{"id":72037,"date":"2020-05-01T12:57:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T19:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=72037"},"modified":"2020-05-01T19:31:19","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T02:31:19","slug":"car-features-dick-trammell-and-his-nascar-modified-ford-pinto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/car-features-dick-trammell-and-his-nascar-modified-ford-pinto\/","title":{"rendered":"Car Features: Dick Trammell and His NASCAR Modified Ford Pinto"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We first caught a glimpse of Dick Trammell’s STREET-LEGAL NASCAR modified Ford Pinto when he entered it in the Racing Junk Virtual Car Show<\/a> we didn’t really have a proper place for it. So we wanted to reach out to Dick and find out more about him and his wild Pinto.<\/p>\n

Written by Dick Trammell<\/em><\/p>\n

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A little of my background:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2016, I retired from a career in the hospitality industry.\u00a0 In the 1990s, while serving as the executive director of the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Division, I commissioned the first state motorsports poster in America, and declared North Carolina as \u201cThe Motorsports Capital of the World.\u201d I did it to salute a sport and industry that has had a significant economic impact on my home state.\u00a0 Then, as now, the majority of NASCAR teams were based within close proximity to Charlotte, NC.\u00a0 At the time, we were home to Charlotte, Rockingham, and North Wilkesboro speedways, as well as a myriad of short tracks.\u00a0 In the late 1980s, when Bahari Racing<\/a>, Michael Waltrip\u2019s team, opened its new race shop in Mooresville, NC, the shop was designed to be visitor friendly. One entire wall of the reception area and hallway to the shop offices was glass so visitors could watch the mechanics working on various stages of building or prepping the cars.\u00a0 Only the engine room was windowless!\u00a0 Soon after, other area race shops wisely followed Bahari\u2019s lead as \u201cvisitor friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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How did I get into this industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am only in the industry by virtue of my lifelong love of cars and racing.\u00a0 My mother swore that when I was two years old, I could name every car on the highway \u2013 of course, in 1948 when I was two years old, there weren\u2019t many cars on the highway!<\/p>\n

In 1955, when I was 9 years old, I started racing micro-midgets in the juvenile division of the Forsyth Micro Midget Club, in my hometown of Winston-Salem, NC.\u00a0 Since my car wasn\u2019t finished, I drove a friend\u2019s car in my first race.\u00a0 I started dead last and finished dead last, but I was hooked.\u00a0 Over the next two years, I lost only one other race.\u00a0 My \u201cfledgling\u201d racing career ended when Mother and her second husband split, but I was already \u201caddicted\u201d to racing.<\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s great-uncle, A.D. Burke, was one of the men that built Peace Haven Speedway<\/a>, a \u00bd mile dirt track, with board fence and all, off Peace Haven Road in Winston-Salem.\u00a0 It was one of the first NASCAR tracks. When I was a child, I attended races there with my uncle, and when I was 10 years old, I got to drive an old A-Model Ford around the track for a few laps. The drivers that competed there were some of the early legends of NASCAR.\u00a0 Racing at the track ended when NASCAR made Bowman Gray Stadium<\/a> home of its first and longest-running weekly Saturday night racing venue.<\/p>\n

In 1960, my mother again married, and this time to her high school sweetheart, who was a long time Gulf dealer in Winston-Salem.\u00a0 He was an amazing person.\u00a0 My first job as a teenager was pumping gas, changing oil, and washing windshields at his family-owned and operated Gulf Oil station.\u00a0 For me, that first job was truly educational experience in cars and equally important, customer service.\u00a0 He was so trusted that customers used to bring him their car to trade-in because they felt he could negotiate a better deal for them.<\/p>\n

The first car that I drove had a manual transmission, and my wife and I made our son and daughter learn to drive in cars with manual transmissions.\u00a0 Both continued to drive manuals for many years.\u00a0 I\u2019m a firm believer that learning to drive in a car with a manual transmission will make a person a more attentive driver.<\/p>\n

I attended my first sports car race at the old Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in 1965. It was there that I fell in love with Formula Vee racers.\u00a0 In 1984, I bought a 1972 Zink C-4 Formula Vee that had been sitting in an enclosed trailer in the warehouse of the owner\u2019s father \u2013 untouched \u2013 for ten years!\u00a0 The owner, an engineer, had built the car and enclosed trailer with the best parts and engineering available.\u00a0 I joined SCCA and started competing in SOLO I events to learn the racecourses in the Southeast before moving up into open-wheel competition.\u00a0 In 1987, I won the SCCA Southeast Division Solo I Championship.\u00a0 In 1989, I finished 3rd<\/sup> in the \u201cSARRC MARRS Shootout II\u201d on the road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway.\u00a0 In 1999 I was in the process of restoring the car for vintage racing when we moved from Raleigh, NC back to the Charleston, SC area.\u00a0 With mixed emotions, I sold the Formula Vee to buy a bigger boat.<\/p>\n

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Story of the car:<\/strong><\/p>\n