Tag Archives: Reflections

Racing Junk Car Features: Dick Trammell and His NASCAR Modified Ford Pinto

12 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in From the Writing Room, Thinking Outside The Boat

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Pintolet

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.  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.

May 1, 2020 Dick Trammell Classic Cars, Cool Cars, Featured Vehicles, Galleries, Guest Columns, News 0

CAPTAIN’S NOTE:  While I enjoy writing about cruising Slow Dance and “Thinking Outside the Boat” along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, I grew up with a love of cars and racing.  Though I no longer race, taking the little red Pinto, affectionately known as “THUNDER,” to Cars and Coffee, and entering it in car shows, almost satisfies a “need for speed.”  When Racing Junk contacted me about doing a feature on the little Pinto, they asked that I answer two questions.  The instructions were to: “Be as short or as detailed as you would like!”  They chose to use my response as submitted.  If you’re into cars, hot rods, and racing, check out RacingJunk.com.

Written by Dick Trammell

Micro Midget 53

A little of your background and how you got into this industry:

In 2016, I retired from a career in the hospitality industry.  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 “The Motorsports Capital of the World.” I did it to salute a sport and industry that has had a significant economic impact on my home state.  Then, as now, the majority of NASCAR teams were based within close proximity to Charlotte, NC.  At the time, we were home to Charlotte, Rockingham, and North Wilkesboro speedways, as well as a myriad of short tracks.  In the late 1980s, when Bahari Racing, Michael Waltrip’s 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.  Only the engine room was windowless.  Soon after, other area race shops wisely followed Bahari’s lead as “visitor friendly,” creating yet another attraction to keep visitors in the Tar Heel state at least another day.Dale and Kenny autographed poster

I am only in the industry by virtue of my lifelong love of cars and racing.  My mother swore that when I was two years old, I could name every car on the highway – of course, in 1948 when I was two years old, there weren’t many cars on the highway!

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.  Since my car wasn’t finished, I drove a friend’s car in my first race.  I started dead last and finished dead last, but I was hooked.  Over the next two years, I lost only one other race.  My “fledgling” racing career ended when Mother and her second husband split, but I was already “addicted” to racing.

My mother’s great-uncle, A.D. Burke, was one of the men that built Peace Haven Speedway, a ½ mile dirt track, with board fence and all, off Peace Haven Road in Winston-Salem.  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.  Racing at Peace Haven ended when NASCAR made Bowman Gray Stadium home of its first and longest-running weekly Saturday night racing venues.

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

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.  Both continued to drive manuals for many years.  I’m a firm believer that learning to drive in a car with a manual transmission will make a person a more attentive driver.

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.  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’s father – untouched – for ten years!  The owner, an engineer, had built the car and enclosed trailer with the best parts and engineering available.  I joined Sports Car Club of America and started competing in SOLO I events to learn the racecourses in the Southeast before moving up into open-wheel competition.  In 1987, I won the SCCA Southeast Division Solo I Championship.  In 1989, I finished 3rd in the “SARRC MARRS Shootout II” on the road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway.  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.  With mixed emotions, I sold the Formula Vee to buy a bigger boat.

The story of the car where it came from, how you acquired it, what
you’ve done to it since and any plans you have for it.

1 IN FRONT ~ IF YOU AINT THE LEAD DOG THE SCENERY NEVER CHANGES

  • 1974 Ford Pinto “Street Legal” vintage NASCAR Modified racer
  • Now powered by 427 Chevy Big Block
  • Close ratio 4-speed tranny
  • An early Frankland quick-change rear end

A couple of years ago my wife and I were driving Westbound on I-40, heading home from Winston-Salem, when in the Eastbound lane I saw a 1930s-vintage, Bowman Gray NASCAR Modified coupe that had been converted to “street legal.”  Much to my wife’s dismay, the moment I saw it, I started dreaming of owning one.  In June 2019, I saw the “street legal” NASCAR Modified 1974, Ford Pinto for sale on the Internet, and the rest is history.  Since I recently turned 74, I figure it will be my last race car.

The little red Pinto was built in Connecticut in the late 1970s by Mark Berndt and his father.  It’s my understanding that Mark drove the car in the NASCAR Northeast Modified Series.  The last time it was on the track was in a vintage race in 2010.  Mark stepped away from racing after his father passed away.  Gary Babineau, owner of Babineau Metal Works, in Auburn, IN had worked in CT during his engineering career and was familiar with the car and Berndt family.   When he heard it was for sale as a “roller,” he bought it to convert to “street legal,” and to play with.  Gary’s “claim to fame” is having built 18 beautiful, reproduction, 1960s vintage Indy roadsters, for museums and private collections.  A man in New York saw the car on YouTube, tracked Gary down, and talked him into selling it.  Last summer, when his daughter was getting her driver’s license, he sold the car to me in order to buy a daily driver for his daughter.

HINDSIGHT

Since taking delivery of the car last August, I’ve changed the car’s number to #1, to reflect the fact it’s the first “street legal” vintage, NASCAR Modified in South Carolina.  Though my wife questioned my sanity for buying it, she now climbs through the passenger side window (the doors of real race cars don’t open) and accompanies me on many rides.  Most people question me about the noise of the exhaust, and then look at me with a shocked expression when I tell them the screaming of the square-cut racing gears of the quick-change rear end almost drown out the exhaust thunder!

Last September, after Hurricane Dorian hit Charleston, I was bringing the car home from a warehouse where it was stored for the storm, when I experienced what I thought was disc brake caliper seizing.  Upon inspection, I found the welded spool in the locked, Frankland quick-change rear end had failed.  When I contacted Frankland Racing, I learned that all new spools and axles are 31-spline rather than 12-spline like my original.  Since I wanted to keep the car authentic (except for the motor and interior), I tracked down Jamie Frankland, the grandson of the founder of Frankland Engineering.  In a call to him, I learned the welded spoon indicated it one of the original Frankland rear ends.  He said that as soon as his grandfather and father had generated enough revenue, they began using forged spools.  A friend and I drove the rear end to Balm, FL, for Jamie to rebuild. When he checked the numbers on the rear end, he said it was indeed one of the first the company had built.  Today, Jamie Frankland still competes in vintage, dirt track, modified events, in his two vintage racers.

427 Chevy Big Block

Though I would love to get the little Pinto on Bowman Gray or another ¼ mile asphalt flat track that it was built for, my plan is to use it for Cars and Coffee, and car shows.  It is without question the most videotaped car that I’ve ever owned or driven!  No matter where it goes, it always draws a crowd.  At the first Cars and Coffee that “THUNDER” and I attended, it was referred to as “a loud and proud show stopper!”  In November 2020, it will appear at the incredible “Cars on Kiawah,” car show.

Our son is a “reformed” motorhead that spent his first year out of college building and driving Formula 2000 racers for a team in Pennsylvania.  He went on to spend the next five years turning wrenches on Porsches at a European auto shop in Raleigh, NC.  In 1998 he bought an inn in Western North Carolina, and today doesn’t even change his own oil!  The first time he saw the Pinto, he asked why I bought it.  My only answer was that I always wanted one.  With him at the wheel, we drove to Costco to fill up the fuel cell.  When we pulled up to the pump, literally every customer walked away from their cars to take pictures of the little Pinto.

Our son looked over at me and said, “Now I get it.”

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The Man He Didn’t Have to Be

02 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in From the Writing Room, Thinking Outside The Boat

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Bop Ches

He is with me every time Slow Dance leaves the dock.  He may not have been my “father,” but he was the kind of “Dad” every child deserves.  He was my stepfather, Chester Woodrow Shore.  He was a “man’s man,” yet humble and kind.  He died unexpectedly on March 1, 2003, one day before his eighty-first birthday. To say that I miss him every day is the classic understatement. From the moment he came into my life, he was always there for me.  If not for him, I don’t know where I would be in life, or if I would be boating today.

My mother and father divorced when I was a toddler. A couple of years later she married a man that before the age of twelve, I was begging her to divorce.  He never touched me, but when drinking, he became a nightmare for mother.  No child should ever see their mother bruised or her eyes blackened.  No child. Ever.  It never goes away.

Mother and I had it tough after she filed for divorce and he moved out of our home. But Mother was strong, she was frugal, and we survived. I can’t tell you the year or day, but I will never forget her smile when she arrived home from work one afternoon. On the way home, she had run into her high school sweetheart when she had stopped to fill the car up with gas.  In conversation, she learned he was going through a divorce. After graduating from high school, the war had separated them, and ultimately each married someone else. Later, when his divorce was final, I was invited on their first date, and about every date until their marriage in October of 1960.  In their forty-plus years of marriage, he never once raised his voice to Mother or me.  Soon after their marriage, he began calling me “Junior” more than he called my name.  I wish I could say that I called him “Dad” for the rest of his life. Country music star Brad Paisley, and Kelley Lovelace wrote the song that best described my “Dad” when they wrote He Didn’t Have to Be.

That first summer after they began dating, we started going to a lake cabin that he leased from a friend.  He introduced me to boating in his beautiful sixteen-foot Borum Mahogany runabout.  He taught me about boating and taught me to water ski.  He also taught me the importance of boating safely and to respect other boaters.

After he and Mother were married, they bought a rustic little cabin on the same lake. Later, he taught my “bride” to ski, and in the summer of 1968, just weeks before our son was born, she was skiing with my dad at the helm.  When she told her doctor about it, he asked if she knew what could have happened if she had fallen.  Her response was that she knew that she wouldn’t fall with my dad at the wheel.  She was right, he was that kind of man.

Early in my career my bride and I were transferred multiple times in a few short years, but we were living back in our hometown when our daughter was born.  Our children called my dad, “Bop.”  Growing up on a farm, he had smoked since his early teens.  One Sunday after lunch at my parents’ home, our young son and daughter climbed into his lap.  As they sat talking to him, our son, who was about eight at the time, asked, “Bop, why don’t you love us?”  Shocked, my dad replied, “Bo, you know I love you very, very much.”  Our son’s innocent response was, “Bop, if you really loved us, you would quit smoking so you could watch us grow up.”  From that moment, the man never smoked another cigarette. Not one.  That day he quit smoking,”cold turkey.” It was another example of the kind of man he was.  On the day that he died, our son insisted on being with him as he was taken off life support.  It was the last thing he could do for the grandfather he loved so much.

He died five days before his first great-grandson was born.  He would be so proud of each of his three great-grandchildren.  If he had lived, he would be ninety-eight today, March 2, 2020.  He enjoyed anything and everything to do with boats, fishing, and hunting.  He would have loved Slow Dance, and I’m confident that we would have gotten him onboard for a ninety-eighth birthday cruise.

He would have loved witnessing each of his great-grandchildren on the water, whether boating or fishing.  He would be proud at how the oldest has excelled in rock climbing to the point that he now climbs with the varsity team at boarding school.  He would have been proud to see his great-granddaughter make her solo run on her dad’s Hells Bay flats boat when she was only eleven year old, and shot her first deer at fourteen.  He would be equally proud that his youngest great-grandson, who just turned eleven, has an amazing vocabulary, could sell ice to Eskimos, and shot his first deer before his eleventh birthday.  Our grandsons like boats, but his great-granddaughter is the one that loves being at the helm every chance she gets — which is almost daily during the summer months. To her, boats are more important than “electronics.”  She’s a high achiever, and when it comes to boating, she is mature beyond her years.  As her uncle Bo says, “She does not lack for confidence.”

There was never a question that I couldn’t ask “Dad,” and while he may no longer be around for me to ask, he’s still with me when we leave the dock — right there at the lower helm, where I go when the cruising gets rough.  His picture gives me peace and a little more confidence.

Happy Birthday, Dad.  I love you and miss you.

“Junior”