Inside Alan Kulwicki's First Two NASCAR Race Shops! He Showed Up Here With Almost Nothing!

you know allen's name's in the cement he goes where i was hoping there would be paneling in here we shared the office but he's only that wide we keep him around been in a few arguments because i didn't understand his thinking and he didn't understand mine we're on the way to norman the gray's shop right now if that name sounds familiar to you it might be because you've heard of his dad before uh edna gray who's probably best known for daler and hard driving for him and that number eight dodge charger well norman owns the building that alan kulwicki rented when he first moved to north carolina to go cup racing with one car he's got a lot of cool allen stories so we're gonna go check that out kind of see you know where allen got his start with his own cup operation well this is it what are we looking at right here uh well this is the original building that was here when i bought the place and then allen come in and i laid him around half the shop for his rookie year in 86. allen called me the winner of 85 and wanted to come down and me help him do his rookie year deal so he had the quincy's deal then starting up so this paint booth of course wasn't here um i don't know if you can see the picture but that's where alex's car set set in that area right there so that's the same yeah it does the same doors over there uh them are but the we had an office there it's gone we took it out is it right there probably this is pretty much the same that way so like right here is where kind of where this booth is yeah i said okay let's have to shop yours in that house that's kind of what we've done and that's pretty much all the same except that when it wasn't there we built cars down here and uh we also done all allen's sheet metal hanging on his car he only had one car to start with just one car yeah and that was a sirloin they called it and i had built a car for uh larry coleman coleman taylor transmissions out of memphis tennessee and larry hadn't used it any so i called larry and i said hey alan kawiki's down here and only got one car maybe you two need to get together and they did so that gave him two cars so he ran two cars that year look at here that's funny uh sirloin cars in that museum over in mooresville oh is it yeah yeah we just saw that a couple weeks ago so that was that was the car that started it all started out right here yeah these two cars here see one of them sirloin and one of them is uh is larry coleman's it was a speedway car actually we ran it in charlotte daytona talladega what was he towing the cars with he just had an enclosed trailer it was a long gooseneck and a and a crew cab dually where did he park that at right here just anywhere along in there straight out he said that one pad right there yeah just this first pads on the pedals here the rest of it just grabbed me was there any pit crew practice going on oh no no i don't remember i don't remember him having pit through pit cruise practice i i really don't i don't know if he did or not i don't remember having it we was here day and night so i don't know things all run together after a while was there any um love perfect level spot in the concrete here did he just no not really we uh we would make our own level spots with the level of stuff now we didn't have surface plates back then so while allen was over here doing his stuff what were you doing over there nice cars over here i have business and degree enterprises with building race cars what would you do in here uh body hanging mostly uh but we that was our body shop then also that was our paint booth and everything bondo room back in the day but we done kale stuff when he changed to osmo build what he changed field forward i think i can't remember what he changed to no it was just osmobil when kale had his own team and we've done a lot of pontiac stuff some ford stuff and we've done we've done quite a bit argus stuff back then too for bob revac and bill van orini we hug bodies those like a lot of independent guys that didn't necessarily have their own manpower to do that but not a whole lot of them did anyway back then yeah we hung a lot of bodies in here can't remember them all i'm letting people out tony gibson's brother come to give some work for me in here too when he first started running started working on race cars that's actually how he ended up with kwiki how did allen end up calling you did he know you already or something yeah we i've done a lot of stuff for the miller brothers out of wisconsin random lake and uh they they was friends with allen and i don't know if he ever drove me their stuff he come down here and did test at charlotte with their car why built their cars and uh that's probably the first time i made even talk to him that would have been i think it was him i don't know what year that was but i made him through them and then we became friends he moved down here didn't have nobody so we tried to take care of him collected a lot of really cool stuff over the years i'm sure yeah this isn't mine actually this belongs to a friend of mine dale was here one time and i should have had him sign it for him and i never did what did he come here for oh him and randy had come by every now and then what was working with alan like if you were over there doing your thing and he was over here doing his did you interact much or was it like oh yeah we shared the office actually that's the office it wasn't very big it's only that wide and probably about that long it was right there yeah it was right against that wall but it was only that wide so we we shared the office he was on one side of the dog the table knives on the other in fact that was his phone that was mine when you hear a lot of people talk about like the kind of the stigma of alan kalwicki is that nobody worked for him for more than six hours and all that stuff like what was he well what was he really like as a as a person he was really a good guy i mean he really was but he was serious about his racing he was serious about the engineering background because he used that in racing and uh you know me and him been in a few arguments because i didn't understand his thinking and he didn't understand mine but we got along fine at the end of 86 after he won the rookie of the year the xerox thing come in and and he wanted me to go to work for him and rent the whole place and i said no i've got my own business going so one other place you might want to check with would be dennis friends then his friends he left here went to dennis springer's shop that's where he was until he built his building out behind speedway and dennis is from wisconsin he built i think dennis built him some cars also back in the you know in the asa stuff this was big and asa stuff in mark martin mark would come here and see alan and all them guys that they ran with i will say that that when allen came here he he i ain't gonna say mark was his idol but mark was his main go-to guy he thought a lot of our part so that is cool but then it still owns that building yes dennis was just here the other day i don't know he's getting pretty old he's probably about 85 but he still gets around good we keep him around he says he's gonna open the gate so you can get in the back okay i told him i could probably leave here okay yeah we'll go there you better go while you can i'd add it on again right here from the very end too to where that jig is probably so it to that downspout and he went that was his office door y'all the office is the same from bobby's uh the rest of the shop is different so this is bobby alex's office for his race team before he finished his his building how long was he in here for before his building was done uh it was a little over a year i think golf is the only thing the same really that definitely looks like i was hoping there would be paneling in here yeah it is and then i'd put that trophy case in but the guy that works out here now does street car stuff and that's awesome it's floored the same too yeah everything checker for checkerboard square we put down when we built this thing so you built this office and you just used it yeah he just used it well but i mean his race cars are built out there they use the 50 by 100 to build it right their new team in huh the 12 car uh ray bestes i think it was that's kind of funny that he ended up his building was right behind allen's and allen was over there dude you were like the farm team for that whole cul-de-sac down there i don't know about that but i forgot that i had bobby come out and read this but bobby and all of us our families we've been close for years so maybe i've had davey's car in there worked on it a couple times was alan ever not intense did he ever turn off the the machine brain and be a regular guy yeah when we we'd have him over for christmas and thanksgiving because he wouldn't go home at our house so he would he would be normal you know i mean well normal he would be calmed down just be alan why didn't he want to go home well he's just stayed down here i mean he's the only child that i pretty sure he was the only child so yeah it was just his dad and his mom back in wisconsin they'd come down so what at the end of 86 after he won the the rookie of the year we built the the xerox deal that winter and in 87 before he went to daytona they had the uh the charlottesville had the media tour and they came by here and was here with alan and that was pretty neat to have here actually when when did allen move out of here to the other place it was after daytona 87 87. i can't remember the exact time but then he went to dennis fringes huh and he was there until he built the built the new building behind the speedway yeah there's his own shop when he built that you know i don't remember the year on that um dennis could probably tell you more when he moved out of his place were you relieved to have the other half of your shop back yes we was busy yeah we was we was covered up work and stayed that way for a lot of years look at this on the corner here it says allen k october of 89 when bobby was in here when so allen wrote his name in the concrete when it was what i don't remember we were walking across the other desk you know allen's name's in the cement he goes where it's so like something dot allen k does that say eleven eleven it looks like an eleven done it's 11 11-11 i don't know what that what that is [Music] everything to him was 7 or 11. if you can read that last number speak up because i have absolutely no idea what that is maybe my eyes suck i don't know but what is this here this is the mark 8 this is the one from the john andretti's car yeah i know about the only thing i kept off of it but it set out out back for years and got all nasty so i'm just trying to get the decal made that was uh that's just like it was that's the original paint there with the deck lid does this is this a factory deck lid yeah i mean you had root factory stuff the only thing that we had to make was the hood because it was it was a fiberglass or something that's covered so we made the 15 minute or so drive over to dennis's shop which is the second building that alan kolwiki used we had no intentions of coming here today we didn't uh know about this i'd stumble across this place once in my research but had not verified or didn't know who owned it anything like that what you saw on camera was the actual first moment that we figured out about this so they called him and he said yeah come on down so we're gonna find out this is all very coincidental and it's pretty cool because we weren't even trying to find norman we just ran into him at the museum last week he was just there when we happened to be there so this whole video is just by complete happen chance so see where it goes dennis didn't want to be on a video but he said we could take pictures so took a bunch of pictures and i'll explain it to you as we see it uh this is it this is where he did all of his stuff right after he left norman to grace the offices in the back or i guess that's the front of the building they were added on after the fact that second layer there there's evidence of some anchors in the ground it looks like in some old pictures that they may have been there used by allen or they could have been used by a body shop that was in there after that fairly recently dennis said he had the floor ground and painted so he has all of his own personal builds in here now he doesn't rent it anymore he said he built this paint booth for alan before he moved in there so alan's cup cars were painted in there it's been there since then here's what it looked like inside pretty basic like most old paint booth is just a room with a vent there's no how this was set up is uh dennis's personal shop was on one half of the building and he rented the other half to allen so that cinder block wall right there is the divider this was alan's office or where it was he said it has not been updated since then it's exactly the same as it was in 1987 when he was in there with the exception of the furniture i asked him about that and he said alan was so cheap he could squeeze a dime until the bull pooped so he didn't leave any furniture in there view out the front door or front windows in the office there pretty crazy to think of all the sponsor deals and phone calls and checks written all that stuff that he used to do in there running his own team like that you can see out the door into the shop area and that's the front door with the old school paneling all over the walls back here is a parts room still the same as it was that's where alan kept his uh spare parts that and upstairs he had random supplies in here this other room his sponsor would send him you know cases of transmission fluid or even pedestrian car things like radiator flush and transmission and sealer stuff that you wouldn't use in a race car but his sponsor were sent to him anyway and dennis had some cases of that that i guess he would go over there and take on sundays when alan wasn't there because he knew he didn't use it so he'd load himself up and he still had some and he gave it to us so we got some desk ornaments now that are supplies right from allen's closet you can see in the old pictures that it looks like they did the chassis fab stuff to the left with those pegs in the ground and to the right is where the level spot on the floor was you can see him kind of pointing where he had some squares painted on the ground and that is where he would do the chassis setup and he said allen would complain that he wishes he built the paint booth sideways or somewhere else so he didn't have to roll the cars in to do the final setup right there and then roll them out around the where they were cutting stuff up but back then he didn't have maybe but two cars i don't know still had sirloin to know that pretty wild it's really it's not that big definitely big enough and something i notice is kind of funny is if you look at the way the shop is set up the stairs on the right go up to a loft and that's you know they had extra storage up their shelves and whatnot well if you look at his new shop the most recent one he has where spire operates out of now it is set up exactly the same it's just bigger and my theory is that allen was comfortable in this setting in dennis's shop here so when he built the zone he built basically the same thing but just made it bigger so he already kind of had his routine down out here uh when alan was here there was no concrete outside the only thing left in the building that allen put there was this air compressor which dennis said he tried to sell to him at full price if you enjoy this kind of history we're glad you're here shelby's glad you're here see look how happy she is that you're still she's so enthusiastic yes we told her that you guys are still watching this video and you hadn't gone to watch something else with less historical value by 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cup era like we are obviously you can't buy new winston cup t-shirts anymore so we make these if you like look at that look at that look at the eagle it's wings or boom tubes and he's holding a wrench because we build stuff yeah we've got this white one there's nothing on the back so your back doesn't get all sticky if you're in the hot sun at a racetrack or something and the shirt i'm wearing now is on the website too i just didn't grab it i just want to make cool noises that's all we want to do here and uncover stock car racing history which is the back of this shirt you can find these at stapletonautoworks.com along with the hat i'm wearing that matches it and there's a decal pack that's like nine bucks and it comes with five stickers it's basically one of all of these logos but it decals you know everybody sells their stickers for five bucks each or something and that kind of sucks because where car guys would like stickers so you get five stickers for a lot better value than most places we're not trying to gouge it we just want you to have cool stickers in this one we're out of this in some sizes we're in low stock and yeah like you know like i think we have one large left maybe i don't know uh no extra large no 2x for sure yeah this one went pretty quick so if you see something you like you want but we carry up to 6x yeah we carry up a 6xl and everything so and these hats are richardson snapbacks we have some flex fit options too let's just check out the website you'll think it's cool and everything is packed and shipped by us right here this is what we do who packs the shirts i pack your shirts with love [Laughter] and every shirt every every package even if it's stickers comes with a note card that we write on we both sign it and thank you note yeah it's from both of us every single one because we care and if you're still here go leave in the comments to say that you're still here at the very very end because we want to know who you are we want to i'm just 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