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Current Video:American Muscle Car: Smokey Yunick|
No other person was more instrumental in bringing NASCAR racing from a down-and-dirty, "run what ya brung" Sunday afternoon brawl into a high-tech, fully-engineered racing series than Smokey Yunick.
Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate)
Since the early nineteen hundreds of people with a need for speed flocked to Daytona Beach, Florida. You can bring your car out at the beach put about a fire wall and see what she did. The world's most famous beat Venus all candidates don't have to set new records. After World War II with America's love of cars kicked into high gear Daytona continue to grow as a major race since. Naturally a place like this attracted a vast crowd. After the war Uga brave box. Setting up shop here in new York red boy there's a lot of different converging personalities that ended up in Daytona is approximately. The same period of time. But it all came together to make something wonderful. One of those personalities of the young mechanic in Henry unit and army air force lieutenant who it won't be seventeen bombers against both the Germans and the Japanese. Unit was typical of the restless war veterans who have seen the world and we're not gonna go back Ohman work on the farm. He grew up really pour on a farm in Pennsylvania to get out he went he joined the service. -- birth certificate and -- service and them. Got away. After you left the service he was working as say as a test pilot and he thought Daytona Beach was beautiful from there. It was green and it was it was just beautiful and most importantly it was warm he could not stand cold. Those test flights over that's beautiful -- sold Munich on Daytona as a nice place to live. So in 1947. They units headed south from the Jersey and set up housekeeping and -- a big don't is fashionable mobile communities. Before the war racing motorcycles that are ready -- unit been -- smoky. And very soon assigned -- that name on it hung outside Daytona -- newest garage at 957. Beat street on the West Bank and Halifax river. It wasn't long before this place became known as the best damned garage in -- out. But smoking -- wasn't the only garage in Daytona or hot cars are being built there was another guy and down a serious racer named Marshall T. So they worked on cars over Marshall teams there was -- you know gas station -- service -- You know there were kids there was and there are learn in the business back then. Marshall. Builder and driver before smoky. -- -- Marshall when he wanted to go Indianapolis completely he talks -- and taken smoking and that's how small he got started in stock cars. What do Marshall teach young prodigies as a racer named to land Roberts who also had a colorful nicknames fireball. Smokey offered fire all the place to work on his car. Relationship form that a few years later would turn the racing world upside down. In 1949 Marshall Teague and it's fabulous Hudson hornet with the class act in grand national racing. Its roots were in the good old boy moonshine run and hills of north Georgia and the Carolinas. On the four mile Long Beach and road course in Daytona. These races took a whole new -- they'd truth bad -- meant a lot obstacle if you had to overcome to win and run that on the beach. To a competitor like smoking unit though this guy -- racing wasn't it toxic. He had his adrenaline junkies could have been released from the war. And they probably maybe they didn't go in -- adrenaline junkies but the ones that survived we're addicted to -- -- survival. -- he had hooked up with a North Carolina native named Herb Thomas who went a special gift for making a huge Hudson hornet do incredible things on the racetrack. Over the next few years Kurt Thomas and smoking unit one dozens of races and laid the foundation on which a legend with the bills. By the end of the decade just beat the popularity and the cost of racing with exploding. And -- unit was right at ground zero they let us as the whole thing speeds up on the American muscle car.