34 PLYMOUTH COUPE
This will be a short story about a race car with a short life. After a hard long winter of building one more vintage car for my vintage racing club the car was destroyed the second night of racing. I am not going to go into all of the details but I will say it was three nights of bad luck. The first night the coupe won the heat race but in the feature we started in the back and was making our way to the front when another car got crossed up in front of us and then we got hit from behind. Next we were sitting in the middle of the track with two flat rear tires. So much for that night. The next weekend I took the car to Savannah MO. and started the heat race in pretty good shape but once again someone was out of shape in front of us. We had no where to go except to the inside where the track was still wet and slick, then we were sideways and headed for one of them big implement tires used to help protect the pits and I knew I was in for one bad ride. I landed on my top and the car was torn up pretty bad. The rear end and drive line was torn out, the nerf bars were ripped off, the front end was bent and alot more damage, especially to the body. When I took a look at it the next day and after all these years of racing and pushing 60, I thought it might be a good time to quit but later that day a friend of mine called and convinced me to take it back to Savannah the following week and that he would give me a hand with the car to get it ready. So after a hard weeks work of cutting and welding and taking the body off of the frame and pounding it out the best I could I was ready to try it one more time. It was going to be the last night of racing for Savannah Raceway as it had been sold for new development. It had been the longest running track in this area so I really wanted to make it to the last race as I had done a lot of racing there. Well I made it to the last race and the car didn't feel too bad in the hot laps so I felt we were going to be ok (WRONG). They started us in the front row and on the very first lap another car decided to drive his right front up under my left rear then I went for another wild ride. I don't think I have ever went higher in a race car or had this much bad luck in all my years of racing. This time it destroyed the little coupe even worse than ever. A few days later I sold what was left of that car on ebay to someone out east and decided to slow down and retire from active racing and do a few other things. I do plan on restoring a couple of old race cars I still have so I guess Savannah's last race was also mine. One day I recieved a phone call from a fellow I believe that lived somewhere in Wisconsin and he told me he had purchased my old coupe and was restoring it. He wanted to find out some history on the car. I laughed and told him that there was not much history but what there was had been pretty exciting. I also informed him that it was not an old car but one I had built the year before for vintage racing. He said he would send me some pictures when he gets it finished. Hope you enjoy the pictures below a little more than I do. Jim "Grandpa" Cox
First night at Adrian, thats my old 35 sedan sitting next to it that I had sold to Ron Lutes the year before
Anther picture at Adrian
In this picture if you look close you can see I am still hanging upside down in the car. The only easy way in and out of this car was through the top and I wasn't about to pull my belts loose and land on my head so I told them they would have to roll the car back over before I would exit the car. I did go the next day to the hospital and found I did recieve some back injury.
In this photo the car was being rolled back over with me still inside.
Next day at home I went out to take another look at the car as it sit on the back of my truck. I felt the same as many other racers have felt the next day after a bad night at the races. Several of my club members didn't like the way I had built this car. They thought it was too much like a sprint car but it did fit all of the rules. I just wonder if this might have had anything to do with my bad luck. There were no pictures of the third night as I thought I had enough to remember about this car.
