Jack Roush Racing Museum Full Tour: Legendary Ford Racing History From NASCAR to NHRA

But we have people who live two miles from here, and they have no idea that this is hidden here. One second faster than the track record. It was incredible. Ford internally called us a "workhorse. " Essentially, they tried to save one fireproof suit each year as much as they could. If I could add a third nozzle per port, we would get over a thousand. We're in Livonia, Michigan , this is the Rausch Collection, which is basically a museum of all of Jack Rausch's race cars, road cars, and all that. We decided to organize the museum in a way that would avoid using barriers that prevent cars from being inspected . It's hard to enjoy cars when they're enclosed by a chain-link fence or rope-topped posts. We don't advertise because we believe that people who come here make a conscious choice. We have much fewer problems with people who can damage cars or come up in jeans with chains and scratch them. The people who cross our threshold are usually fans who have made the effort to find us. This specimen particularly interests me. Yes. JR17. Yes. This seems to be Mark Martin's most successful chassis we have here. I believe there were four victories on this chassis . I know he won it twice at Watkins Glen. Dad, what can you tell me about JR17? Well, in '89 we started moving to front-wheel drive cars, and the first one was the JR10. So the 17th came along shortly after that. And the car apparently replaced the previous one in 1990 at Watkins Glen. We broke it at the top of the "esok". The BB turned sideways, it was standing on top of the "Esok", we did n't have a spotter there, I crashed into it and destroyed the car. So around that time, this car appeared on the scene, after that incident. I know the car has been around for a while. And before we got ready for the trip to the Glen in 1993 , Steve and the guys put it on a "diet " and put a new body on it. We installed a new body, according to the specifications we developed. They cut a lot of non-essential support pipes out of the car while it was on stands. the hood did not close properly. You couldn't connect the hood pins . He was so bent over. And, uh, we brought him up there to the Glen, and, you know, in practice we were pretty good. We did n't know we were, uh , just incredibly fast. And when we went out to qualify and I came back, I mean I did a good lap, but I did n't even know it. And it was like a second faster than the track record. It was incredible. And, of course, we won the race with him. And, uh, then we came back and won in '94 from pole , and in '95 from pole in the same car. We didn't use that car in Sonoma because we used a regular car . That car was offset, uh, for right turns. uh -uh, like all our other cars, they were offset for left turns. It was shifted the other way around to get as much weight on the right side as we could at the time. And, uh , so we retired it in '96, and it was the perfect car for Suzuka when we went there for the Suzuka race. On the first day, Saturday, it rained during practice and qualifying . So we trained in the rain. We took the pole in the rain. Then, when I left the hotel on Sunday morning to go to the track, the sun was shining brightly. So we had no idea. We have never been there. We had no idea, uh, what to do with the settings. But, uh, we were leading the race. Um, and Mike Skinner, Larry McReynolds and the guys got ahead of us at the pit stop, and Mike was fast enough that I couldn't pass him back. So we arrived second. She's still, um, she's still standing in Jack's museum, painted the way she was after the Suzuka race. Yes, she came straight here, as far as I understand. Is there still an engine? No, no. And often, I mean, I would say probably two-thirds of them have engines, but it's probably not the same engine they were driving last time. Usually, when they are written off here, they are already used up. And there's no particular incentive to leave a racing engine in the car. This is also my favorite part of NASCAR stock cars. We kind of call this period what I think of as the heyday of NASCAR, you know, big bright paint schemes, the golden era, kind of the end of the hand- painted era, but back to printed materials, when you had, you know, maybe three or four primary colors, like three primary colors, an accent color, high contrast, simple things that you could overlay with vinyl. I don't like when they start—I don't know if they have one here—but there's all this stuff that clearly looks like it came out of a printer. From afar it looks different because there is too much of everything. I mean, at the time, it was probably the craziest thing. It must have taken a long time to lay it all out, because each element is a separate layer. Some of this is printed, some of it is not. And there 's a base coat of paint underneath, which makes it even more difficult to even it all out . And this was perhaps the most advanced in this field. I mean, at the time, it was revolutionary to have vinyl printed like that . Yes. It almost seems like the print quality was better back then than it is now. It's as if people are just skimping on their printers and not adding ink saturation to save a few dollars on cartridges. Like that one, the front part is from '89, and the back part is from '88. This was a car that was assembled later, probably around '91 . In the first few seasons, nobody thought, "Oh, we should probably keep some of them," until they started winning races, and then they said, "Oh, okay." But they assembled this car from the parts that were on hand at the time. This was pretty typical for show cars in those days . Certainly. Yes. It's a bit of a funny story, but we were holding an event, an open house, where we decided to put on display a lot of historical trophies that were n't usually on display. And I was rummaging around in the back room and I came across this tiny trophy in a box against the back wall, broken into three pieces, and it turned out to be the trophy for Rush Racing's first win at Rockingham in 1989. Really? Yes. So, is that trophy that Mark was given a real trophy? Er , just the one that was handed to Mark. Yes. Interestingly, I don't know when they started making them in pairs. Yes. I think there was only one at the time. I'm almost sure. Yes. But over the years it obviously fell apart and I think someone stuffed it in a box and said, "No, if we don't, no one will notice." So I took it to the nearest award-making shop and asked, " Do you have any mounts that will fit this?" And they helped me pick out a few. We put it back together. I also like that generation because it was such a wild, lawless place— NASCAR. And there doesn't seem to be any safety equipment there. It's just everything, as if there is no upholstery. The seats are simply open. Apparently Mark always liked the cooling of his groin. A small hose comes out of there. Can he be blamed? No. I would like one in my car too. This GT is actually a powertrain test mule for the 2005 generation of the Ford GT . At Ford, they call it a "workhorse ." This means that this is probably one of the first five chassis they built. In fact, this is the roughest stage. Here, you know, the body panels aren't quite finished yet. Many of the body contours are marked only by lines of tape. There are regular headlights here. There is no salon at all. The side mirrors were probably stolen from some Focus. The underskirt is cut from aluminum. You know, everything is held together by screws, tape, and pins. It's as if the prototype headlight housings are simply attached on top of a sealed rectangular spotlight. But it's impressive, you know, if you step back a little. It looks like it was designed that way. You can become quite inventive if you have a little bit of smarts. But it's interesting because you can see that there are certain things that didn't make it into the series. You know, the orange parking lights in front are gone. Some of the body lines are not quite the same. There 's a "Gurney bulge" here that was never sold on a real car. How did Jack get this machine from the R&D department? As far as I understand, we conducted most of the road tests on these cars. So can you open the door? Will we or will they fall off? I honestly don't know. Maybe not. This is a prototype door latch. She was never supposed to really open up. That's it . Yes, of course. The production model has electric locks. So this looks like the dashboard from the Mustang New Edge. Yes, that's normal. They simply took whatever was at hand. As I said, I think the side mirrors are probably from the Focus. They're not the ones that ended up on random doorknobs, but we have a pretty close relationship with Ford Motor Company, so we can sometimes negotiate something like that. This is really cool. So, that was essentially the chassis configuration they wanted to use, and they just put the rest together as a mockup. Yes. This was probably used to fit body panels. Er, starting to tune the engine and exhaust system. Probably their very first road test. It looks like it was once on fire. And so it was. Yes. I was told that there were clearance problems at first. Initially, the exhaust was routed higher. Ah-ah. And he, uh, set the back of the car on fire. Imagine early 2004 and you see this thing driving around town. Look, they put a big bumper there just so, you know, in case someone hits you from behind, so it doesn't slow down development. And again, this is an example of the kind of work we do for major automakers here in Detroit. So, we do road testing, suspension testing , exhaust tuning. We're probably best known in this area for what they call OVT—off- road vehicle testing , where you take a car out on public roads and fix any problems before going into production. Um, I know our test drivers drive over 10 million miles on local roads every year. The body of this thing is simply incredibly wild looking. What is this? Yeah, I mean, this bulge here is probably because they had to attach a template. But that pattern on top didn't connect to anything except where it was supposed to be, or they were kind of independent dimensions. Something is just wrinkled here. But, honey, I just spoke to Doug Richard on the phone while we were driving here. Oh yes. He was Greg's team leader during that era. And the configuration of those side skirts, the way they're very short in the front and then they become long. Something about this helps get the air out from under the car. I'm not exactly sure about the mechanisms that create this. This may be due to the angle of the car's steering and the rotation of the front wheels. I don't know. But that little curved part at the bottom helps to facilitate air drainage. And then on the right side of the car, they made the side skirt as low as possible to press it as tightly to the ground as possible for downforce, so this one is probably scratched from rubbing against the track. That's right. They made it as low as they could, and even lower. That seems to explain everything. Particularly striking is the car for the "24 Hours of Daytona", which Mark Martin drove with Paul Newman. Jack likes to tell the story that Newman, at that time in his life, was known for not signing autographs. So before the race, Jack gave Newman $1,000 in cash so he could discreetly hand it over to the marshals at the turns if he crashed or crashed and needed help or a quick tow. And when the race was over , Newman wanted the money back because he didn't need it, and he just said, "No, no, no." Your money doesn't work here. "I only accept checks." And he received a check for $1,000 from Paul Newman, which he did not cash but instead put in a frame and hung in his office. This is funny. He did it just for the sake of a signature. Susan likes to talk about what exactly helped make this happen. Newman had been pestering Jack for several years with offers to rent a car by that time. And the Roush Racing team did not participate in the IMSA series at all in 1994. They focused their efforts on the Trans-Am series and on new NASCAR teams. He received occasional calls from Newman and his people for several years. And somehow Newman found out Jack's home phone number. Yes. She mentions this story several times, at least two or three times. Jack would come home after a long day at work and find his wife Pauline talking to Paul Newman for over an hour while she waited for Jack to return. And he eventually relented, and they prepared this car for him as a one-time project. So Paul Newman was really committed to the idea of ​​driving Jack Rausch's car. His goal was to win the "24 Hours", that was his business. He could have turned to anyone else. He's Paul Newman, but he's been waiting a long time to talk to Jack. But Roush Racing was so dominant at that point. They won each of the nine races they entered at that time. So, the logic of Jack and Ford Motorsports was that any result lower than a class win was a kind of disappointment. So you really have to make an effort to make sure it's worth your money. What is "No Fools"? "No Fools" is, so to speak, a not very well -known film in which Newman starred back in 1994. Bruce Willis was also there. Hmm, this isn't the best movie . I watched it once just out of curiosity, but Newman plays this old alcoholic handyman who's down on his luck and fights with his neighbors and his son, and it was, well, okay. He didn't make a big impression on me, obviously, but when they needed sponsorship for Newman to be in "24," Paramount Pictures decided to put it on, well, a car, which is kind of funny because it seems like the movie came out about 6 months before. But they were trying to boost DVD sales, or maybe they did n't have DVDs yet at the time. Maybe it was right then, but also, interestingly, after Newman won, after they won that race, Newman came here to Michigan, rented a local restaurant, had a dinner, and then showed one of his films to all the team members and employees. Oh, that's really cool. So this little section here—it's all cars from the "24 Hours of Daytona" or It's a mix of Trans Am and IMSA. So, the Trans Am Championship, this car has an absolutely incredible history. This is the car that Tommy Kendall raced in the ’97 Trans Am . Back then, the Trans Am calendar consisted of 13 races. They won the first 11 races. Wow. And the championship, of course. So this is a winning streak that probably won't be broken anytime soon . But the Trans Am championship, the Daytona 24 Hours win, another Daytona 24 Hours win, the IMSA GTO championship, the Trans Am championship. Cougar has two wins in the 24 Hours of Daytona. Who was running it? Uh, a whole bunch of people. I think the last ones were Mark Martin, Robbie Gordon, Kevin Fish, uh, Dorsey Schroeder was one of them, I think. You see, this video will probably have a lot of jumps, like in ADHD, because there's a lot to look at here. It's hard to just focus on one thing. I only need to disassemble one car. We understand. And I always say this, I think car enthusiasts are a little hyperactive from the start. And it's really hard to guide you. When tour groups come, I say: I will speak for about 10-15 minutes. And after that, you are your own boss. You should just enjoy the views. Feel everything that is here. And then you can focus on individual things. It's too tempting to just run around to see what's here first. This car, I know, is DLC in one of the Forza games. We even invited the Microsoft team here to scan cars for the game. Cougar, this is just so interesting. Tires are my biggest problem right now. We are working on it. Many of these cars from the late 80s and early 90s had 17-inch wheels , and in most cases, these tires haven't been produced for 25 years. So we're in a situation where all the vintage racers have taken their cars apart, and now we're probably going to have to put 18- inch wheels on and find a compatible tire size. What is this? Pneumatic jack. Oh, this is a thing from a completely different world, not mine. I've never seen a car that had one like that before . Yes. So what do you do here in terms of servicing or repairing these cars? We have a restoration workshop out back where we do almost all maintenance and restoration work in- house. The building across the street is a paint shop. And we have a design studio a couple of miles from here. So, generally speaking, we can do over 95% of the work ourselves. And if not, we have local experts we can rely on. Is there anything interesting going on in the restoration workshop right now? Yes, we have one of the little Prostat cars there, as well as a covered car carrier that Jack had in the late 70s , and we are currently working on restoring it. And Jack's daughter, Susan McClennon Rouse, she participates in drag racing at NMR and MCA. So she also has her race car serviced at this workshop. And a few more of Jack's personal cars and the like. Honestly, most of them are not running right now. So there's not that much maintenance work. And especially when it comes to vintage racing cars, you probably know very well that all of these become functionally obsolete in an average of 3-4 years. So yeah, for us to keep them all going is just unwise, they have to be kind of canned. Yes. Aha. And even the ones that aren't racing cars, I would say, are mostly the same. Drain all the fluids, remove the battery to avoid corrosion, and they just stand there. We could get many of them up and running quickly if we had to, but there are about 115 cars on this plane on any given day . We could probably get about a dozen. And these are the ones that we know Jack really likes to ride. Yes. Aha. Can we quickly jump to the restoration workshop? I'm trying, I'm trying to think. I'm still trying to figure out how to structure this video in my head, how to film the footage so it can be edited later. And I just don't know how that's going to work here. So we can just abandon this plan. At least if we walk from here to there , we'll get a better feel for what's here. Yes. Because I still...we didn't go anywhere until we turned on the camera. This new car here—it's actually the last chassis they put together in the shop. Really? Yes. We talked in the 21st when they were decommissioning this generation. Jack wanted a Busher car because we didn't have one yet. So we kept that fast car downstairs. But Susan and I sat down and talked about it, and we said, you know, we feel like when the transition to NextGen happened, it was the perfect time. Uh, when the transition to the next one happened, about 190 people at Rous Fenway who built the chassis for the cars were unfortunately laid off. It was, you know, a long legendary story, and we felt there was a need to document their latest build in that workshop. Looking ahead, this will be seen as the last true Cup car. Yes. And so, I don't know. Not a big fan of the current car. I like that better . I like it. I think a lot of things there have long needed to change, but I'm sad that all those people who worked for so long, not only at Rush Fenway, but all the teams, are no longer working there. Along with those people, a lot of institutional knowledge and history was lost. And this, you know, is kind of sad for me. This is Jamie McMurray's win, I think, in the Coke 600 or Coke 400 at Daytona in 2007 . It was the closest finish in the Cup Series until a few months ago when Chris lost in Texas. I wonder what that little sign on it was for. Oh, it must be something to do with radio communication. Radio guide. Because I think in that era, teams could communicate in a way that you could switch and talk directly to the drivers. Yes. It would be interesting if they brought it back. I look at these old superspeedway cars. Some of them just have dents from a hammer so that the tires don't rub, reinforced tape is glued on top —and that's it . Yes. The funny thing is that people like to see these cars the way they came off the…