Trans-Am, hard to kill.

[Bob Riebe]

By Nancy Knapp Schilke - Motorsport.com

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and the home track for their corporate offices have reached an licensing agreement that will allow Heartland Park Topeka to market and promote two Trans-Am races this year. A possible revival appears to be in the works for the future of one of the top road racing series in North America.......................

................Now it all depends on how Detroit reacts.
Bob
Post reduced by moderator, please provide a link and don't reproduce entire articles.

[Al Weyman]

Retro Mustangs, retro Camaros now retro Dodges all running in a retro championship. What happened to progress, what was the words from the song 'Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, you can never look back, you can never look back', seems we can! :-) They were damned good races by all accounts though.

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Retro Mustangs, retro Camaros now retro Dodges all running in a retro championship. What happened to progress, what was the words from the song 'Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, you can never look back, you can never look back', seems we can! :-) They were damned good races by all accounts though.

When something is right, it is right.

Auto style from the late eighties to just recently was pretty much genericmobile.
NASCAR led the way in genericmobile racing. (ANd I still have the Comp. Press & Autoweek where a SCCA spokeman, said the main reason for allowing tubeys in the Trans-Am, was they wanted to be like NASCAR.)

Only time will tell if this is a return to what made things so well remembered before generic mania set in.
Bob

[Al Weyman]

Oh Bob I agree mate I could not agree more, whats a tubey? Is that what I have in my garage, the Penske/Nascar style IROC racer with Banjo Matthews stampted on the tubular space frame?

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Oh Bob I agree mate I could not agree more, whats a tubey? Is that what I have in my garage, the Penske/Nascar style IROC racer with Banjo Matthews stampted on the tubular space frame?

Tubeys is a lazy man's way of the plural, of tube frame cars.

If your car has the prod. sub-frames in it, no it is not a tubey; if there is not one piece of prod. frame, and stock firewall,and windshield frame, you gots a tubey.

IN an odd occurance, in the last years of the Cat. II Trans-Am, the SCCA no longer required the stock frame or even part of it on a C II car, but having spoken with Joe Chamberlain who built several C II Corvettes, they DID require all pick-up points to where they would have been had they used a stock frame.
Lee-way was a fraction of an inch, so while you could take the frame out, you had to put every back where it was, when the frame was there.
Bob

[Al Weyman]

No mines a tubey then, full Banjo Matthews space frame, IROC car number 11 last raced by Buddy Baker in the USA

[R59]

Wouldn't that have been Buck Baker?

I used to enjoy watching Tom Kendall in that "Oldsmobile Cutlass", but as has been pointed out, the series went more towards the tubeframe cars, like the last batch of Jag's and Corvettes, with the old ASA racers in their own class.

Though the cars looked the biz, they didn't seem to follow the "off the shelf" style that TransAm was about (all parts should be available off the shelf for anyone to buy - or something like that)

I wish SCCA success with this, as TransAm has the "ethos" of the sort of championship that I like.

And Al, when are you going to get that car finished?

Rob

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by racing59

Wouldn't that have been Buck Baker?

Rob

This is a bit confusing; Buck, was Buddys dad, who drove in the original Grand American series, which was Bill France Sr.'s version of the Trans-Am.

These were similar to the original T-A cars modified prod. cars.
Some Trans-Am cars did track testing in early Grand-Am races.

Buddy drove in, at least, one version of the IROC series, whose cars, (now this is from old memory) depending on the years, may or may not, have been modified prod.

[Al Weyman]

No it was Buddy, the outright NASCAR record holder with a plus 200mph (I believe) around Talladaga in a Plymouth Superbird before Big Blocks and Hemis were banned, I think it still stands today. I must get on with the project Rob but I have got bogged down with modifications on my business premises.