If you thought the Goodwood Festival of Speed was a snooty English vintage hill climb for guys in tweed jackets with elbow pads you couldn’t be any more wrong. In fact, one of America’s least pretentious stock car racers (Cripes, he drove without shoes!) Junior Johnson, is scheduled to appear at Goodwood this weekend shoeing a 1955 Chevy stock car, built specially for him by General Motors. The car is a replica of the Smokey Yunick-prepared #92 ’55 Chevy that Herb Thomas drove to victory 50 years ago at the Southern 500 in Darlington, South Carolina. Thomas’ win was Chevrolet’s first on a superspeedway and the beginning of a long tradition of small-block Chevy-powered racers in NASCAR winner’s circles. So what was Johnson driving in the 1955 Southern 500? An Oldsmobile – he finished 36th. If non-GM machines are more to your liking, Goodwood will also host racing Astons, Cunninghams, Kurtis Krafts, Mercedes-Benzes, McLarens, Shelbys,–in fact, just about every type and vintage of racer you can imagine. For more info check out: http://www.goodwood.co.uk/fos/
(This post originally appeared in the June 23, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)