Winston Cup Museum's Final Days: Huge NASCAR Collection Headed to Auction (A Man and His Dream)

We're standing here with probably the most interesting guy in motorsports that I would think you've probably never heard of. I'm Will Spencer. I'm the founder of the Winston Cup Museum in Winston Salem, North Carolina. There are some things you got to know about Will Spencer and the Winston Cup Museum. Before we get going, Will Spencer is a true historian across the board, not just about race cars. He's the kind of guy who saves bricks from historic buildings to repurpose them. He's bought buildings that were derelic just to fix them and make them nice again. All because he cares about his hometown. Will Spencer is the kind of guy you want living in your hometown. This is a story that I wish we didn't have to make a video about, but we do. First, we're going to talk about why we have museums. And this 33 Harry Ant car is a perfect example of what happens to old race cars when you don't have a museum. They get left outside to rot. The cars you see down here are going to make them at auction in January. So, there are a lot of cars that now don't have a home. And back to the 33 car. One of the worst crimes I think I could do is since I'm closing the museum, bring them to this facility and leave them here for no one to see or enjoy. This car was actually a prototype car. Fiberglass nose pieces. It's 110in wheelbase now. It was a 100in wheelbase and it was a prototype and it had a Pontiac Sunbird body on it. a Pontiac 2000 Sunbird this past January. It was a development piece. It's a banjo chassis and we called it left right because NASCAR was thinking about doing just a road course series and RCR actually built the original little Pontiac Grand Prix. Danny and I were talking about it. Well, it's not a Grand Prix. It's a Sunbird. We were talking about it the other day laughing about. He says, "I remember that car." laps around the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course to reveal the search for the ideal LR car was going to be a lengthy one. It's been I was looking at it. It we stretched the chassis in the front and you can tell the driver's compartment is kind of small. We stretched it in the front and the back. Little space there from the from the fuel cell to the bumper. Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah. It's like a really itty bitty fuel cell. Yeah. We needed a car to to hang this body on and we weren't going to use it for anything. So, we cut the body off and used the chassis to hang the body, but it has a fiberglass nose that we were able to get. A lot of a lot of the stuff, you can see it never ran. We never put a towel in it or anything. Rear steer got the big bathtub bar thing on top. I always called that the push them out of the way bar. I always thought that if you're going to run a short track, you needed a band chassis front clip. So, unique history behind behind that that car. You'll see later in the video, there's a couple more of these Winston type ones that are also banjo chassis with their own interesting history. A lot of these parts that we got were development parts cuz you couldn't we couldn't get them. So, fiberglass parts before the manufacturers went to stamp the metal, they did fiberglass molds. from the fiberglass molds. They pulled body panels to hang the body on the car and get the arrow package right. Make sure that was what they wanted. And that was for all the manufacturers. So when Reynolds told me that they were going to get out in three, I was like, what am I going to do with all these things that I've kept? And we used them for commercials and different things. And then they were, you know, things that had been special to me. Always the joke was take it to the warehouse. So, I'll do a museum one day. That's what I told everybody. No expectations of ever doing a museum. And then I was talking to Richard Childerson. I said, "What what should I do?" And he said, "Do a museum." That's how the Winston Cup Museum was created. We took an old Nash dealership that originally built. It became a Pontiac dealership and it was an Earl Shives. And when I I bought it from the city of Winston Salem, half a block up from JKS, no one had been in it about 10 years. Put the building back to its to its original glory. Stood the test of time for 20 years. The museum looks as nice today as it did 20 years ago. It does. And it's it's it I wanted to do it to where it was timeless. So for me, you know, with the restrictions of what I have to comply to, um, taking how I want to say it, my dog, old dog blue, naming him yellow doesn't work because I'm I'm a historian and I don't want to I don't want to basteurize, and I say that, I don't want to bastardize what I preserved for 20 years. And I think it's a dishonor to to take and change what it meant in the purpose that it was there for and not deliver what the original product was supposed to be. And that's to preserve that golden era of the sport. And I I'm still very much active in the sport. I appreciate the sport. I've been in it over 40 years with doing things prior before I started JKS, but actually yesterday was 40 years a business for me. Been in business 40 years officially yesterday. Back in the 80s, I tried to get a job at Reynolds uh at Sports Market and Enterprises as a show car driver. And they always told me the next job was mine and some corporate CEO's son got the job. So, I was working at Modern Chevrolet and uh good friend of mine, Danny Lawrence, the engine builder, became the engine builder for RCR for Nhard, came to me one day and said that uh he was going to go work for Lulu Laarosa. I said, "What are you going to do?" He says, "I'm going to clean parts." I was like, "It's not going to be any fun around here." So, I decided that I was going to go start JKS. And that was in 1983. didn't have a clue what I was going to do, but I wanted to be a part of the sport, which I had fell in love with when I was 11 years old. I went to my first Cup Series race at Rocketham when Reynolds became the sponsor. Loved every aspect of the sport, the drivers, the haulers, the cars, but there weren't any real show cars. Reynolds was the one that had a show car program because all the race teams if they took a car to show used an actual race car because most teams only had three or four cars um if that about 84 had been doing some work for creative services at Reynolds and went and met a gentleman named Jeff Bird. Took him a stack of pictures. This is what I can do. These are the things I do. And he says, "Will you can do about anything we need." Just started coming together. We paint and decaling the cars. I built a shop to do it in '86. All of a sudden, there was a need. When did you become the wrecking Sunday by a Monday guy? So, there were a lot of cars that became show cars got a second life. Uh, you know, we And there are a lot of cars that I gave a second life that are still out there nostalgia racing or they were uh Pacific cars that didn't, you know, there's a camel car here that uh was built in Englehala. I bought it in 96 with the intentions of Ed Beard running it in the Arca series race. Is that one right there? Yeah, let's go look at that one. Fuel cells fuel cells pushed back all the way to the back. Well, it never cheated up. It wasn't cheating until you got caught. But this was a car and actually got it from from Travis uh in 96. I think it was the end of 95 that I got this car. And what's interesting is it's 100% authentic. Um, it's just like Jimmy drove it. It has the last motor that was built in Englehollow by CV. And a unique piece of history. As you can see, it's it's very arrow, sleek windshield laid way back compared to the Winston car side of it. Yeah. It's about an inch narrower in the front. Fuel cells kick back. It's It's slammed. It's lowered and slammed, as we call it. See the difference? They cheated it up in the back. Yeah, there's good bit of space here between this back bar and that and the back of the trunk. And there's Everything's farther back right here. This is a really good back to back comparison of a normal car versus a Speedway car. It's all about balance and weight and getting the rear of the car down to get the spoiler. Lower the spoiler, faster you go. The teardrop shape crush panels down there. And then they outlaw that eventually. Yeah. So that was a big deal to anything to get the air out from underneath the car. Get the car lower faster. And then it goes all the way to the bumper here. Right. They weren't allowed to do that later, were they? No, they changed the They changed that. They changed Everything about it is different. This is a good shot right here. The pillars are different. This This thing's just flat the whole way down. And I never put a tape measure on it, but I bet you the the tail piece on this car has been shortened up two two or three inches. Yep. See where it's You see where it's cut right here? It's cut here and over here. Yeah. It's had it's had and I can see I never noticed that before. It even looks like the area it's had the whole 2 in. If you look at this space right here, it's had it's had two inches out of. I can tell. Never noticed that. Learn something new today. Cool. Yeah, that whole indentation part right there is pretty much gone. And I've got some old Thunderbird for templates. I kept them. Actually got one, I think, in the back there. That'd be cool. We could set We could set it on there and see. Yeah, let's see what it does. That's a 96 template. And this is a 96 car. That's a 97. Might be a hair different. You can see right now they added a little bit of little bump right here to get it to fit there. CSI Stapleton. Never done this before. You see where the temple set the top marks on the colors gave you where it's crucial points where it had to hit. Bottom of the windshield, top of the windshield, back of the windshield. front nose. So, she does fit the template within tolerance. So, it uh where does it say where it had to hit? Is it like the Yeah, the color. So, the green the green I don't remember, but I think this had let's say a penny and this was probably an eighth and then the roof line is really close. So, the roof line must have been a quarter. H we'd have to go back and look at the rule book, but it just, you know, it's within the tolerance where it hits the key points all the way across the bottom of the windshield, top of the windshield, and the hood. It'd be good investigation to find out what color meant what, you know. Yeah. So, I got this one in end of 96 and I got this one at the end of 97. So, but I know this was a backup car. It wasn't the primary for it went to Daytona or Tallaladega. It was the backup car. So they they built a faster car, one that was even more cheated around than this one. And because they were going from the Thunderbird to the Taurus, I told Travis, I might have told the story, but I told Travis, I was standing there, I said, "Jimmy doesn't wreck this thing, I want to buy it. If he doesn't wreck it today, I want to buy it." And I went and picked it up on Wednesday after the Atlanta race because I thought it was it was a piece of history. It it was, you know, it introduced the Noble brand to for the next 3 years, four years. The Noble stuff was really cool. I remember I always liked the cars when they had the neon number on the roof and the neon spoiler. It just looked It was just cool looking. So, we put together for the We talked about the Noble 5. Yeah. So, I put a paint kit together. Sickens paint kit with the neon orange paint. roof number and the neon orange that went to each team and they got set of two for primary backup. Yeah. So that was one of the things that JKS did that went to the teams for the Noble 5. So everybody's car was identifiable because we wanted the fans to be able to see the Noble drivers. Those that was a cool deal. Whose idea was that whole promotion? I would say when the no bull when the where they change the brand for no bull was was a marketing part for the for RJ Reynolds. So it was a way to draw attention to no bull made in the the cigarette didn't there was no bull. It was it was a true pure tobaca cigarette like a like a camel cigarette. So, you were kind of in the middle of you either buy a car to turn it into a show car or you were buying it to actually run it with Ed Barrier and some of this stuff was too cool for you to make into something else. So, we ended up I ended up that year um we ended up doing a deal with Juny Don Levy and we had AcuTurn and AD the ADT the home security company. Juny called me in 95. He said he wanted us to go to Pocono. And I told Juny there really didn't have any money to race. And he was convinced and I still had that car that we were going to race. And I said, "We got two weeks to Pocono." And he says, "Well, you better get up here today and get the car." And we were doing the test engines for Ford in the Arca series. And Preston Miller was over the Ford Motorsports program. So we were able to run 95 90 it was out there 95 96 97. So you were also you were doing all like the banners and signs and all that stuff for the racetracks and you were running a team. Yeah. At the same time. Yeah. So it was it was kind of a we started we started in 90. It was called three threear motorsports. So it was Ed dad Max Barrier Ed Barrier and me. And uh I had met Ed through Bobby Moody, which was one of the original flying aces for Nhard. I got this car. It was for the NASCAR thunderstorlight on it. So it ran Richmond. I looked it up. It was like 96. 96. So it ran the Richmond night race where it's got an Ernie Ernie Elliot engine in it. E L says B E R053 BL Elliot Race. That would make sense. So, you know, I don't I don't remember the history cuz I've had this car for 27 years. This car is as old as me. Yeah. So, it was it was in the NASCAR thunderstor. And then there was something that we got back or something I bought and I put this motor in this car just like I did the camel car with the CD range motor. So, try to pair them up. Most of the cars have engines. They're the right engines. These two are probably more specific because you got the engine builder for the team or the brother engine builder. How often do you fire these things up? You know, basically the take the carburetors are dry and everything, but basically what you do is about every 3 months, you just take them and crank them. Don't start them, but just take a wrench, put a ratchet on it, turn them over, keep, you know, everything from seizing up. The Tide car was used for for Tide Proctor and Gamble. They were a big sponsor. Everybody remembers. We had, you know, Ricky Rudd and Daryl Walrip. Daryl Walrip. Who else do we have? Ricky Craraven. Ricky. Yeah, Ricky Craraven. So, this was this was at the end of their sponsorship. They carried into I think about what was it 2004 about 2003 2004 cuz this car's got actually a Next Cup series sticker on it. It wasn't specific to a driver. It was kind of the the last exit on what they were doing. Uh, that makes sense. Yeah. So that was and what's crazy is this this paint is sickens and it was developed this fluorescent orange was developed for fire ladders for firet truck fire ladders is what this and if you leave it out in the sun it fades away eventually. So, this car is pretty much stays covered up all the time just so it doesn't get any type of light and it's held up really well. Yeah, it has. Yeah. We learned we had a bunch of tied show cars at different at different times and we learned we had to paint them every year cuz they just fade out. That's the cool part about some of these show cars cuz if you see a car at your local mall or something like that, it may not be the it could be, but it might not be the actual car of what it is representing, but it is a car of somebody's that did something at one point, right? And that's what's kind of cool about all these things are like Easter eggs, right? Ed and I made our first cup race in 1996 in Darlington with a car I bought from Genie Donley for a dollar and I still have that car and it's white. It was white and that's Darlington. We qualified 33rd. We beat out old DW and Bill Davis and we made the race. We went with a single transporter, one set of tires and wheels or one set of wheels and tires. I was doing the Winston Million program and if Dale Jarrett won Darlington, he would have won a million dollars and we had blowback and a lot of the engines we got from Pirec had blowback because they were always experimenting or whatever and we ended up the back of the car got black. Dale Jared was running good and he got into the wall in three and four and they thought we were oil on the track but in turn what we found out Brett Bodine was putting water down on the track. Yeah. So they black flagged us. They came over from Dale Jared's team and they weren't happy about they thought they had put the oil on the track and I said I don't know what everybody's so upset about. I said, "I saved Reynolds $250,000." And I walked away cuz they were all pissed cuz Dale didn't win the million dollars. I still got the bottle. I'll show it to you. The the Winston Million bottle that he never got. So, yeah, a lot of great stories on the back side. I love both aspects of what I did. You had like three candles burning at both ends at one time. You were doing the team stuff, you had the promotional stuff, you had the show car programs. I don't know how you did all of that. I had good people and you're only as good as the people that believe in you. That's the truth. What did that car used to be? Was that the is that the oldest show car of yours that you have in here? That's the That's the oldest existing Winston number one show car. Um it was built by up in Ningahala by Junior. Uh it's kind of tricked up. You kind of see it's but it's a it's an older chassis. It's probably a 76 or 7 chassis. It actually I believe it was and it's on the mural. It was a it's right here behind it. It was a Buick and it went from the Buick to the 86 Ford. This is this is one of the original show cars that Winston had before you started doing them. Yeah. Oh, wow. So, and it came from Junior and and basically the first thing I ever did to this car was I painted the wheels gold and Bobby and I we refabbed this because they made the side window mandatory. I believe it's what 87 87 88 probably later ' 80s. So, yeah. So, I don't know where the side window is, but that's that was the first thing I did to that car. So, then by the chassis being is old. It's an old banjo chassis. Being as old, the chassis changed, you know, cuz we're like now on Gen 7. What happened with a lot of cars I got is when they were updated to update or rehang a body, the cost to do it to bring the chassis to the current standards, it wasn't feasible to do. So, this car ended up in a in a warehouse. Um, actually, uh, I took it and it was down at Petty's for a long time. Uh, and when I opened the museum in 2003, I went and got it and brought it back. It was just put away in a warehouse like so many of these cars. Was this chassis an original Junior Johnson chassis? As far as I know, it's a junior Junior Johnson chassis from Inglehala back from the early early 80s. It's 110inch wheelbase. So, it So, this is probably a Daryl Walrip Buick before it was the show car. Yeah, there's a picture on the mural. Just saw it right here. Buying. So, as I was saying, early '8s chassis could have been I could look at it and probably tell you, but early late '7s, early 80s. I'm going to say it's I'm going to say it's cuz it would have been longer than that before 81. They were the big the long cars then, right? for like the whole show car stuff where some of these are like in their as race form and some of them are like repurposed as show cars. That Winston 2002 Tony Stewart champion car over there. What did that start life as? That was um was a Pontiac as I remember correctly and then we changed it to a to a Chevrolet. So in 2002, we had a…