NASCAR Origins in Moonshining?

[Scumpup]

I’m not a follower of NASCAR but I am curious about the roots of the sport. I’ve heard two versions:

1. A friend who is an enthusiast told me that the sport had its origins in poverty. Racers in the southern US didn’t have the money to build Formula I or Indy-type cars, but they could afford to modify and race production cars.
2. I’ve seen it repeated several times on the Internet that NASCAR was born out of moonshiners modifying cars to carry illegal whiskey i.e. outrun the revenuers."

Frankly, I find 1 more plausible than 2, but I thought I’d ask the biggest group of intelligent people I know. Was it 1 or 2? Both? Neither?

[duffer]

No cite yet, but I’m sure I could find one sometime today.

It’s number 2. Well, ever hear of a race circuit built outside the Southeast US?

A quick history. The moonshiners in the S.E. states needed cars that could outrun the Feds’. There was one way to transport the hooch with a chance of not being caught, and it was in the trunk of a well-handling fast car. With a driver that could handle both the car’s handling/power and the path (track) that would have to be driven.

Of course, guys being as we are, there arose a sub-culture of moonshiners trying to prove they had the best equipment and were the best drivers. Fast forward a few decades and Daytona Beach became famous. (The 500 came along later. Originally it was run partially on the sand.)

Illegal activity (moonshining)? Check
Cars? Check
Ego? Check
Horsepower? Check
Competition? Check
Trying to avoid/outrun the Sherriff? Check
Trying to avoid/outrun the Feds? Check

Proving you have the best driver and car? Priceless.

I thought everyone knew this. :dubious:

[Bruce_Daddy]

12 of the drivers in the first Daytona 500 were from Dawsonville, GA.

I don’t believe there were any racetracks in Dawsonville at the time, but for some reason, corn and sugar were very popular :dubious:

[ElvisL1ves]

You might be interested in readingThe Wildest Ride: A History of NASCAR (Or, How a Bunch of Good Ol’ Boys Built a Billion-Dollar Industry out of Wrecking Cars) by Joe Menzer. The inescapable Kirkus Reviews sez:

Legendary driver Richard Petty once said that auto racing began “the day they built the second automobile,” but according to sportswriter Menzer (Four Corners, 1999), stock car racing developed in the southeastern US during the 1930s, when moonshine runners would try to outrun federal agents. This quickly led to loosely organized races among the moonshiners, which led in turn to the formation of NASCAR in 1947. The first president of the organization was Big Bill France, a northerner who organized the renegade sport primarily by devising a points system (to determine the winners) and by disqualifying any modified cars from the races.

Legend has it that the 'shiners preferred to keep the outsides of their cars looking perfectly ordinary to evade attention from the revenooers, while hopping up the powertrain and suspension underneath. Even today, stock cars still have some pretense to not just vaguely resemble but *be * actual road cars.

[Reeder]

During the Prohibition era of the 1920’s and early 30’s, the undercover business of whiskey, or “moonshine”, running began to boom. More of a problem than secret manufacture of moonshine was the secret transportation of it. The common term for moonshine runners was “bootleggers”. Bootleggers were “men who illegally ran whiskey from hidden stills to hundreds of markets across the Southeast. These men were the real Dukes of Hazzard, only there was nothing funny about their business. Driving at high speeds at night, often with the police in pursuit, was dangerous. The penalty for losing the race was jail or loss of livelihood.” (1)

As bootlegging boomed, the drivers began to race among themselves to see who had the fastest cars. Bootleggers raced on Sunday afternoons and then used the same car to haul moonshine Sunday night. Inevitably, people came to see the races, and racing moonshine cars became extremely popular in the backroads of the South. Bootlegging continued even after the end of the Prohibition era, because of the huge tax placed on whiskey upon repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933.

http://www.nascar-info.net/nascar_history_1.html