Classic Auto Mall

This is the Classic Automall Show.

Broadcast from the studios inside the Classic Automall in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.

Just one hour west of Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 298.

Featuring nearly 1,000 classic vintage and barred fight vehicles for sale under one climate controlled roof.

Now, here's your host, Classic Automall President and the man with all the toys, Stuart Howden.

And welcome to show number 235 on a lovely overcast day in beautiful downtown Morgantown, PA.

Before we get to our guest, how many cars in inventory? JR, go first this week.

I'm going to go with my favorite old AM top 40 radio station, 890 WLS.

Interesting. I don't have a favorite radio station.

But the promo says nearly 1,000.

No, it still is. I'm going to say 850.

Oh, he went low on us. 869.

I win because I didn't go over.

Fantastic. How exciting was that? Let's get to our guest.

Joining us via Zoom this morning from Imagine in the North Carolina area, Mr. Ray Evernham. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Yeah, Morseville, North Carolina, where we can be 80 degrees one day and 40 degrees the next day.

I love it.

We have layered clothing right now.

Absolutely. And I imagine all the F1 Cadillac guys who came from across the pond, if there are any of them, are kind of confused at the weather in the United States.

At least they're racing. Yeah, but those guys, they wear short pants all the time, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Yeah, I think it's funny. You see, there's guys like that. It's dead of cold here.

It's 20 degrees outside and a guy walks in on a tank top and a pair of shorts and flip flops.

It's like, oh my goodness. So we've had you on the show before. It's been, gosh, it was back in 2022 that we had him on.

Wow.

Yeah, I know. It really has. It was right before your auction, your Mecom sale was in May and we had you on in April of 2022.

And for those of you who don't know, I mean, your resume is, you know, crew chief, team owner, consultant, analyst, broadcaster, car collector.

Four decades in the business, you got to be pinching yourself on a great gig you have.

Oh, yeah. You know, every day something comes up and when you and I were talking a little bit about, hey, you know, retirement and this and that.

People like us don't retire. You know, I mean, I've loved racing my whole life and it's all I've ever wanted to do.

And I feel really fortunate to be able to do it. Some days are harder than others, but, you know, he's going to say, so it's 50 years, 50 years of racing for me.

So 68 years old drove my first race in Wall Stadium in New Jersey in 1975.

Wow.

It's been, it's been that long.

It's funny to think back, you know, somebody said something happened in 1980 and I said, oh, that was just 2024.

Oh, I love it. It's hard to even do the math anymore, how far apart that was.

And yeah, you're from this area. You're from, well, not Pennsylvania, but Jersey.

Yeah, I'm from Monmouth County, you know, it's kind of Central Jersey.

Grew up around, you know, did a lot around the Trenton East Windsor Heights County, Flemington, Wall Stadium, New Egypt.

Those were all my home racetracks.

Yeah, we, we've got lots of people with lots of nostalgia, the Redding track up here, the drag strip Maple Grove, which just changed hands to the IHRA from the NHRA,

which we were a little disappointed because we were hoping to see some of the top fuel guys and the funny car guys and gals coming back here.

It's only seven miles from us, so you could hear them from here. It's so loud.

Of course, not like Charlotte where they have four wide and when they're running the Z-Max race track.

That's all I'm going to tell you when they do that at Z-Max, pretty amazing, you know, it's, it's worth seeing.

And I've been lucky enough to be down there on the starting line when they fired those things off and you try and tell people it changes the atmospheric pressure.

You've never felt any, it's like standing, it's literally like standing by an explosion.

Yeah.

They leave the starting line. If you ever get the chance to stand there at the starting line when those nitro cars leave, it's, it's, it's.

People don't appreciate top fuel and funny car and drag racing in general until they actually go to a race.

It's hard to convey what it's like on television, on video, anything like that.

You've got to be there to experience it, the smell, the sound, the fury, the whole thing.

Well, when you look at, they defy the laws of physics, right?

You know, when you go from zero to 330 miles an hour with a wheel driven car in a thousand feet, just think about that.

You know, it's mathematically impossible.

Right, right.

But somehow they make it happen.

And it's, and then they tear the whole engine down in about 38 minutes and bring it right back.

So it's pretty amazing.

But you missed the days of being a crew chief or is the, God, that's got to be a lot of pressure being a crew chief.

I missed the days of being Jeff Gordon's crew chief.

You know, I'm a crew chief for some other people.

I didn't enjoy much, but you know, the, you know, I enjoy, I enjoy, I miss the race, right?

But the race that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore.

It's changed, right?

As far as it's changed, the strategies change.

It's, it's different.

So again, I thank God every day for the, the time.

Right.

You know, you talk about timing and, and Jeff and I talk about this with our, with Rusty Walls, with Mark Martin and Schwerter.

And, you know, we hit the sweet spot for us.

Right.

And, you know, those were the best times of my racing career when I was with Hendrick Motorsports on that 2014.

Yeah.

And you all had quite a run.

I mean, you know, the 47 NASCAR wins and three titles, 95, 97, 98.

I mean, that's, that's talking about defying the odds or defying gravity.

That's.

Yeah.

We, we, we set out to make a dynasty and we had a dynasty, you know, I was looking at

some of the, somebody posted Darlington's this week, right?

So somebody posted a run in Darlington.

I think it was from 95 to 99, you know, we, we won five and the worst finish we had was

third.

We had like over a 10 race schedule or something, you know, like 1.6 average finish.

Yeah.

It's like Nick, Nick Saban, yeah.

Like Nick Saban, the coach of Alabama, they lost one game and they're ready to, you know,

game and they're ready to hang him, you know, terrible.

But it's cool.

You know, we were, that was a great team.

We had a great car owner and Rick Hendrick and we had, that was one of those deals you

just very rarely in life, you get to be part of.

And I understand what you're saying.

You know, we always say that we're living in the best, we've lived in the best time,

the music in the 60s and 70s and 80s and all that.

But I mean, to watch the racing today and I'm not diminishing and I still enjoy all types

of racing NASCAR, Formula One, Drag Racing, whatever.

But when two guys are running at 60% throttle side by side around a track and holding everybody

up on a fuel mileage saying, I don't really understand how that's racing.

I don't quite understand the logic of that.

You know, it's, you know, it's different, you know, and as same as it was different when

we came after the guys had just gotten off the dirt tracks and gotten to the speedways.

And so, you know, I try, I try to understand just because it's not my type of racing.

A lot of it is strategy, a lot of it is technical and truthfully, a lot of it's evolution.

Right.

Racing gets driven into a direction largely by what the manufacturers and the sponsors

and people are going to want to do safety wise.

Sure.

You know, probably a lot of this EV stuff and the things that they're doing, you know,

are being driven by what could happen five years from now.

The sports are, you know, and not everybody makes a great call, right?

They may have to go back and make some adjustments.

Right.

You know, but when I look at Formula One, I think they're doing a fantastic job.

With the promotions and stuff because it's not just a race, right?

It's an event.

Right.

Exactly.

And I think, you know, NASCAR, I like some of the things that they've done with a new

car and they've been improving it.

And, you know, I think their ratings and stuff have been up.

I'd like to see them make the drivers and let them be a little bit more exciting.

Give them a little bit more adjustment in the car.

I understand why they have to do that to keep the cost and stuff down.

But I'd like to see a little bit more personality there.

And I think IndyCar is in a fantastic place right now.

Probably the best of all.

With Fox, Fox TV owns part of it now.

Fox is doing a great job.

They've got some really good competitive young drivers, you know, some good stories.

So, lots going on there.

This will be the first year that I've ever officially been involved in IndyCar.

But I really like what I see there.

Sure.

I think so.

And speaking of, you know, series and things like that, you've revived the IROC series.

And I mean, that was always to me the coolest testament of what could happen.

I mean, you picked the elite drivers from all the different disciplines and you create

the champion of champions, so to speak.

Yeah, really, that goes all the way back to everybody else.

I always wanted to know, okay, could this guy beat this guy?

Could that guy beat that guy, right?

And so, in the 70s, when Roger Penske and, you know, Jay Signori and that group got together

and Les Richter and Mike Phelps, but they came up with this series.

And that was popular for a long, long time.

It was a badge of honor for drivers to be invited back to IROC.

You know, to be, you know, you've got to do it.

And when you look at the list of those names like Donahue and Fulmer and, you know, Petty

and Pearson and Yarborough and Earnhardt, it just goes on and on.

So we, Rob Kaufman, as my partner, has got together with guys like Bruce Canapa, you know,

and Zach Brown, guys like that, got together and brought some of these older cars back

and we're putting, we had an event out at Laguna Seca.

We had Jeff Gordon, Mark, Kenny Schrader, Bobby Labani, we had Jensen Button.

And, you know, we're doing that in Charlotte coming up here for the heritage.

You know, we've got a list of drivers.

Again, we've got Gordon, we've got Bush, we've got Martin and Schrader and Labani.

We've got Tommy Kendall, Scott Pruitt, you know, guys, you know, driving vintage IROC cars

and then a vintage race just for fun.

Yeah, I was at Laguna Seca last year in 2025 and I was amazed at the popularity of IROC there

and the amount of people that had gathered in that tent that you guys had there was staggering.

It was the most popular thing.

It was packed.

It was like a concert.

And it wasn't like a small tent.

No, it's a big old tent.

We could barely get to the cars.

You know, those cars are stashed.

Right.

When you look at a lot of the vintage cars, they've been driven by a famous driver and

won a famous race.

When you look at some of the IROC cars and we've got cars that were driven by just about

every, you know, from the 70s to the 90s, just about every top guy you could or, you know,

the girl that you could imagine.

And people remember that.

At Laguna Seca for the first time in history, the first time in history, all seven generations

of the IROC cars were on track together.

Right, right.

And to me, that was a big moment.

I started IROC.

My first professional racing job was at IROC.

When they moved in to Boston, New Jersey.

Yeah.

I worked for Jason Nouria, who was the general manager.

Sure.

And one of the...

Yeah.

Wow.

You know, it's interesting that the way the cars evolved.

I guess the Porsches started it, but they were probably a little pricey for trying to

make a series like this.

Well, not as pricey as they are now.

Don't even get me started on that.

That's a whole other thing, right?

I mean...

Well, no, the IROC Porsches are two and a half, three and a half million dollars.

Crazy.

It's just...

I mean, but, you know, it used to be that you couldn't hardly give a race.

Well, you know this.

You couldn't hardly...

I can remember 935 Porsches from the IMSA series and they'd be at an auction and nobody

even been bidding on them.

It would just be as...

Nobody cared.

And this wasn't that long ago.

Maybe 25 years ago.

And then all of a sudden, it's just like race cars and just went crazy.

Well, that's what I think should tell us.

Look, vintage racing is going to be here to stay.

Right.

And I think that's why a lot of these smart guys have jumped on.

You know, they're buying these vintage IROC cars.

They're having us restore them.

They're going back and racing them because they know that when you look at what the historic

Trans Am series, those were cars guys looked at it like, hey, those are street stops.

Yeah, yeah.

Now they're 500,000 to a million dollars.

I know.

You know, the IROC cars to me are still a really good way to get into a vintage race

car and they're only going to go up.

You know, we've got some interesting things being thrown at us about bringing the historic

IROC series to some different shows.

Sure.

And it's pretty neat.

You know, people, people have talked to us about going to Goodwood or running in front

of an Indy car race and things like that.

Really cool.

Yeah.

It's got to be exciting to be involved in that.

It's funny that there was never, and you know, if you look at a marketing standpoint

from Camaro, when they came out with the IROC Z in the mid 80s, that was so popular.

And people, a lot of people that had an IROC back in the time didn't even know what it

meant truthfully.

They weren't really sure what the IROC part of the Camaro was that they were buying.

And they just knew that that was the coolest Camaro that you could get with a 350 and a

four speed or a five speed and a 5.7, which is there was two options, I think on the

motors, five twos and five sevens or something.

But great marketing thing.

But I was always surprised that Corvette number was involved in IROC.

Yeah.

Don't know.

You know, you know, Chevrolet is one of our sponsors now.

Chevrolet is coming back on board and it will be a historic IROC series or the IROC series

presented by Chevrolet now.

And so so hopefully we can we maybe maybe there'll be another IROC Camaro.

We'll see.

But she really came back on board with us Chevrolet and Goodyear were they were a long

time partners of IROC.

So they both come on to help support us to keep this to keep this thing going.

And you know, I'm hoping that that car car dealers and salespeople like you are giving

me a percentage of all because we've given up the value of the IROC Camaro.

Absolutely.

And I'll tell you the coolest thing.

You're on me three and a half percent.

All right.

Well, we'll we'll cut you a check.

Just wait by your mailbox.

It'll be there any day.

So the coolest thing about it, especially at this past year at Laguna Seca is when you

guys all got to drive from Laguna Seca to the quail and back.

And the greatest comment was one of the drivers said the cool thing was we don't have speedomaners

in these cars.

So we don't know how fast we were going.

Well, I'll tell you what, the police gave us an escort and they were certainly weren't

going slow.

We were like, oh, man, we should have put new tires on my people for those guys.

It was a great event.

You know, I really want to say and throw a shout out to the people at Laguna Seca out

there, you know, our main contact that put that deal together was was Bruce Canipa.

Right.

All the guys out there, they did such a fantastic job of putting that event together and felt

good.

It was probably one of the biggest crowds they ever had out there on a Saturday and they're

doing a lot of really neat things at the speedway there.

We're looking forward to going back with them will be there in August.

Right.

But now, you know, they're they're pretty sharp.

The IndyCar finale for the championship is going to be there in September as well.

Right.

So I'll be back out there again, but they've made some huge improvements at that facility.

Yeah.

It's a wonderful facility.

We had a great time.

We had so much fun.

We went back the next day and weren't planning on it because, you know, when you're in Monterey

in August, there's a gazillion car things to do.

And of course, you think, oh, we'll go one day to the track.

And my wife looked at me that night and she said, let's go back.

We should.

That was fun, you know.

And that doesn't mean.

She's an IROC fan.

Yeah.

Well, now she is.

Yeah.

She was a Camaro girl.

She grew up in outside of Kansas City.

So she's got a little hillbilly.

So so your next event that you're doing with IROC is going to be at the 10 tents Motoring

Club, which is I got to go to this place.

This that place is done exactly what you'd expect the Smith family and the Hendrick family

to put together.

It's just amazing.

Yeah.

And Marcus Smith and I are friends.

And obviously Mr. Hendrick and I are friends, but Marcus Marcus is kind of a visioner, right?

Like Rick Hendrick.

And Marcus has been doing something called the Auto Fair there.

And obviously the footprint at Charlotte Motor Speedway is got the mile and a half state

of the art NASCAR style race track there, but you also got the drag strip.

You've got a dirt track where the world of outlaws run.

And now they built an incredible road course right across the street from Charlotte Motor

Speedway with a beautiful clubhouse.

I mean, it's just a really beautiful facility and it's called the 10 tents Motor Club.

And he said, Ray, I really want to do a deal like I took him out, out the pebble and all

that array.

And he was like, now we need to do a deal like this in Charlotte.

So he's building what he wants to have a car week in Charlotte with maybe the Auto Fair

starts at an in between, you know, whether there's drag racing or dirt track racing.

And then it ends with this concor.

And we started with with 20 cars and with a thing called we call the heritage.

And we had some charter members, some great people like Nick Soprano, Wayne, Wayne Carini,

Paul Gould jumped in, you know, I wrap him around.

Oh, I know, you know, those guys, they brought their cars and they've supported us when we

only had 20 cars.

And then last year, they got the clubhouse done and we had the vintage trans am on track.

And we had a beautiful concor on Saturday morning.

And this year, I've actually was named executive director of the concor, again, to try

and and help fill some some slots for for now.

And it's been a great experience for me.

Chris Brewer, who worked at Amelia with Bill for many right on board

and been a tremendous help getting cars.

But this year, so we're going to have historic Iraq.

We'll be practicing Thursday and Mike Lashman and his group are bringing in the

vintage Indy cars.

Nice.

So we're going to have historic Iraq cars.

We're going to have vintage cars.

They're going to be on track Thursday afternoon, practicing Friday.

We'll be having, you know, exhibitions and there'll be an actual Iraq race Friday

afternoon and then Friday night.

Sorry, this is April 9th, 10th and 11th, so Friday night on April 10th, we have a

program where we take a amateur and a pro for charity.

I love that.

Not across class.

It's a big party and that raises money for the Speedway Children's charities.

And then Saturday, it's all the static display, about 120 super classic cars,

muscle cars.

We actually have these really cool hyper cars and stuff.

And Mr.

Henry election, unbelievable on the lower loop.

And then on the upper loop, we're going to do Radwood, a bunch of 80s stuff.

I love that.

Three really full days of just cool car stuff going on at 10, 10ths.

And yeah, so that's April 9th, 10th and 11th.

And as I said, Thursday afternoon, a lot of practice getting ready.

Friday, all day on track activity, all day, you know, Iraq, some of the cars,

you know, some of the Indy cars that are coming are amazing.

Some championship cars like Bobby Unster championship cars, the car that a

car that we restored, Mario Andretti's first win, first championship.

The, the, the real brah-ha.

What a car.

Play skillmen is bringing that.

So we've got about right now, it looks like to be 21 historic Iraq cars there.

18 of them will be on track racing, three of them will be just for display.

And then probably about 25 incredible, incredible historic Indy cars.

So that's all day Friday.

And then on Saturday, I mean, there's, there's, there's music, there's food,

there's, there's fashion.

It's, it's, you know, it's probably leans more towards what the quail would be.

Big display added, you know, because we just want something upbeat that that's an experience.

Well, I like what you said about what, what the Smith family is doing is that maybe

incorporating the whole week into a car thing, because I think if you got guys who

were into Ferraris and took them to a dirt track, and they'd maybe never seen

sprint cars at a dirt track, they would love it or the drag strip.

They would absolutely fall in love with it.

And so you'd open up a whole new window of people appreciating that type of racing

that never gave it a thought, thought, oh, that's not for me.

And then they realized how cool it is.

Well, then if you can put all that on one footprint, right, you don't have to travel

20, 30 minutes in traffic to go see one thing, you know, you basically jump on a

tram or whatever you want to do, you know, the footprint of Charlotte.

You know, again, it's incredible.

And we've always said this, I live the whole, the whole automotive world,

motorsports world, motor classics, whatever you want to call it.

It's like a pie, right?

Everybody's got their stuff.

But when you get that pie together, it's pretty big.

And, you know, just because I don't like that all time, that doesn't mean I won't enjoy it.

Exactly.

Jumping, you know, walking a half mile or a quarter mile down the road

and seeing a, seeing a sprint car once.

Yeah. Well, and, you know, you come in on early in the week

and they have the auto fair with a huge flea market.

I like, I like the flea market.

I do too. That's a great fun place.

And, you know, it's like that Chattanooga event that sadly is no longer going on

for now anyway, that they did where you had the hotel as the hub and everything was

right there and you could like you said, you could get on a tram and go to any of

the events that you're going to where it's an auction or the races or the

concourse or the car shows and all that.

And having that kind of central location really made it an enjoyable experience.

Much more so than even in some respects, Monterey, because you're half the time

in Monterey, you're in traffic driving to the next place.

Yeah. You know, and again, that certainly Monterey is Monterey and Pesto, right?

That's number one. That they're incredible.

It's an incredible deal.

But I think for our demographic in our geographic area for Charlotte,

the way we could do it got a lot to offer, because Charlotte, pretty easy.

You know, there's the little private airports two or three miles away

from Charlotte Motor Speedway, right?

The city of Charlotte is 20 minutes down the down the highway.

And then Hendrick Motorsports is right across the road, right?

The Cadillac F1 engine facility, GM technology, all that stuff.

You know, when people come, you can spend a week there and not see it.

Everything, you know, all of the NASCAR race teams, just the Charlotte Motor

Speedway facility itself, you know, so centrally located in that area,

plenty, plenty of hotels, plenty of roads getting in and out.

So because they're used to handling, you know, one hundred and fifty,

two hundred thousand people for some of the Charlotte races.

Sure. As I said, it's new in its building.

But, you know, with Rick Hendrick and Marcus Smith behind it and Smith family,

they know how to do they know how to do stuff and they're doing it right.

Sure. Well, you talked about Hendrick's hypercars.

He's not not as of late, but, you know, for a long time,

his collection was mostly Corvettes and a few other things here.

But his hypercar collection is the stuff of, I mean, a two 88 GTO

and F 40 and F 50 and Enzo and a La Ferrari.

I mean, that's dropped the mic and move on.

You've got you've hit the quad factor or whatever you call it.

And he loves the stuff. He loves it.

You know, what's really neat about Mr.

Hendrick is he doesn't hoard that stuff and put it away so he can see it.

He shows it and he lets people look at it and he displays it.

And he's, you know, he is just a car guy that loves cars

and he puts his money where his heart is.

Yeah, exactly. Cars and he shares those cars with the public.

You know, let me tell you, they have a cars and coffee, you know,

they do at Charlotte once a month.

I think it's coming up this Saturday.

As a matter of fact, there's one this Saturday.

But Rick Hendrick sends cars over there.

Right. And so you could be walking around a car, a coffee and go,

whoa, that's that, that nine, 18 Porsche that just sold for six million.

That's it. As a matter of fact.

And you know that. But that's some, you know, as I said,

he does a lot, a lot for the automotive world.

And we're in a good place here in Charlotte.

I mean, we're in a good place.

We've got two fairly wealthy guys, right, that have that have resources

that love cars and they want to share those cars with other people.

How perfect. And from a timing standpoint, as we talked about earlier,

you know, it's just a perfect time for this.

I think with the confluence of all the events coming together with the internet,

the ability to see all this stuff, to watch auctions on TV or to watch a race

that you used to be able to not watch because there was no outlet for it.

I mean, now you can watch anything you want.

I watched the other night I was watching the Christie's auction of Jim Erse's

sports rock and roll memorabilia, the guy who owned the Indianapolis Colts.

And when I'm watching a Christie's auction and I'm thinking it wasn't that long ago

that you didn't have access to all the things that you do now.

And, you know, this all of the stuff, I'm not sure if practice day is going to be

streamed, but Friday and Saturday, all of that stuff is going to be streamed.

Like if you go to heritageinvitational.com, it'll give you all the information.

So if you can't come down and make it, you'll be able to watch it.

You'll be able to watch the Iraq race. Sure.

You'll be able to watch the Vintage Indy cars.

You know, you'll be able to see, you know, we've got Justin Bell and his group

are going to come in and do a lot of the commentary.

And I've worked with Justin. He's he is fine. Oh, fabulous.

They do such a great job.

But we've got Alan Bestwick going to be doing the the Iraq race.

You know, we have people that that on the streaming side are professionals.

It'd be like, you know, I work with Alan at ESPN.

Right. You know, bring it in group.

Racing America are the people that are going to cover and stream the sport.

And I've worked with them a great deal.

And they are putting together a really super professional group of people

to cover the racing part on Friday, including Pro Am.

And then on Saturday, you know, treating everybody to what's going on in the car show.

So we want people to come and show up, but you can also watch it

if you can't get there. Absolutely.

And, you know, a lot of people don't realize that these guys

who bring their cars to these concord elegances and high end car shows, if you will,

there's no money in it. That's not they're not getting paid to do this.

They're not, you know, it's not like they're, you know, getting a check

for twenty five thousand dollars for bringing their car.

They spend a lot of money out of their own pocket to bring these cars to these shows,

which is, you know, of course, it's the notoriety that they get for winning the event

if they are best in show or best in class.

But but it's it's not nothing.

And people don't always realize that how much they actually put into it.

That's really spot on because it costs these people money.

They do, you know what? They battle for a trophy, right?

And they want they want their car to be appreciated.

They want they want to be rewarded for the effort by by being recognized

that they did a good job on their car.

But a lot of these guys that have these cars worth a lot of money

really just want to share them with people and show them, right?

So and these big events, having fun, being experienced

and making sure that we're doing good, raising money for charity,

these big children's charity, you know, so they're doing something good

with their car, they're getting shown.

And we want to ask again, what you know, it's up to us to put on,

you know, these these fun dinners and fun events that people can enjoy.

It's got to be an experience because it's it is it is costly.

Yeah, it's just about getting it's like, look,

we're going to throw a big party and hope everybody comes and has fun.

And hopefully at the end of the day, we break even or make a little bit for charity.

I get that. Absolutely.

I would be remiss in not mentioning that since we've last talked,

you released a book, Trophies and Scars.

I love that name with a forward by some guy named Gordon.

Vice chair. I was fortunate.

Yeah. Jeff Gordon wrote a forward.

Rick Hendrick wrote a forward. Roger Penske wrote a forward.

Come on. My friends from outside of the, you know,

world like Mario Andretti pulled in there.

John Elway, you know, people like that, that understand the significance of

of sport and it doesn't always come with just a trophy.

Right. Right.

You anybody that's done anything at a high level knows that it comes

with sacrifice and commitment.

So in the book is a lot about my my early days at Wall Stadium and

and, you know, the trials and tribulations through through the years

and about evolution, you know, you change as a person and you've got to be

you know, you've got to as you're gaining skills and doing things.

You're you're changing, you know, and then if you're not changing, you know,

you're really not surviving. So we've I've changed, you know,

what Ray Evernham is throughout the years, you know, right.

You've achieved to team owner to television, to this, to that.

And each one each spot along the way, we learned a lot.

It's a good couple of good chapters in there about our Pikes Peak race,

which to me was one of my biggest accomplishments as a builder driver

owner. But it's some people, you know, they look at it and you know,

but I did that book because I wanted my kids,

my family to understand what I was thinking.

Sure. I love that.

OK. All of the weddings I missed, all of the birthdays I missed, all of the,

you know, hey, mistakes or calls that didn't go the right way or decisions.

At least I could explain like right or wrong.

Here's what I was thinking when I did that.

And if somebody wants to buy it on top of that,

then that's just gravy on top of it, because you've you've solidified that

in history for them to be able to see and know and understand.

And maybe they don't understand it today, but 20 years from now,

it's going to strike a chord just like it does all with all of us,

with our parents and the way we were raised.

And I would hope, you know, we saw a lot of those books when we go speaking.

I do a lot of different speaking engagements.

But, you know, when you leave a speaking engagement,

you hope that people have a few things that they can take with them

that either help them personally or help them professionally.

And I think, you know, reading the book, there's there's several things in there

that that I shared with lessons I learned along the way.

And and that's why we call it trophies and scars, because, you know,

you got the trophies to remind you of the good decisions you made.

You got scars from the bad decisions.

Yeah, exactly.

So shape you into the person that you are today.

Absolutely. I love Mr.

Pinsky said that you win such a simplistic thing, you win more than you lose.

You know, I mean, and the the losses, like you see,

are the scars that you see on your body and and and that's part of life.

And I think that, you know, we can all take a lesson from that.

So you sold everything in your collection a few years ago.

So what's your I didn't think so.

So what's your my favorite question?

I love to ask everybody nowadays is what's your daily driver?

So I'm not going to lie to you.

I'm going to go what and I'll tell you what it is.

And then you got to let me explain why.

So my daily daily driver right now is a 2023 Jeep Sahara four door,

four cylinder, turbo, rub rails, right, pipe bumpers and all that.

And that's because the way I drive and where I drive in Charlotte,

I'm up and down over the curve talking on the phone.

If I feel like going off road to my property or whatever, I love it.

So when I when I'm not driving that my two go to cars are

I have a 1941 Chevy pickup truck that's, you know, it's a hot rod.

Sure. But it's real frame, all steel car, Mustang two,

front suspension, automatic transmission, just a nice driving ball.

Again, air conditioning, all that.

And then I've got a 1964 Porsche 356C that's got one of the little polo motors in it.

You know, the guys at the 911 shop down in Florida, right?

Did it. I love that little car.

So those are my two drivers when I'm not I like to thought on that.

I've often threatened my wife that we're going to get a Subaru just to do

the same thing that we can go forward, you know, like, you don't care.

Hey, hey, you want to cut me off?

I don't worry.

I could don't traffic stop right over the matter.

I love the fact, though, that if you could pull out in front of people nowadays,

the cars automatically break.

So you don't have anything to worry about.

Unless you got a guy in a 72 old Delta 88, right?

So they're still hitting each other side to side.

That's exactly right.

So we'll put up on the screen the websites and the dates for the heritage

invitational and really appreciate you being on the show again today.

I know it's been a few years and we hope it won't be so long the next time we have you on.

Well, it's always a pleasure to see you and I keep an eye on you.

You know, I bought stuff from you.

You have. And I was stuck today.

I ran through the inventory just to make sure that something that someone

catching my eye, but you got you got some really interesting stuff up there.

It's cool that you got the barn find stuff going on now.

And as I said, some days I just like scrolling through your cars to look at the pictures.

I appreciate that so much, everybody.

Ray Evernham will catch you next time, Ray.

And we'll be back in just a couple of minutes with the classic automobile show.

Take care. Thank you.

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And we're back with the classic automobile show from the classic automobile studio.

Show number two, thirty five.

We've got a special guest joining us.

We don't normally do this.

We've got a little short segment here.

We're going to invite our friend on Kurt Hanson,

who's joining us from Denver this morning.

Good morning, Kurt.

Kurt has a very popular radio show out in the Denver area.

Well, you cover more than just Denver area, right?

Oh, no, we're the longest running motorsports radio and TV show in the country.

Twenty five years worth.

And we have a huge streaming audience just run local Denver radio.

But stay tuned because we have a big national radio announcement

coming up as it relates to race central radio and race.

Central TV is seen in every TV set in America and in Canada

and every portable device you can imagine.

Wow. But we're easy to find a race.

Central dot live.

But yeah, we've been doing this a while.

I think we another twenty five years, we might have some success.

Yeah, you finally finally figuring it out, right?

Yeah, I'll be lucky.

I'll be lucky and make it.

But I've announced Indy car, NASCAR, NHRA, world of outlaws.

I mean, dirt track series, local NASCAR announcer.

I mean, I've been around this little gig for a little bit.

Sure. Sure.

Well, it's a good time to be in media right now

because of all the outlets we have with this podcast, video podcast,

streaming stuff that you're doing, Roku, all the I mean, there's a thousand.

It's hard to keep up with everything that there is.

But I think that's a good thing because it allows us to have a lot of variety.

I was watching the 1946 Indianapolis 500 on YouTube the other night.

It's like, well, that's pretty cool.

Well, I'm so old, I was there a lot.

You know, you should be you should be you should do this for Libby.

You're very good. You must be a radio guy.

Everybody says I should have done radio, but I always said, well, that's nice.

Yeah, I didn't sometimes two and two doesn't equal four with me.

So so but you've you've done some racing yourself.

Now, you're not just an armchair quarterback here.

Well, I'm probably if not the only certainly one of the only guys that's

actually done it. I've raced.

My God, I started way back in the day with likes of Tommy Kendall.

Yeah, Crosnoff, Lesa Sol, a lot of, you know, great race car drivers.

But yeah, I've done the Russell series, the pro series,

the Formula Three I've done roundy rounds in NASCAR Legends.

I've done hill climbing, raced Champs-Atlantic for five years.

I won the West Coast Formula Atlantic Championship in the SCCA.

I've done the Baja 1000.

I think yeah, I think that's one of the things that makes me very unique

in this in this space, as we call it these days is, you know, like when I announce

or I'm doing my show, people say, how did you know that?

Well, I know that because I've either done it or tried it.

Right. And that gives me a very unique perspective into what is happening.

And in some people say, it's almost like you can foretell the future.

And that's true because when you've done it or tried it, you actually are in the head.

You know what that driver is thinking or shouldn't be thinking.

And it gives me a perspective that's very, very, very unique.

Sure. Well, I think the interesting thing that I found in doing a broadcast

of any type is the ability to you could read a book about somebody

and you take in a little bit of it.

But when you're doing research to have them on a show and to talk to them

and to be educated and know what you're talking about, my learning curve

has just gone through the roof on this stuff because I've read so much

with the purpose of remembering it, not just reading it for entertainment or enjoyment.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the good news for me and I mean, maybe it's bad news.

I don't have to do a lot of show prep for any I mean, I've been I've been hired

by ESPN, Flow TV, speed, you know, speed back to the day, Fox.

And I don't really need to do a lot of prep because this is stuff that I do every

day or every Friday on my ESPN radio show here in the Mahai City,

three to five p.m. mountain.

We call it the drive.

But the other broadcasting I do is when you've done it and you just get little

snippets, you can compartmentalize that very quickly and come up with great

commentary. Is I like to say, I want to leave the viewer listener going,

wow, I didn't know that in wanting more.

And when you've done it, you can you can do that and you can kind of project

to the audience, you know, what's going on or what's going to happen.

And I have great relationships with all the drivers and all the series because

they look at me with a different level of respect.

Sure. I'm not just the guy with the mic.

Right. Well, it's funny how when you when you become

somewhat of a quasi celebrity or you're on some kind of video or radio or

television or whatever, people do kind of it's funny how people that you used

to be able to wouldn't hardly give you the time of day.

Well, all of a sudden now stop and say hello to you.

So it's I guess that's enjoyable.

I think that, you know, being famous for famous sake,

though, doesn't really interest me.

I, you know, I don't want to be a well-known movie actor.

I just like to, you know, make a living and talk about cars.

Well, in the real world, my last name is Kardashian, but I didn't make a movie.

So, you know, yeah, I mean, and I still do a lot of racing.

And it keeps me keeps me engaged and young.

I lost my wife to cancer two and a half years ago.

Hard to hear. It's been a pretty rough period.

But we're, we're, you know, we're going and blown and shown and banging.

I just signed a contract to do a lot of announcing for a big dirt track series.

Fun. Yeah.

You know, a lot of other stuff is in the mix.

So, you know, at 68 years old, what's the old guy going to do in a small town?

That's exactly right.

Well, check him out when you get a chance.

If you're in that area or go online and streaming and we'll put all that

information up on the screen card.

We appreciate you being on today and look forward to running into you down the road.

Yeah, thank you for joining my ESPN radio show.

And around the country, around the globe, streams at racecentral.live.

We'll be back with our guest Keith Martin in just a couple of minutes.

We'll see you then.

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This is the Classic Automall Show.

If you have questions or comments, write podcast at classicautomall.com.

And we're back with a Classic Automall Show from the Classic Automall

Studio, Morgantown, PA, joined by our weekly guest, Mr.

Keith Martin. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. How are you today?

I'm pleased to have you here.

So down to three.

Your latest blog.

Are you are you getting a little fidgety?

Are you a little jiggity about this and only down three cars?

What are you going to do?

Well, I started at 13.

Well, that's an odd number.

So you don't want to do it.

You know, the what I've tried to figure out, I need to drive cars

that are easy for me to drive, you know, and that the the new Porsche is easy.

The my Hyundai is my everyday car is easy.

My Alpha S4 automatic is easy.

So I've just had to stop and think, all right, I've got all these cars

and which ones do I actually drive?

Right. Right.

That's what it comes down to.

Is it sitting there getting passed by to go to something else?

Eventually, you say, why do I need that car in my collection or in my space?

Because each car adds its own series of

I drove my Porsche, my new Porsche out, put on a little Porsche run

and we picked up a nail in the tire.

You know, failure is one thing.

Stupid crap like that that you just can't control.

There's no way to know ahead of time.

That's just the irritating part.

The nail in the old nail in the tire trick just really ticks me off.

Well, then it, you know, it affects the the wheels.

So I'm less swabbed tires.

They quote me fifteen hundred bucks for a set of rear tires for the car.

I get I make a blog about it.

I get all these people telling me I could have gotten them so much cheaper

than somewhere else.

And I said, well, I'm sitting in the parking lot of a tire shop.

Yeah. If you can, if you can place me at that right moment

in another tire shop that can do them cheaper than I'm only.

And otherwise I'm getting the thing fixed now.

Going to the guy who's offered to keep the car overnight saying,

well, by the way, can you match discount tires for us on this?

Yeah, I was stuck.

Yeah, yeah, you had to do what you had to do, right?

And of course, you know, in downsizing, you had another reason to it

because you're you're you're a HOA.

The Morlocks are love that have decided

that trickle chargers are not safe for the whatever.

Have we ever heard of a trickle charger exploding?

I'm just curious. I've never heard.

So I was just curious that maybe you'd heard.

No, I would like to take the people with electric bikes and put them

in one room and surround them with those lithium ion chargers.

I like that a lot.

You know, listen, a lithium ion charger makes absolute perfect sense to me.

And I don't understand why it doesn't make sense to everybody else.

But, you know, what whatever it is is whatever it is.

So the Hyundai Elantra, though, you know,

I hear lots of people say what a great car that is.

And, you know, for most people, you would look at it and you wouldn't

give it a second glance.

But there's something gratifying about something that's reliable

and easy to drive and easy to park and easy to maneuver.

And and if you get a scratch on it, you're not going to freak out.

Well, it's got all the reason I bought it.

I bought it five years ago. It's just paid off this month.

So it's time to get a new car and get a new payment, right?

So I put 12,000 miles on it in five years.

Wow, you must live close to work.

It really it's it's it's been totally reliable.

It was the new gen when it came out and it had all sorts of safety features

like people in your lane, people in front and back.

And I find that I want those things in my when I'm doing my driving

daily driving these days and an Apple CarPlay. Yeah.

He needs, you know, the whole it's really been.

It's been I call it my golden retriever.

Right. Exactly.

And, you know, it's funny that you should say that

because I was driving a car the other day that didn't have warning signals

when you change lanes and all that stuff.

And I started to change lanes just in my head.

I was in the new car, but I wasn't.

I was in an older car and there was somebody right beside me.

And luckily, I just happened to glance over and realize, oh, crap,

there's no warning device on this car.

That's the only downside of these warning devices and these aids, if you will.

You better make sure that you remember what car you're in.

But that's right. You know, that's right.

I can't tell you how many times when I get into a car

that I haven't driven in a while and I don't know where's the shifter?

Is it a knob? Is it a button? Is it a stick?

Is it on the column? Is it on the dash?

Do I have to blink twice and turn around and can't figure out?

Start the damn thing.

What warning lights am I waiting for? Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Nothing worse than that.

Warning lights just all of a sudden pops up because they seem to be,

you know, in the old days, they were a little faded

and you might not even notice them for a couple of little bit.

And boy, now they come on and you're just like, oh, no, what can that possibly?

It's never good.

It's never even when you wipe the codes out yourself.

It's never good. Yeah.

Is there non-ethanol gas in your part of the world?

Can you buy non-ethanol gas? There is.

Yeah. They're here, too.

There's an app called Pure Gas on your phone,

which will point you to the nearest non-ethanol gas station.

Oh, I like that a lot.

You know, it's amazing that especially for cars that don't run very often,

if you're letting them sit for a while, the moisture in the fuel and a lot of

people will start their car up, but they won't let it run long enough

for the moisture to get out of the exhaust system.

And therefore, you got rusted out exhaust because you got water piling up

in the low points of the exhaust system.

Yeah, we try it with the Lotus and with my Julius Spider Veloce.

The shop they're at, they start them once a month and warm them up.

Yeah. And you got to get them warm and do all those things.

You know, it's not easy owning more than one car.

I mean, I know that sounds boohoo, you know, rich guy problem,

but it really is there are times when you wish you had one.

I agree with that, you know.

It's the the problem is there's always some somebody's tire pressure is always going down.

That's true.

Why does the one tire on my wife's SUV decided to go when it gets cold from

forty two PSI to twenty eight.

And it happens every year and it happens when it gets cold

and you go and you air it up and it's just fine.

There's nothing wrong with the tire, but apparently some and tires.

You can't visually tell a low tire anymore.

It's not like good old days. Yeah. Yeah.

Used to be you could look at a tire and you go, Oh, my God, that thing's low.

Not anymore. They all look normal.

And that's why you got those low sidewalls on them.

Yeah, exactly. Which are, you know,

love to hit that expansion join on the turnpike with one of those.

I would be happy with all my cars if I were dry.

If I had three, I mean, the the Hyundai for regular and the Porsche and the Alpha,

the Alpha Club and the Porsche Club are both very, very active.

And so that gives you there's value in use.

Yeah. What's the point in having these cars

if you're not taking them out and using them? Right, exactly.

Well, and the good news is, like you said, I mean, they're they're

automatics or the Hyundai and the Porsche, you know, are automatics.

They got power steering, power brakes.

They got nice stereos, which is important.

And so, you know, we liked our music just as like as much as we liked the sound

of a car and a Porsche 9 11.

I mean, there's sound at the upper end, but in the lower regions,

it's not very throaty or voicy.

Well, my car has the fakey-do exhaust system on it.

How's that? Ridiculous.

You mean ridiculous, good or ridiculous, bad?

I don't know. You fire a car up in the condo basement.

I look at myself and I say, I did this when I was 18 years old.

Rev it a couple of extra times just to make sure they know it's you.

Well, it's an exhaust cutout on that car. Oh, yeah. Right. Right.

It was extra twenty five hundred dollars when it was moved.

It's an open exhaust up when you're sitting at idle in the garage.

I love that. Your neighbors must really love you.

Yeah, you get fruit cakes every December for Christmas.

And my HOA board is full of fruit cakes.

Oh, you just give them back the fruit cake when you give that they gave you

the year before because nobody eats those things, right?

Yeah, the expired by date is the 23rd century.

We somebody said something they found some there was a wreck of some type

and they found a jar of olives or something.

And they were like three thousand years old and they and they tried them.

They said it wasn't bad, you know, and tastes a little bit like chicken.

So so when are you doing the I have you have you set a date for the IMS bear?

Oh, the the the right now, my nineteen seventy five nine eleven

S is going up on bring a trailer. So they're prepping that car. Right.

That's right. I forgot about the nine eleven S that car,

which is really the most fun car to drive.

It just it's got no power steering, no power brake, no AC.

You know, it's it's a lot of work to use.

But once that goes, then then they'll turn the tension around to the the C4S

and and just just tell me how many thousands of dollars it'll be.

But I think they have payment plans now for that kind of thing.

So so I've been told I told you my my with all my cars.

I have a barcode on the windshield.

When I drive by the shop, it just takes two thousand dollars up the town.

Yeah, I like that.

I think that's that's sensible.

And then at the end of the year, they either owe you money or you owe them money.

And that's kind of like the IRS, you know, you at some point in time,

somebody came up with a system that I've never I've never been to the they will be money.

Now, I think one time that happened and then they can send me a letter

and said, sorry, that was a mistake.

We were we regret sending you that letter.

My dad loved to mess with the IRS.

They would get him on capital gains or something.

And when I was a kid, I didn't know what he was talking about.

But he'd he'd write him a letter and then they'd say they'd write him a letter back

and say it'll take us about six months to go through this letter.

And then we'll give you a response and then give him a response.

And then he'd respond to that letter.

This drug on her like that.

This will be this is in reference to a case that was eight years ago.

Right. The interest, you know, I hope you can beat him out of the interest

or something to that effect. So anyway, I hope all is well in your world.

All right. Thank you. Great to be here.

Take care, Keith. Keith Martin, everybody.

And we'll look forward to catching you next week

on the Classic Auto Mall show and thanks for stopping by.

The Classic Auto Mall show with their host, Stuart Howden,

executive producer, Steve Seth here, produced and engineered by your truly

J.R. Russ, video editor, Randy Lambie, available on ClassicAutoMall.com,

YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, music, courtesy of the Pat

Travers Band for tour dates, contact and stuff.

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Classic Auto Mall - #235 - Stewart Howden with Guests Ray Evernham, Kurt Hansen and Keith Martin

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