Ray Evernham's IROC Racecar Collection: Driven By The Most Legendary Names In Racing

we're here in Big Iron garage with Ray everingham we're going to learn about some IROC cars and IROC history one of my first jobs was at IROC in the early 80s I was driving modified so I went to work there now Iraq is the international Race of Champions was started by Roger Penske Jay signori Mike Phelps uh did the TV part a guy named Les Rich Richter who was you know NFL Hall of Famer and they started with Porsches in 1973 but they only ran a few races and the Porsches were expensive they're really expensive now the most valuable IROC cars you can get those things are two and a half three and a half million dollars if you can get them wow then they switched to Camaro from 1974 so in 74 to 76 I believe and against it could be wrong they ran these and they were basically Camaro bodies they got from Chevrolet they called bodies in white and they had stock Camaro snouts and things on them they sent them down the banjo Matthews and he put roll cages in them worked on a little bit of the suspension but then they were sent back to Penske Racing and Penske Racing's guys I said built all the Trans Am cars from Mark Donahue and those guys actually finished these cars and random so they ran these 74 5 and 6. this particular car really cool car never won an IROC race but it's been in a lot of different pictures Brian Redman drove it James Hunt drove it you know I think AJ foyt drove it so that you know it's got some good history in it it's really pretty pretty original so it's a great car to have in our collection cars were running big ovals and one of the drivers Richard Petty said to the Iraq guys hey look if we're going to be running these speeds you got to have more of a race car so then they went to these cars and this car is a little bit of rough shape but 1977 through 1980 they went to banjo Matthews the car builder for you know he built at that time I guess banjo probably built 80 percent of the the NASCAR stock cars he took over really after the Holman moody people stepped aside and they built these cars it's 110 inch wheelbase regular NASCAR stock car chassis and they ran these these were to me the most popular ones these are the cars I love this is what I call the generation two Iraq Camaro they ran these from 77 to 80 and some of the greatest drivers in the world ran these things again it's my favorite type car I happen to have uh I've got one two three four of these and uh they're just you know from you name it and they've driven them and I mean from Formula One Champions like like Nikki Lauda and James Hunt you know Derek Bell and people like that all the way up to the foyt and the answers and the Andretti's so that again that's my favorite part of series but again I never got to work on those because it just you know wasn't wasn't working for them and this particular car we've saved it done a lot of documentation on it the cool part about this car is not only was it driven by Nikki Lauda in Iraq competition it was then sold to the Cook Woods racing team in California and it actually won a Trans Am brace at Laguna Seca with George Fulmer drive that so it's got IROC wins and Trans Am trans ambulance so it's a cool car we're gonna totally restore this one and and make it some kind of a hybrid between its Trans Am life and its High Rock life this is an Avenger but it actually started life as one of the Camaros that I was involved in building in 1983 and 1984 so after a big wreck at Atlanta in 1980 and you can see you know they just tore up a bunch of cars Atlanta 1980. IROC took a a three-year Hiatus and they brought it back we went down to banjo Matthews again and had him build these cars which started life as the what I call the generation three Iraq Camaros they were full banjo Matthews chassis this is where the IROC Z and all that came from now the hard part about finding an IROC Z is the only one that I know that exists in original condition is the one that Dale Earnhardt had and that's one of the cards that I built the IROC Camaros then became the Dodge daytonas which became the Dodge Avenger so there's Avengers around but they're really the Camaros that had the bodies changed on them and this car has an incredible list of drivers it was one of the practice cars just about everybody that ran IROC from 84 on up to uh when they went to the Firebirds had driven you know or or at this car at one point these cars were always interesting to me because they had and at this time there was no Dodge engines in cop you know you know again I don't know a lot about what they used their cup cars for Dodge I think they were kind of based on what they were running in the truck series at that time but you know what's neat about this is IROC the guys at Iraq evolved into their own engine shop so I believe that these were built up these engines were built by the guys at Iraq in partnership with a local racer in New Jersey named John Blewett oh well I think his company was called flotec at that time they worked together as a partnership to build these engines so you know again pretty neat deal uh didn't make a lot of horsepower uh I I I'm guessing you know 550 or or so but still cars were capable of running about mid 180s at Daytona Talladega did these things have anything to do with dodges increased interest in getting back into that which eventually led to you being the the Dodge guy ah you know I can't answer that because I don't know what happened behind the scenes but you know you know Dodge Iraq they did the truck series and then came into the Cup Series so I'm sure that they saw some increase in sales for the Iraq program which so did Chevrolet so did Pontiac so did Porsche most of the manufacturers that have been with IROC have seen an increase in sales what's really cool about it it was converted to a two-seater used as a marble driving school then I got it back recognized it because some of the cars some of the parts and pieces that I built in 1984 were still on this car so it's cool it's cool to own it I'd love to find I'd love to find another uh one of these because in my collection right now what I'm missing is an IROC Camaro and the IROC Daytona okay the problem is they were all the same cars so finding them I've got to find two of them uh so it is it's neat I was lucky enough to be able to locate a about 90 of one of the original Camaro bodies so we plan on making molds off and making some newer or repairing those pieces so that if we can find more Avengers that were Camaros we can also do those over cars that are really complete I've been using them as templates to make the parts and pieces hopefully to help other people restore these things so you know because the roof and the doors on those cars were stock Camaro right now I'm looking for a hood and a couple of small pieces for the 84 to 89 or 90 Camaros and uh and we'll have enough to make a complete body after they switched from Dodge they went back to General Motors to Firebirds these cars were all built for them by Mike Laughlin banjo Matthews had passed away at that time and they ran them up until the day of the last IROC race uh this car is is decaled up as it ran in the last race with with Ryan Newman these things I think were really nice but unfortunately you can see they started to become more and more real race car they became very aerodynamic and all of the things that take away good racing I I think started to to hurt and at this time you know big sponsorship was in the the owners really didn't want to have their drivers involved uh because they didn't want them you know to take time away from their own their own stuff that sponsor conflict started to happen manufacturer conflicts started to happen IndyCar was growing stock cars were growing and it kind of hurt the IROC series it's a shame when you look back at the history of the IROC series I think that it's time for that to maybe come back in in some way because a lot of these vehicles there's just not cars out there right now that so many great drivers drove and not only great drivers I've got a little Jewel hidden over here under the plastic I'll tell you a story about this car here this car is uh it was IROC number 15 the last time it raced at Riverside California Daryl Waltrip won the race with it it was a practice car for a while but this car was used in a promotion at Sears Point raceway and they brought in some movie stars to drive it so that car Not only was driven by the greatest drivers in the world race drivers it was driven this on the same day by Paul Newman Gene Hackman Clint Eastwood James Brolin and then uh Bob bonder on so it really cool history I've got all the lap times from those guys and I'm going to tell you uh Gene Hackman and Paul Newman were Wheelman they they went pretty quick in that car compared to some of our the professional drivers so you know in a nutshell I think that this is a special year with the 50th anniversary of Iraq coming up there's so many stories to be told throughout that many of the guys that drove in that Series in the early series especially are still around Jace ignore the man that basically was The Mastermind behind putting all the cars together uh speak to him regularly and it it to me it's it's obviously it's its own little cult thing but when you look at the talent the drivers the the things that went in that Iraq in there you know they ran from I think 1973 to about 2 000 was it six I think was the last race so there's many different stories and historical moments from some of the greatest drivers in the world I just think it's a great story in each one of these cars has got its own story you know it you know you can see all the stuff I know I've gotten hidden all over the place and I'm sorry again for the the memorabilia sitting around here this car again I rock car this was a some of it started Life as a as a silver number nine and it got flipped over by Al Holbert and they put new cage in parts and then they that it was a upgraded number nine and then Tom sniva smashed it into the guard rail at at Riverside and they fixed it again and as the series got passed around this thing ended up it ran a Trans Am race here at Charlotte and then it got made into a short track car in Ohio then somehow it ended up in a dirt track in Alaska and then you know so now now it's back here and you know again if these things could tell stories it would you know be incredible got another one in the back that we're restoring to take to Charlotte and if you want to see that one that's the car you can probably get some really nice close-up shots and I can talk you through that a little bit if you'll see it yeah I can't get over the Nikki louda drove this car that I drove that one we've got we've got a picture of uh of the car decaled up and at Riverside was loud on one side of it that's so cool that's an awesome part yeah you know again when you look at Loudon and hunt and you know and and some of the guys that came over to do that you know really really pretty amazing what I'm curious about is how they went from kind of like the actual Camaro with a cage in it to the stock car chassis with a Camaro body on it um well when you think about Roger penske's organization at that time was largely sports car oriented you know they did Trans Am and they did Can-Am and and IndyCar and and he dabbled in stock cars but but you know again just getting into that so that they just assumed hey you know we'll build a car the way we build them but then they took them to Daytona right and you had guys like Richard Petty and AJ Floyd and Bobby Allison say hey these things aren't really designed for here and if we're going to run these cars at these speeds you need to look at this so it was just Evolution you know again they evolved from the Porsches to this generation Camaro to that generation Camaro because this Camaro Daytona Avenger and then finally to the Firebirds so you know my goal is to have all of them I don't really believe that I'm ever gonna afford to uh a Porsche well maybe we'll build a replica but uh you know the there were a limited number of Porsches and only a limited number of true IROC cars cars that competed in the IROC series it you know there's only a limited number that exists people have to be pretty wealthy to own one of those so when these cars were finished out were they sold by Penske to just whoever wanted one and this ended up in Trans Am some of them were you know some went into private you know most of the cars as they got sold were used for other race series you know this including the Porsches like they got sold for next to nothing you know and you know these things again you know next to the really nothing that nobody wanted them um so they were being sold at really really fair prices like many of the old vintage sports cars you know that stuff was giving away you look at the at the Daytona Coupes that that ran Le Mans right you know the the the the Shelby daytonas they were going to push those things off the boat into the ocean right they just didn't it wasn't worth bringing them home and now they're worth millions and hopefully you know these IROC cars start to get some of the respect that they deserve let's check out that other one back there I want to see some technical stuff sure so this is a car that we're getting ready we're gonna start to display that this year this is uh was actually called Iraq number four it was a light blue car ran again the whole series from 77 to 80. uh Peter Gregg the road racer won Riverside in this car but been driven by tons of people where'd you find this car what kind of condition was it in when you when you got an eye on it I keep an eye on it and when they pop up you know I'm always searching for them Bob sharp actually had bought this car as part of a collection that he bought so I bought it from Bob sharp and but when I say Bob Sharpton and obviously you know well known in the road racing world through several things that he did and it was actually restored by the guys at Iraq through the 80s it was dropped off there restored we've replaced the engine in it the cars had originally had traco engines in them you know this is not a complete Draco engine but they were steel heads and and whatnot again on these cars so you know we're trying to make this car runnable I want to take it to the racetrack and use it for some vintage race events but again it this car is one of the most original ones because it was stored uh and restored by by our options when you look at some of the seats and different things that you know these were seats and pieces that we actually made while I was at High Rock uh you know inside this car it is again being done over by Jason Nori in the Iraq group it's a very very original it's a car that was crashed I think it was crashed in that big crash at 1980 um not sure who was driving it maybe one of the Whittington Brothers but as I said the fact that it was one of the original cars and it was restored by the guys at Iraq make it really valuable to me and then Peter Gregg who was one of the greatest Road racers in America ever actually won a race in this car so is this one of the bodies in white or is it a banjo trap no this is a banjo chassis so the the other 74 74 through 70 six I guess are the bodies in white then the banjo cars were this generation Camaro because again you know they changed the Camaro body I believe in 77 to a different body this this is one of the newer bodies these cars were steel roof steel doors steel quarter panels everything else is fiberglass and they ran these again 77 eight nine and eighty it's really cool because the old Hearst Earhart breaks and things like that are are still on the cars these cars didn't have power steering which was really cool and even when we built the cars originally in 1984 they didn't have power steering we later put power steering on them but they were they were pretty difficult to drive without power steering you know it didn't have a lot of downforce but you know again fairly heavy cars did the racing change when they went from the you know Camaro with a Cajun into the banjo chassis like did the NASCAR Guy start to do better when they did that did the other guys complain I don't know road courses so you know at that time they the race cars evolved um the Iraq race is at Daytona and Talladega and places like that were always pretty good right because cars were big and bulky and I think what really started to um make the stock car guys the NASCAR guys shined as they started to run more over you know where it started out predominantly a road course series it ended up predominantly oh and that gave the stock car guys an Advantage Plus even on the road courses the NASCAR guys were just becoming better and better Road Racers I started at IROC in December of 1983. so my my era I worked at Iraq from 83 to 89 which was all Camaros the IROC Z I didn't work on the daytonas or The Avengers these cars were the series before me they were 77 uh 77 to 80. but there were several of these still you know at Penske Racing when I went there so even though I didn't work on them to race I worked on them we took Parts off of them we moved them around we we copied a lot of stuff off them so they were there I'm somewhat familiar with these cars but I did not work on them during the race that's something that very different with these cars most fuel cells and NASCAR fuel cells were at that time 22 gallons now they're 18. I rock because they ran 100 miles with no pit stops we're always 30 gallon fuel cells so 30 to 33 gallons of fuel in these cars so really really tail heavy at the start of a race and then big change as they would go on how did you guys make sure they were all the same what was that like actually in the shop trying to sort that out well the common sense was a lot of it you know we didn't have the tools to have today like lasers and the way they measure things and all that you know we use templates and and measurements and and you know scales all of those things you know we would we would build a prototype car and then at that time you got to remember in the early 80s who just did not have we didn't have coordinate measure machines and laser scanners and you know we rapid prototyping or cnc's or any of that stuff to build them with so built them by hand and we did it the old-fashioned way you know using common sense and tape measures and dial calipers and you know making everything as the as best as we could and I feel like for the for the tools we had versus what I know now about aerodynamics and and you know chassis dinos and all those things we did a pretty darn good job very close with those Hardware that always fascinated me like if you okay maybe this engine makes five more horsepower and this chassis has been fixed a couple times was there any kind of like moving things around or was it like oh this is a brand new card does it not get the Oh no you're 100 right but what we had you know no two carburetors were the same no two sets of tires are the same right so we would move things around and make it an average yeah and that would you know would make the racing better and there were times at Super Speedways or places like that you know we'd raise or lower the spoiler I had you know add a little drag take a little drag away and you know that would give a car a certain advantage in a certain place but not everywhere and you know in the end it was about the race you know Iraq was a show it was a TV show so the whole deal about making up for passing was you know the cars and the drivers would be would be different to create passing opportunities so in the end we could get the cars to run the same lap speed within a tenth of a second at a lot of places we went to but how we did that sometimes was just was mixing and matching the best parts and pieces it's interesting to me would you like take the cars all out individually prior to that you…