NASCAR Hall of Fame's NEW Glory Road! Historic Race Cars Over 75 Years! (A Story For EVERY Car)

we're going to check out the new Glory Road cars exhibit this is called Glory Road 75 years 2023 we're celebrating the 75th anniversary of NASCAR Glory Road features 18 historical race cars we change this out every three years we have a different theme each time we do glory for this Glory Road that we wanted to Encompass as many individual themes as we could over a 75-year history there's not just one theme or two themes there's a lot of different ones for NASCAR so we have tried to include as many areas of Interest as possible including drivers tracks technology and we just opened this in the second week of January eight different series past and present represented on here the 18 drivers represented here have won a total of 55 NASCAR championships and 729 Premier series races like the Richard Petty car there with the the fluorescent paint is there any kind of coating on the windows that blocks UV light from fading these cars while they're sitting here for three years yes the windows are tinted that is that is interesting I just think about random stuff like that so in 1950 Darlington Speedway was open and Darlington was the first paved track in NASCAR that was longer than one mile there was a guy named Griffin who owned a automobile dealership in South Carolina he got a 1950 Oldsmobile that was the first entry into the First Southern 500. Buck Baker drove the car before they raced it they drove this car all around the cities in South Carolina to promote the race and get race fans to come and the initial race Drew more than 20 000 people unfortunately Buck crashed this car out but he went on to to win the event several times and he's now a Nascar Hall of Fame inductee went in in our class of 2013. this was one of the original performance cars Oldsmobile 88 with the famed Rocket 88 V8 engine and this is the car no this is a replica of the car okay this is what it looked like then yeah with a car that he crashed was destroyed and probably scrapped most of the cars on here 14 or 15 of the 18 are actual race cars the older you get the less likely it is that a team saved the car because in the old days nobody really paid attention to Future historic value or you know they were just race cars they use them up they sell them they scrap them they take parts off them use them for next year's car yeah they didn't really have the budget just keep a car just for the sake of keeping it they had to sell it and put that money back into the next one that's right constantly reinvesting we also have interactive displays 360 degree inside cameras in each of the cars and if you look at some of the older cars versus the newer cars you can really see how far safety has come and Innovations have come take these pictures and blow them up and this is Richard Petty at the White House we have these for for all 18 cars this is one of my favorite cars NASCAR in the in the late 50s you have to remember the Auto industry was a lot different than it is today uh Convertibles were very popular from 1956 to 59 NASCAR ran had its own convertible division and the winningest driver in the convertible division was Curtis Turner who won 38 out of 79 races he entered even though the convertible division was disbanded after the 59 season Darlington continued to run occasional convertible races and this car was is an exact replica of the car that Curtis Turner drove to a second place finish in the Darlington convertible race in 1961. it's prepared by the Wood Brothers meticulously restored they spent over a year working on this car and building it 1972 Richard Petty went won the second consecutive championship and this was the first year that his Dodge Charger had STP Diego red on it in addition to the iconic petty blue this is one of his genuine race cars and Petty of course has won seven championships which is set the record for the most of any driver and he is the all-time winner in NASCAR with 200 race victories and he's also a great great ambassador to this sport he was the guy who really set the tone for everybody else because he would stay at a racetrack until the last fan got an autograph he is a member of our inaugural Hall of Fame class of 2010 and even now he's still and and he's 85 years old now he's still one of the most popular men in the sport is this a real car yeah I would imagine it yes it is like most of these still have engines in them most of them do not all of them but but most of them do they have to catch pants yeah because if it's not leaking there's nothing in there this car was established in 1948 the very first series was called the modified division and it was pre-World War II Ford Coupes mostly Ford Coupes and they didn't run the new cars because the factories were still gearing up and changing over from World War II when they were making bombers and boats and and whatnot so Bill France didn't use production cars until 49 when the strictly stock series started so they began with these modifieds and this is this car belonged to a Hall of Famer named Jerry Cook this is one of his real race cars Jerry won six championships in the modified division in the 1970s and 80s and Jerry and Richie Evans another Hall of Famer were from both from Rome New York and between them they won 15 consecutive championships nobody else won the modified division championship except them and the modified division is still very much alive and well today in the early to mid 19 1870s and Beyond there was a group of racers known as Independents and they were guys who typically were owner drivers who didn't have big budgets who didn't have a lot of money to spend didn't have a lot of factory support but loved to race and went to the track every week one of these guys was named Richard Childers Richard was the owner driver of this car this is a 1976 Chevrolet Laguna Richard raced from 1969 so he stepped out of the cockpit in 1981. and he never won a race but he showed up every week and he got a few top fives and a lot of top tens and managed to make a living doing it and in 1981 he hired a guy named Dale Earnhardt to drive for him Dale finished out the 81 season and left for a couple years and came back in 1984 for good together Earnhardt and Childress won six championships Dale has seven overall six of those came driving for Childress and this card to me is a Real Testament of the level of commitment that some of these guys have go 14 years and not win a race is a long time yeah but he hung in there and he showed up and he eventually became a six-time championship team owner in a Hall of Fame was this one ever on the floor at the RCR Museum yes it was speaking of Dale Earnhardt in 1980 he won his first to seven championships and driving for a gentleman named rod osterlin Midway through the 81 season osterlin sold the team to a gentleman named JD Stacy who earned heart didn't like and didn't get along with it we actually found the former Rod Australian Race Shop building here in Charlotte among with probably 30 other different race shops if you'd like to see that you can find that video link in the description and you should subscribe and check out the racing history nerds on playlist all kinds of stuff like that is on there so this was the car Earnhardt drove Verrado Sterling in 1981. it's the only year he drove a Pontiac and Midway through the year he moved to Richard Childress Racing but he formed a an alliance with Wrangler the blue jean people and they sponsored him for many years and they ran a promotional campaign called one tough customer which featured Earnhardt who was a natural for that you know he was a cowboy boots blue jeans kind of guy and he fit their marketing ideal perfectly so even though he changed teams they stuck with him and moved with him when he went to Bud Moore in 1982 and 83 and then back to Childress in 84. that is a pretty cool story because uh weren't they contractually obligated with budmore so they ended up sponsoring Ricky Rudd's car and Dale's car for a year that's how bad they wanted to stay with Dale yeah I mean Dale was Dale had millions of fans he was an incredibly popular driver and his son Dale Earnhardt Jr was too and you know he was the face of NASCAR sort of post Richard Petty in the 80s and into the 90s Dale was the man he was he was certainly one of the most popular drivers in the sport and he was the cool thing about him is not only did he have a huge fan base had a huge base of people who didn't like him and we have we have a saying in racing in in racing as in wrestling hate is great and you like to have guys who are Rivals and so he was had great rivalries with Daryl Walter later with Jeff Gordon and so he was he was the most probably the most loved racer in the sport during his Heyday and somebody who a lot of fans didn't like and that was good he told Jeff Gordon once he said you know Gordon was being successful in his early career and he he said to Dale he said you know I'm getting booed a lot you know should I worry about that and Dale said no said doesn't matter if they cheer you or they boo you as long as they're making noise you're making an impression on them what you have to worry about is when they don't say anything this is 1991 Oldsmobile that belonged to Bobby Labonte and He restored it Bobby is a classic example of somebody who worked his way up through the ranks in NASCAR he's a four-time NASCAR champion he won his first championship in 1984 as a crewman on his brother Terry's car and Terry won the Cup Championship he won his second championship in 91 with this car when he was the bush grand national series driving champion then he wanted Bush owners championship in 1984 with David Green as his driver and finally he won the Cup Championship in 2000 driving for Joe Gibbs Racing so Bobby and Terry are brothers who are both in the Hall of Fame and Bobby really started his way kind of at the bottom and worked his way up to become a full-time champion and this is his car yes this is his car this is real race car He restored it really he owns it he landed to the museum that's even cooler and he did all this himself yes wow so Jeff Gordon is the only four-time Cup champion in NASCAR and between 1995 and 1998 he won three of those four championships and his favorite chassis was a car but the team nicknamed blacker and that's that chassis right there he won more races and that chassis than any other single car and if you saw that car race in 95 96 97 98 almost all the time it had the Rainbow Warriors paint Scheme on it one of the most iconic paint schemes in the history of NASCAR this particular car is this chassis was painted in what they call Dupont Chrome illusion paint and it was erased in these colors in the 1998 All-Star race at Charlotte where Gordon was leading and unfortunately ran out of gas on the last lap the Chrome illusion paint changes color different light and back in 1998 25 years ago it was eight hundred dollars a quart so it's an expensive proposition to use on a custom carb this was this was Gordon's favorite car 1998 Daryl Walter had a terrible start to his season team wasn't running well just nothing was going right Steve Park striving for Dale Earnhardt Incorporated and the team owned by Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt and Earnhardt and wall truck will rivals on the track but when Park got hurt Earnhardt went to Walter and said I want you to drive my number one Pennzoil Chevrolet and in 1998 he did that filled in for parking 13 races one of them was at Pocono Raceway and at Pocono Daryl nearly won the race and got out of his car and wept because he thought he was wandering at the end of his career was he washed up and he got out of his car and he proved to himself that he could still race competitively with the best Racers of the day so in his interactive display we put a copy of this article out of Winston Cup scene that I wrote was at the race in 98 so that's that car right there is that the the race for afterwards he said they were throwing dirt on me and I climbed out yeah that's that's a really cool quote they didn't put quite enough dirt on me kicked it off and crawled back out Jack Roush was one of the most unique team owners in NASCAR history when he came into the sport in the late 80s there was a path that young drivers took they would go into a cup on a back marker team run for two or three years go to a mid-level team run for two three four years and maybe by the time they were in their 30s they were for a competitive cup ride Jack changed all that and Jack hired unproven drivers most of whom had never won a NASCAR race before many of whom had never even entered the Nascar race one of the guys he hired was Greg Biffle from Washington state in the Pacific Northwest Biffle was a great local short track racer and he rewarded roush's faith in him by delivering Rouse racing their first NASCAR championship which was in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2000 in that truck and years later Biffle moved up to the NASCAR Xfinity Series and won the Nascar Xfinity Championship so those were roush's first two championships both with Greg Biffle and Roush continued to hire drivers who didn't have a lot of NASCAR Experience in fact in the first couple decades the only one he had ever hired who won a race was Jimmy McMurray who won One race filling in for Sterling Marlin for stat I did not know about Adam Petty was somebody who it was said of Adam that he could talk like his father and race like his grandfather he's the first fourth generation professional sports athlete in the United States Adam unfortunately was taken from us before his his prime he perished in a crash at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2000 but talk to Kyle pettia's father who wanted to get one of his cars on here to represent the family lineage and four generations of family and if you notice the front of his car is all kind of Pock marked this was the car he raced at Daytona and in 2000 finished in the top ten in the bush grand national race in 2000 and those marks that you see on the front of the car are caused by the sand that comes up off the track Daytona Beach is Sandy and that sand hits the front of the car wears it down and leaves marks but we miss Adam very badly but we wanted to honor his legacy and the heritage of the petty family by putting one of his cars on the worry about it in 2001 Toyota decided it wanted to go NASCAR racing and it took a very measured approach starting off slowly and working its way up and Cup Series in 2001 they hired a gentleman named Robert Huffman to race in the goodies Dash series which was a compact car series and in 2003 Robert drove this car that you see right here to Toyota's first NASCAR championship in the goodies Dash it was his fifth Championship overall but it was the first for Toyota and this is Toyota Celica little sports car you know they they don't this is one of the series that they no longer along the race uh sort of the interesting piece of trivia that right there is the flag stand from North Wilkesboro Motor Speedway and if you look at the panel behind it everyone who was employed full-time here in this building when it opened in 2010 we photoshopped their faces in there where which square is on there uh in the Square behind what side stand is okay that's pretty funny are you in there no I was not working here Jimmy Johnson is one of our three seven time Nascar Cup Series champions along with Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty and we've had a number of his championship cars in here at different times we wanted to include this car which he swept in 2003 when the NASCAR All-Star Race and Coca-Cola 600 and you see it the All-Star Race much like we showed with Jeff Gordon's upon Chrome illusion paint speed this is a unique paint scheme for his sponsored Rose and Jimmy was one of the most successful Racers ever at Charlotte Motor Speedway and seven championships speak volumes about his talent and talent of his Hendrick Motorsports team and Kian crew chief Chad canals made a great combination and really pushed each other to Greatness of the championship accomplishments Dash says Midnight Special on it Jimmy Johnson had his own midnight too apparently Dale Earnhardt Jr was 15 times NASCAR most popular driver he won the Daytona 500 twice he had one stretch at Talladega Super Speedway where he had five victories and two second place finishes in seven races he has won multiple championships as a NASCAR Xfinity Series team owner and won 15 consecutive NASCAR most popular driver Awards now he has transitioned out of the race car into a broadcasting career with NBC and he has an enormously popular weekend podcast called the Dale Jr download and this car sort of symbolizes the transition that some drivers make from being on track to going into media and television and radio Wendell Scott the late window Scott was the first black driver to win a NASCAR National Series race 9 1963 Bubba Wallace in 2014 drove this truck at Martinsville Speedway to honor Wendell Scott Wendell was from Danville Virginia which is only about 20 miles from Martinsville and Bubba won the race in this which was his second victory at Martinsville and he joined Wendell Scott as winner of the national black driver as a winner of the national series NASCAR race and he ran this paint Scheme 34 was Wendell Scott's number the sort of what pale blue was his color and this was this was Bubba's tribute to Wendell and he managed to win the race so it was a momentous victory of the Wendell Scott's family was at Martinsville in bubble one so it was a big moment for him and for the Scott family Joe Gibbs was a team Builder he was a team Builder as a pro football coach he won three Super Bowls with Washington Redskins and he's won a bunch of championships as a car owner in NASCAR and what NASCAR and the NFL have in common is it takes the same things to make it work you have to make the people work together you have to have teamwork you have to balance a lot of high intensity type A people some with big egos almost all you know alpha males and really hard Chargers and Joe is able to do that get to the Super Bowl and win three times and he won Nascar Cup championships two with Tony Stewart two with Kyle Busch and one with Bobby Labonte and this is Kyle Busch's second of two that he won the championship with in 2019 and part of the reason Gibbs selected this car to be included in our exhibit was they've had a long-running sponsor relationship with Interstate Batteries they've been with Joe Gibbs for 30 years which is pretty unusual in any sport I love nothing more than the story of a little guy toils for a long time and then achieves greatness Josh Berry drove late models for 11 years and in the 11th year he won the NASCAR weekly Racing Series championship driving for Junior Motorsports team Dale Earnhardt Jr owns Josh drove this car this is his actual Championship car from 2020. it took it took him years to win a championship [Music] lives for Junior Motorsports and the Xfinity series and last year he made the championship for and won several races so it was an incredible progression from from toiling at the weekly level to becoming a star in one of the NASCAR's second biggest series and last but certainly not least NASCAR is no longer just a national phenomenon they race all over the world there is now a NASCAR Euro series there is uh panties Series in Canada and there's a NASCAR Mexico Series this car belongs to a gentleman named LP du Morlan who is a three-time penty Series championship winner in Canada and this is the first non-us NASCAR car we had in the five iterations of Glory Road so it's a big deal to the fans in Canada that we have this car here and it's a big deal to us too so in all years past we've had 18 cars on Glory Road for the first time in 2023 we're gonna have a 19th car this number two Ford Mustang Nascar next-gen car it belongs to Team Penske this is the actual car that Austin syndrick won the 2022…