II took the throne, and James Graham's body parts
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were actually collected and buried with great ceremony at St.
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Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.
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That burial area is known as the Montrose Isle, where the Dukes
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of Montrose are interred, and that was part of Bill's family.
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Like I said, all he wanted to do was drive.
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He wanted to race.
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When he was 16, he took his father's car to the Laurel, Maryland racetrack.
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This was a mile and a quarter track.
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It was a board speedway.
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It was made out of 2x6s laid up on edge.
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The board tracks were all the rage back in that part of the century.
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And the motorcycles and the IndyCars of the era raced on those boards.
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They had 48 degree banks on that turn.
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Now Daytona's only 31 degrees.
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But 48 degrees and Bill got to know the people at the track and they would
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let him take his dad's car around the track and his dad got all P.
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O'd and went over to the Ford dealer and wanted to know why his
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tires were wearing out so quick.
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Bill never bothered to tell him he was out there playing hot laps.
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Bill drove in the uh, Maryland area.
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He had a little sprint car that he raced.
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And then in 1934, he decided that if he was going to work on cars, he
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might as well do it where it was warm.
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So he decided to move to Daytona Beach.
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Now the story goes that he was on his way to Miami, and that the car broke
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down, and that they stayed in Daytona.
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And Bill always said that that was a bunch of baloney, because he was a mechanic,
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and he said, I could have fixed the car, and we could have gone to Miami.
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But we came to Daytona because of the racing background, and
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they had family in the area.
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So they went ahead and they stayed in Daytona, and that's
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where he found his fortune.
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And he went to work for a, uh, Buick dealership as a front end specialist,
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and then later got his own gas station.
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And this was during the Depression, when things were really, really tight.
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And you talk to some of the old timers in Daytona, and they'll tell you that when
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Bill had his station, if you wanted to get your car work done, you would have
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to front him the money for the parts.
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And then pay him for the labor when the job was done, because Bill did
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not have the money to get the parts.
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And there was another time when there was a tire that was sitting
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on a, uh, display out on the island out in front of the gas station.
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And it was on consignment, and Bill had sold the tire.
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One day the tire salesman rode by and saw the tire was missing.
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Sammy Packard, who worked in the gas station at the time, told me the story.
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He said, Bill went and hid in the ladies room because he didn't have
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the money to pay for the tire.
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So the next day, the tire guy came by and Bill had the money
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and he went ahead and paid him.
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But, I mean, that's how tight things were.
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In 1936, the city of Daytona put on its first stock car race.
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Through 1935, from 1903, they had the last speed record runs
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through the measured mile.
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There was no stock car racing at all up until 36.
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Malcolm Campbell was doing close to 300 miles an hour in people's backyards
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in 1935, and the city of Daytona decided that it was time that they
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had to find another place to play.
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So they went to Bonneville Salt Flats.
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The rest is history there.
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But in 1936, a guy named Sig Hogdahl, who was a land speed record run guy,
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first guy to run 180 miles an hour, he went ahead and came up with an idea for
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a stock car track on the beach, using half the beach and half State Road A1A.
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So Bill went ahead and entered the race and came in fifth, but
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the city lost 22, 000 on that race in the middle of the depression.
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So they were immediately out of the stock car business.
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So for 1937, the local Elks Club put on the race and they lost their butt.
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The winner made like 50 bucks.
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So for 1938, they didn't have a promoter and Bill France being a
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race driver and coming in fifth in that first race really got him
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fired up about racing on the beach.
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There's a guy named Ralph Hankinson, who was a promoter, he was the
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greatest promoter in the country.
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And he wintered in Orange City, which is about a half hour from Daytona.
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So Bill thought he'd go ahead and call Collect.
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He did not have, this quarter right here, could have bought NASCAR in 1938.
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He didn't have the quarter to make the phone call, so he called Collect.
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And Hankinson didn't know who this Bill France guy was,
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so he refused a phone call.
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So Bill was considering doing it himself.
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He didn't have the money, and he was complaining to a guy he knew named
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Charlie Reese, who was kind of a gangster, really, he had a lot of money.
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But he talked to Charlie about the race, and what are we gonna do, so...
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Charlie Reese said, well, you know people and you know the sport and if you
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do the legwork, I'll put the money up.
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So they ended up putting on the 1938 race and they split a 100 profit.
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And Bill thought, that's a pretty darn good deal.
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They charged 50 cents.
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So, uh, for the next year, they went ahead and they charged a dollar
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and they split a 2, 000 profit.
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Bill said, this is getting a lot better.
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Bill continued to race and he became the 1940 unofficial stock car champion.
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There were no official champions back in those days because of the sport.
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It was just scattered.
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There was no uniform rules.
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There was just no organization to it.
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There's no credibility to it.
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Bill raced one time in Maryland.
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They had a big race advertising 500 to win.
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So Bill drove his heart out that day and finished third and he got 10.
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So he asked the promoter, he said, well, what about this money?
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What about this 500 bucks?
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So the winner got 50 bucks.
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And the promoter said, oh, I just said 500 dollars to make things interesting.
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Yeah, there was no credibility.
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So that always stuck in his craw.
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And Bill was a very honest guy and he didn't care for being screwed like that.
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During the war, he went to work at the local boatyard, building sub chasers.
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He had a couple of little kids at home, so he got a job at the boatyard,
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didn't have to go out into the service.
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That worked out pretty good for him.
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Bill went ahead and continued to race until 1946.
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Then he quit driving, and he went into promoting full time.
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And he got an idea for a race up in Lonsdale, Rhode
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Island, in October of 1947.
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There was a guy named Bill Tuthill, who was a great promoter in the
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Northeast, and they came up with an idea for kind of a North versus South.
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Tuthill's guys against Bill France's guys.
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This was a third of a mile high banked asphalt track, and nobody thought
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that it would ever work, because stock cars had never been run on asphalt.
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They figured there'd be no passing, and you know, maybe you might get 500
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people to show up if you're lucky.
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They went ahead and charged 1.
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20, and they got nine.
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people to show up for this race.
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So Tuthill and France decided that if this thing became organized, it
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could be something really special.
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They had an idea to bring some credibility to the sport.
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And in December of 47, just six weeks later, they had a four day series
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of meetings at the Streamline Hotel.
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In Daytona, they banged out the rules and they selected the heads of different
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committees and all that sort of thing.
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And they came up with NASCAR.
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For that deal there, Bill gave a stirring speech.
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In fact, it's so stirring that it covers one whole wall in the Research and
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Development Center there in Charlotte.
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The way he worded this is pretty amazing.
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He says, Stock car racing has got distinct possibilities for Sunday
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shows and we do not know how big it can be if it's handled properly.
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We can go the same way as big car racing, Indianapolis.
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And I believe stock car racing can become a nationally recognized sport
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by having a national points system.
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Stock car racing as we've been running it is not, in my opinion, the answer.
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We must try to get track owners and promoters interested in
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building stock car racing up.
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We're all interested in one thing, and that is improving the present conditions.
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And the answer lies in our group right here today to do it.
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With that, he was awarded the position of President of NASCAR.
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Tudhill became the Executive Secretary.
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Interesting that NASCAR was not the first name.
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It was an acronym that they wanted to call the organization.
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And then after the first vote, somebody realized that there was a group
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in Georgia that had the same name.
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So they had to go back and come up with a different name.
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So, Red Vogt, who was the first superstar mechanic, he built all the
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moonshine cars and all that stuff.
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He came up with the name NASCAR, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
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A lot of people didn't like it because they said it sounded like NASCAR.
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But then on the second reading, they went ahead and they adopted the name NASCAR.
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And that was in December of 47.
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And it was incorporated in February of 48.
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Right from the beginning, it was great.
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They came up with a uniform set of rules.
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They came up with a point fund.
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They came up with a national champion.
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I have an entry blank from High Point, North Carolina from 1941.
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And on one of the lines, it says, Just call yourself whatever you want.
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We're just looking for good stories for the newspaper.
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You know, you could say anything you wanted to back in those days.
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And it really didn't make any difference to anybody.
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Bill went ahead and they did away with that sort of thing.
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And he brought credibility to the sport.
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And it's funny how he talked about Indianapolis and the big car racing.
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And uh, so here are these guys, they're a bunch of hillbillies, a lot of them.
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Didn't have two nickels to rub together.
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They're talking about being as successful as Indianapolis.
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And that's just about how it is now.
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In 1965, Bill said that NASCAR would be as big as the stick in ball sports
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by the turn of the 21st century.
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And he didn't miss it by much, and he was a visionary, very much a visionary.
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Well, I'd say he was 6'5 very booming voice.
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He knew who to schmooze and how to schmooze them.
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And he was the major, major guy in that regard.
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He got an awful lot of friends that way.
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He was very honest, very charming.
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He could talk you into anything.
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There's a lady that is working in the ticket office at Daytona
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Speedway, Lightning Epton.
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She's 103 years old.
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And she still goes to work every day.
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And she's been working for NASCAR since the 1950s.
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And that's the kind of loyalty that Bill instilled in people.
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It's pretty amazing to see how things grew up over the years,
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and what NASCAR has become.
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And now they're even talking about the space deal, too.
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So there's no telling how far NASCAR is going to go.
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They had that car go to Le Mans this year.
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That's quite an operation there.
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Let me tell you, in closing, what kind of guy Bill was.
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In 1972, they had the race at Talladega, the Talladega 500.
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Bill talked to a fella named Lynn Hendershot that worked for NASCAR.
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He gave Bill the entry blanks and said, Divide the prize money up into 60 spots.
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And Lynn said, Why 60?
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He said, We're going to run 60 cars at Talladega this year.
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And he said, Well, I think you're making a big mistake.
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And Bill got P.
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O.
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'd.
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He didn't like being told he was wrong.
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Lynn said, we've had a lot of problems with Talladega with only 50 cars.
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I think you're making a big mistake here.
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He said, well, if you don't like my opinion, you can just hit the trail.
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So Lynn went ahead and divided it up into 60 spots.
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And during the race, they had a huge pileup on the backstretch.
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And it destroyed about half the field.
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And Bill needed those cars to make his next race.
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And everybody was racing on a shoestring back in the 70s.
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There was only a couple of cars that really had a big budget and
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big sponsors and that sort of thing.
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Everybody was running kind of foot to mouth.
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Lynn said, I'm sitting up in the press box and all of a sudden I get a tap
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on the shoulder and it's the tall man.
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That's what they called Bill around the track, the tall man.
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And then he said, the tall man said, we need to go for a ride.
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So they got down to Bill's station wagon and they went down into the pits.
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And Bill went ahead and wrote a check for every one of those wrecked race cars.
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Because he knew it was his fault.
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Those guys got tied up, got all tore up.
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So it cost him, but he did the right thing.
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And he had a full field for the next race.
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But he told Lynn, he says, Do me a favor, don't ever tell me I told you so.
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Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
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But that's the kind of guy he was.
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He was extremely benevolent.
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Very much a civic minded guy.
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And he certainly has made things interesting.
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He's made my life interesting, that's for sure.
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And, uh, does anybody have any questions?
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Yes, ma'am.
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We are not NASCAR people, but slowly sort of getting indoctrinated through this.
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We're going to get you.
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Don't worry about that.
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We'll get you.
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You mentioned that, you know, people could sort of make whatever
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statements they wanted to make.
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How, as a researcher, do you then handle that looking back, sort
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of as an unreliable narrator?
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Yeah, it's pretty tough before the war, you know, and up through 1946.
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Pretty much the thing, you know, I mean, there were people that were
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recognized as national champions, but it's always in quotes, unofficial, the
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philanthropic side of the France family.
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Can you talk a little bit about that hospital?
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There is massive.
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I know there's a lot of family involvement.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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They have the France wing of the hospital there, the Halifax Hospital
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in Daytona and the Betty France Tower.
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And they have speedy attributes, which is a special fund for kids.
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And then they have the NASCAR Foundation, which is another child foundation.
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Most of the drivers have their own foundations.
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Some of them are for animals, some of them are for abused wives, some of them are for
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kids, some of them are for this and that.
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Giving back is a big, big part of the sport now.
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Junior Johnson and Richard Childress had given millions to the hospital in
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Winston Salem, North Carolina for kids.
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It's just a big part of the sport.
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I just want some clarification.
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Legend has it that Big Bill showed up at the driver's meeting
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at Bowman Gray with a pistol.
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The drivers were trying to essentially unionize and get
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better working conditions.
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And he stood up in the driver's meeting and brandished a handgun and said, I'm
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not afraid to use this if you continue down this path of wanting to negotiate.
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Is that true?
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Yes, it is.
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Okay.
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That's all I wanted to know.
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Ned Jarrett was there and he said it was true.
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He had the pistol and he knew how to use it.
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He wasn't going to have anybody mess with his baby.
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In fact, McKenzie did a heck of an interesting book on that
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subject that he'll be talking about a little bit later on.
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Yeah, old Curtis.
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Curtis Turner was trying to get financing for his Chariot Motor
16:39
Speedway, and Jimmy Hoffa came along and said, If you unionize the drivers,
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I'll give you whatever you need.
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So boy, that's the last thing Bill Franch needed, and it got to be a
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real civil war, and Curtis was thrown out of NASCAR for about five years.
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And he was eventually let back in, showed he could still win.
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Another group got their money together and finished Charlotte Motor Speedway,
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and Hoffa was never involved.
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And it never got anywhere.
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Cameron Argettsinger and France were collaborators.
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Can you talk about that?
17:06
Oh, yeah!
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In fact, Bill always thought an awful lot of what the Argettsingers did here.
17:09
I'm not sure, on an inside track, what it was like, but I know that they
17:14
had a great respect for each other.
17:15
Yeah, of course, NASCAR first ran the Glen here in 1957.
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So that's how much that Bill thought of the race.
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Road racing was extremely rare back in those days.
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There was only one or two other road races that had ever been run before.
17:27
Buck Baker went ahead and came here in a 57 Chevy and won.
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And they ran in the opposite direction.
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That must have been kind of interesting back in those days.
17:34
I was told that France was an official or an organized, uh, community office.
17:41
Oh, yes.
17:41
Yeah, I didn't hear about that, but he was involved with George Wallace
17:47
back in one of his presidential campaigns because they had built
17:50
Talladega and Wallace was a big help.
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So one hand washed the other in that regard.
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And Bill was really good about that sort of thing.
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He got a lot done just by being charming and giving back and
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making deals and all that.
18:02
Bill Rexford was the second NASCAR champion, and he was a northerner.
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Somehow he gets lost in the shuffle, I think.
18:11
Yeah, well I heard the story, and I heard this from his co driver, Lloyd
18:15
Moore, who was from Jamestown, New York.
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He said that a year or two after Bill had won the championship, he
18:21
ran off with his neighbor's wife.
18:23
He moved to California to get the heat off.
18:27
So that was where that happened.
18:28
But yeah, Rexford still is the youngest NASCAR champion.
18:31
And Lee Petty, if he had run one more race, he would have been the champion.
18:34
I think Petty had some points taken away too, during the year,
18:37
but Rexford turned out to be the champion and that's pretty good.
18:40
Supposedly a Southern sport.
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And then here's a Yankee winning the championship only one year in.
18:45
Thank you Buzz, always.
18:47
We appreciate that.
18:48
I wore my lucky underwear today.
19:00
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
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