Finding Mark Martin’s Long Lost Trophy: The Secret Shop He Shared With Alan Kulwicki

to my knowledge I only have one ASA trophy trophies were in the garbage can when I bought the building and I pulled these out and saved them I don't even know whose race car trophies they are so he was driving a Porsche and he showed up driving through a field yeah that's how we met Mark Martin I'm going to add some context to that I Haven been drunk there before go for lunch and stay for supper hammered this was Allstar Racing Jerry G's shop this one in particular is extra special because you had mark and Alan kcki under the same roof that's where you know the Miller Car Bobby Allison's car was crept there and then Allen had the other side of the building and uh we're going to see if we can get inside this would be pretty cool I've wanted to come to this place for a long time so the way Mark described this to me is he raced for gunderman that was Gunman's operation it was his team his crew his car where Allen on the other side of the building was pretty much just getting a place to work out of I think he got some stuff but he wasn't like fully he wasn't the factory like the the house team I guess per se term yeah okay Allan wanted to be where Mark was so this is basically where where Mark Martin rebuilt his career after he went to NASCAR and everything blew up in his face and he had to come back and he became an ASA Champion again here I forgot about that this is what enabled him to go back to NASCAR with Jack Rous and with some momentum yeah so that's it right there boom today this is where it happened you can see there us to be the the80s paneling oh yeah decorating much of this Jimmy and I were always a team like I say he would make them run and go fast I would make them look good and I remember the day we kind of met Mark Martin we were pulling into Nashville here comes a Porsche coming through the field I mean that thing was airborne and this and that and he slides up to the truck and ented right to us so we stopped he said get me that gunman ride get me that gunman ride you know and it's like wow it got all put together that way so he was driving a Porsche and he showed up driving through a field yeah that's how we met Mark Martin they wanted to drive our cars I say ours but it was Gunman's we told gun about it and the next thing you know we're going to make Bill cars for Mark Martin he's getting cars free cars from Dylan so in 1985 is when Martin first started driving for us who almost had the championship but he tried just a little too hard and knocked a couple walls down too many times and finished second into points cuz we had them covered I mean between my brother and Martin oh man and gunnerman getting all the right stuff motor was the right parts and he wasn't scared to spend money the lift is still here yeah so there's uh I got a picture of Mark Martin's car on that lift yeah it's it's a little dirty but yeah so a lift half a lift there and half lift is underneath there so did after yeah it still works it just we turn the uh we turned the everything off for it uh but yeah it's red red and tan now that's awesome and then the other things here I've tripped over numerous amounts of times but I had to cover it because it was a hazard it's too expensive to remove and plus we're car guys too so like eventually you know it would be nice to use it so this must be the mezzanine Mark told me a story cuz he said this half of the building was his and the other half was Allen's and the he said there was a mezzanine he could go up and there was a little hole in the wall where he could look through and see over here hole I don't I heard about it but I wasn't I the other guy with us is John Jeffords he was a volunteer on Allen's crew when he was racing in the late 7s before he' ever even ventured out of the Milwaukee area we were in town doing a HomeTown History tour video about Allen's early days which included the gunderman shop that he raced out of and this visit was not planned the guy here showing us around had no idea we were showing up we never talked to him in my life before and this visit really turned out to be something way cooler than we anticipated it's this kind we're talking about no I thought it was a little bit bigger last I forgot about all that but that way they can hear each other talk about the cars but who knows if that was just for SPO around purposes or not the lift in the floor still works too it's still there that's funny like you sent me one picture you found of that place and the thing I said was I wonder if the lift is still there like the holes well the holes are still there cuz the lift is still in the floor you know that was incredible to have a lift I mean that's the only time in my racing up to that point that I'd ever had a lift and then you know I never had a lift in you know my first years of NASCAR either yeah and it's so great to be able to stand underneath the car and work on it was like amazing everybody needs a LIF my dad bought a lot of trucks from this guy Jesse her down in Texas and we and gunman you know we built that car G to my govern sing me great we and I had a had sponsor I said let me work on so I called my dad and I said you know anybody that my would sponsor the car and he gave me Jesse CO's uh KK's phone number and I called Jesse up I said hey uh want to know if you want sponsor me for the day 2500 said how much said 5 grand where did I send a check and I never met Jessie until 2018 that was 1986 and I never met him until 2018 and and he's one of the most special people I so regret not being friends with him all through those years uh and cherish every moment that I get to spend with him now cuz he is so much and such a great guy they actually sent me down here to have a help put a body on it because you know steel bodies versus those things are fiberglass cuz if we wrecked it we had to be able to fix it in Wisconsin not come all the way down here to put a fender on it and I knew how to work on that kind of stuff whole new world to me though it was six race plan their first race was betona 500 in fact we had the track rent it and it was raining and miserable and everything car was in primer all that kind of thing the DAT the space shuttle was supposed to go up and that's the Space Shuttle that blew up we went home and came back when we could get the track again when the weather was nicer you have any kind of contacts down here that were like hey you know you can do this and do that or was it oh we did the car to the ru book Jimmy would go walk down the garage area and look at all the fors of course and Jimmy says go down to the 28 car which is K Arro he said look at the headlights in that car we went down with chrome headlight doors we came back like this he says go look at them headlight doors and take these off and make them look like that car so I went down and I and you just don't walk up to a car and stare at it you walk walk around like you're a tourist and uh I come back we took the headlight doors off I went in the trailer cuz you always carry bondle and paint and primer because back then if you scuffed it up you had to paint it back and make it pretty again for race day bondle them up got all the Chrome nice looking stuff off of it it broke my heart cuz I'm a chrome freak put them back on spray can them Flack black went through inspection and uh he says to Jimmy he says fix him door went uh headlight doors he says and Jimmy learned a big lesson he says well the 28 cars and Darby stopped him right there said I don't care about that car I care about this car go fix the headlight doors so I took them back off went back in the trailer scuffed them up a little bit reshot him with primer black paint screwed him right back on didn't hardly do nothing but you just made it look like you did yeah and that that was the point later on we find out you know every every you know you got to do something somebody get they're going to find something wrong with your car even it's if it's right we went back out through inspection never said a word about the headlight doors they were perfect Jimmy had a little bit of a reputation of course Jimmy blamed it all on me you know in front of everybody which she did that in ASA too but every time we got caught doing something oh boy did he yell at me what what did you do that for who told you to do that it's like you did but I would say well I thought it was pretty cool and then walk away because that ended that ended the conversation did you do the bodies for these cars with Robert G G hung the sheet metal but and I learned from him parts of it is Ford and parts are handmade and uh and we brought it back raw metal then I did all the bondle and in the final stock they still talk about that car because it was straight as it was a show car there wasn't a wave in it it looks great I mean it's hard to hide that black looks you buff it well what I use I always done painting even though they're race cars I paint them once then I wet sand them then I paint them again and wet sand them and bought them paint jobs on this one and this one but especially black were this deep I mean it was a show cart quality and then we painted the inside red instead of gray like everybody else because I thought it looked cooler would we be able to see the other side no my dad take over the other side but I can call him and ask him that'd be great cuz we'd really like to see the side that yeah his side looks cooler than my side so if you want to see you got the tire was when was this added on we don't know we this was here cuz you can see this was the the Brick was from the outside so I don't know when they had it if it was in the late '90s or early '90s or what uh but you can actually tell it's hard to get to everything here but the rats actually will say yeah those are probably backspacing for Wheels oh yeah that's what that is sure those are too shallow ofy tires there wasn't that much left over when we took it over but the stories I kind of remember so I may ask my dad to see if he can show you cuz all the trophies are off in the yeah that'd be awesome he threw them all in he threw like gunman threw like everything away and my dad like was like well just take it who knows what they are I don't even know whose race car trophies they are maybe we can help you figure that out what was the work environment like in you know like ' 8586 in that shop did you play music or were you running around was it like was it hectic or were you melodical did you talk to other people a lot in the shop or was everybody so zoned was only three of us it was Mark Jim and I did you have conversations while you were working or were you were you all dialed in we all knew what we wanted and if you know Mark in Mark I'm telling you when when we had a massage a body or something and I had a pile of fiberglass on the ground you know how fiberglass itches he'd get right in there and lay in that fire I said Mark what are you doing you can't laying that stuff yeah we got to get it done man it wasn't nothing you wouldn't do he jump right in there and he would do it and he knew how to do it he wasn't just a race car driver see over there we got a welder plug nice welder in Outlet there trying to match up some of this conduit looks like it got moved around cuz this door wasn't here yeah and see you can see that that outlet right there is that one but that welding plug is not there in this particular picture must have been added later I can't tell maybe those might be cabinets there could be these cabinets hard to say these two pipes are there and so far this is the only picture we have inside this shop at the moment if we can find more we will add them you care if I record you explaining what was in here cuz we want to know what that well I mean that's the only thing that I've been told but yeah I mean I I got to count down a little B but oh you're doing it right now huh yeah this is like well you got the firsthand knowledge if somebody told you how this worked we we don't know I mean I have pictures of that one this is the only picture Mark has this is what he sent me I have that I you have more pictures than this yeah oh man was put together and then they brought it into that Salon where the salon is and that's where they painted it oh so when this building was here there was another little building next to it that was The Body Shop wasn't it that's where we yeah I did the heavy body work and not paint yeah did Allan paint his cars in that same body shop no where did he where did he spray his at I I don't know where he got painted cuz his side of the shop was about the same size but both the shops were equal this shop yeah but uh he never used the paint well we call it the paint room over there because there was no Bodywork really to do because they're all fiberglass bodies if you wanted to massage on it a little bit you kept it inside this building on your side of the wall so we can see what you're doing my car that you had a picture of I have it going in you know being loaded in the trailer being worked on here really yeah that is awesome just in case heck yeah pleas you can see you can see the bad bad days they had with the oil stains in the wall yeah I didn't know Ted Musgrave drove out of here too that's cool I pictures of the trailer with the with the Buick where they ran the Buick like that oh that's cool wow Jerry Gunman's D&G Trucking owned this building up until about 2013 and they were still racing out of it as of 2011 it on the Google Street View until Rob here bought it and now they run the mil web one vinyl shop here and what he's saying is when he bought it he asked gunderman if he could scan the pictures that he had in his personal album so that's where these came from they're ones that gunderman saved that Rob had gotten a hold of when he bought the building thank God he did that cuz they are awesome pictures well let's go over there I want to see it all right this is awesome Jim tro just texted you have to find the Spy hole Mark said it was up there right here that was the Spy hole there's a spy hole right here you'll see why on other side and when did Allan move into the other side of the building probably right away 85 what was that like heard some interesting stories did you ever look through the hole in the wall no we never had the hole in the wall because gunman had a key if you wanted to get in there I guess you could go in there but we never did because there was no reason Allen and Mark Martin were good hard race car drivers Allan was smart my brother was smart there was no point and trying what are you going to see through a preall you know you're not going to see nothing uh I mean there was times I would make things for Allen because he didn't have nobody could do it like airboxes and stuff I don't believe I did them I don't think I did them on those cars but when I started working for Gunman with Mark and all that I may have because Lobby was part-time you know but when Mark came along it was strictly Mark's Car we worked on and I didn't go over there and build an airbox or a duck work for Allen because that that's taboo but uh we didn't need a preo we were besides we were friends I mean there was no reason to do something like that H so Mark said he'd go up on the Loft above the office and look through a hole up there sometimes well I wouldn't see a hole probably a crack in the sheet metal of the building you could see in there huh but you can look in there and they probably could look at us and like I said what are you going to look at Allen had a different way of driving Mark had a different way of driving and you're going to see the car at a racetrack yeah what are you going to see through a little I only remember a little sliver and the sheet metal that divided the the two race shops so we never drove the hole or nothing because there was no point now that not that I know of cuz I didn't I saw enough of Allen's cars throughout his career before I was dedicated because I had to be to Mark so the deal like I said with Bobby off and on didn't matter you know I tried to help Allen because alen's and for championships so that was before Mark Mark yeah they used to peek when when they used to go to the bars and stuff like that some white so this is the Allen side it's living a much more laid-back life than the Mark Martin side right there you like that close oh you can close if you want Allan didn't have a lift on this side uh no no no lifts on this side um there was two lifts on that one only I think he ran a couple Bush races with Hardies but this is an ASA car yes this this car came from here okay then my dad is the one who got in the wlpx sponsorship along with and me where was that sticker you were talking about what the sticker in the cabinet oh that whole cabinet is oh that thing that whole thing yeah this is stuff on the side that you see the Peterbilt truck on G&G Trucking around we could P again oh that's okay I believe you that was on the race car this truck sticker was actually on the race car yeah well it was a dup an extra one probably sticker way up in top so they did the cars for even when Bobby Allison would come up and race ASA Races they were built out of this place too well I've heard that know G&G actually would set up the race cars for our hary would come in and do Milwaukee Mile that makes sense they would set up all the cuz he had Miller on that car that was a Miller sponsored pictur lot pictures of Miller so but you know there's some trophies that were left here and things like that that they they had some where the trophies at they're not not together but up there oh there I mean he the guy threw him away when he left you know and I didn't I didn't have a chance to put them together but I think they said firecracker it's j 97 1989 best dressed pit crew I don't know won that that's probably why they threw that one away I don't know what this one was on top of but oh there's no blacker well I I don't know if this is oh I see yeah I can bring that other one down from up there there's nothing on that might be the top of this one a lot of them they love threw away that that one does say something so the rumor of the Spy hole in the mezzanine made spy hole you're yeah that's where and then they used to sleep on that one that n in over there too at night that's why they had foam going across the top we can go up there and look I mean it's got foam going across the across the some of the beams it's really low out up there okay so they always would put uh foam on there so they crack their heads open on the high beams you know stuff so so for the late nights they were nothing is attached that's funny well I got to the allart 1985 Silver Creek Champion cazo Speedway so that could have that could have been Mark Martin yeah 85 yeah I take a picture of that okay Google that yeah oh didn't you say Mark can't find his no he doesn't have any trophies from this era he didn't they're probably got left here I'm just going to ask Mark if uh that's his to my knowledge I only have one ASA trophy okay so yeah Mark Martin May 12th 1985 this is his trophy and it's in pieces oh my God maybe it can be put back together Mark Martin holds off Alan kcki Bob s Butch Miller and Dick Trickle there's a few names that we all remember to win the third race of the 1985 ASA season this looks like the top of that one yeah I think so some on oh red light and blue so is that kakana 1990 slard that could be I know I think Bob daughter drove after Mark Martin left ises that sound right yeah we could put this back got a no problem so there should be six so you're going to I mean I can compact it so we can put it in a small box and just ship it to you well we can take it there yeah I got a pickup truck and we're going to see we're going to see Mark on Friday Thursday or Friday I have I have some cleaner here but I have I think we should bring it to him exactly the…