Reliving the glory days of NASCAR at LeMay

For racing fans who worship at the shrine of NASCAR, this country’s all-American and largely circular contribution to motorsport, the traditional museum pilgrimage has been east toward Charlotte, N.C. There, the NASCAR Hall of Fame spins tales of racing legends and the moonshiners who got the whole deal roaring many decades ago.

But now those same fans have reason to caravan west to the suburbs of Seattle.

Tacoma’s LeMay — America’s Car Museum (yes, that’s actually the official name) will mark its first anniversary June 2 by opening a special exhibit called “Legends of Motorsports — The NASCAR Story,” guest curated by Road & Track editor emeritus Thomas Bryant. Featuring more than a dozen storied machines set amid memorabilia and interactive exhibits, the show aims to make the automotive-museum experience feel like more than just a visit to a fancy parking lot.

“A bunch of cars with plaques was not going to do it,” says Bryant, who consulted to the museum for a dozen years before its founding last summer. At his disposal was a massive, ramped space the size of a football field. “I wanted it to look like a Hollywood set, or more specifically as if you were walking through the pits at Daytona and Talladega.”

That means a mix of tires, tool chests and other props, NASCAR-themed driving simulators and of course plenty of fabled machines, including race cars driven by the likes of Richard Petty as well as one of the vehicles that starred in the infamous 1979 post-race fist fight between Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison.

“People have been very gracious” in loaning vehicles, says Bryant, who relied on his extensive car-world network to source the collection, ranging from historic-racing stalwart Steve Earle to NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick. “With their help, we’re going to take people from the sport’s modest beginnings up through the most modern Toyota track car.”

The exhibit is broken down into eras. “The Beginning” focuses on the 1930s and ‘40s, when Daytona’s beach and parallel Highway A1A grew into the official start of Bill France Sr.’s NASCAR in 1948. “The Growing Years” explains how the sport built in popularity, particularly in the southeast, while “The Super Speedway Era” takes visitors through the end of the last millennium and tracks NASCAR’s evolution into racing and marketing behemoth. Lastly, “The Modern Era” spotlights both the high-tech vehicles that have supplanted modified stock cars as well as the sport’s expansion into truck racing, which even attracted the likes of ex-Formula One hot shoe Kimi Raikkonen.

For Bryant, the journey into the heart of NASCAR was novel. During his decades at Road & Track, the editor became a fixture at Formula 1 and sports car races on many continents. But the big oval mostly eluded him, until a memorable super speedway trip opened his eyes.

“What I quickly learned was that this was really America’s racing program, whose fans loved this sport more than anything,” he says. “You go to any (NASCAR) race and everyone is wearing a cap or shirt or jacket rooting for their team. There’s an emotional tie that’s as strong as anything I’ve ever seen in F1. It’s wonderful.”

And don’t try to tell him that NASCAR is just about turning left. “Just stand with the fans as those cars go by at 200 mph, door handle to door handle, thirty at a time, and you see instantly this isn’t just going in circles,” he says with a laugh. “It’s the automotive equivalent of the running of the bulls at Pamplona.”

Bryant hopes the exhibit he’s helped create will share that frisson of excitement with a new generation of fans. This inaugural Legends of Motorsport exhibit will be open for perhaps as long as two years, says LeMay president David Madeira, who notes that the new museum is bent on becoming one of the nation’s premiere destinations for fans of four-wheeled conveyances.

“Some great car exhibits have disappeared or been sold off mainly because they were static, like (Las Vegas tycoon Bill) Harrah’s famous collection,” says Madeira. “Our founder (the late garbage industry kingpin) Harold LeMay had a collecting spirit we plan to keep alive here.”

Madeira reports that some 250,000 visitors made the trek to the LeMay from all 50 states and a few foreign countries in the past year. He’s hoping to hit 400,000 in the coming year, and notes that besides a standing collection of 700 vehicles, the LeMay family has another 700 or so (of the estimated 3,300 originally collected by the eclectic founder) which often make the trip over to the cavernous museum.

He says LeMay was easily smitten by just about anything with character, be it a pristine Duesenberg or a lonely Tucker.

“LeMay was one of a kind, a guy as apt to by a London double-decker bus as he was to find a few cars in a barn in the midwest, then buy the barn and the cars and leave them there,” says Madeira. “In fact, when he passed away (in 2000), we got calls from people saying they had his cars on their property.”

Madeira says LeMay would have been pleased by the museum’s first celebration of this quintessentially American pursuit of speed. “He had a great passion for America and America’s cars, whatever those were,” he says. And, adds Bryant, “if you’re going to call this place America’s Car Museum, the logical place to start is NASCAR.”