Across the Sound and Worlds Apart
Recently, members of the CarShowSafari team went off in different directions on the same day. Although only the sound separated their destinations, that body of water was perhaps the only thing those destinations had in common. Here are the divergent stories.
Each year in early June, the tranquil, grassy fields of Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in Greenwich, Connecticut, open up to an array of some of the most beautiful and significant collectible automobiles in the world. The event is the annual Greenwich Concours d’Elegance, hosting more than 11,000 car lovers of all kinds to enjoy a selection of truly magnificent vehicles.
The Greenwich Concours is a two-day event, overlooking Greenwich Harbor on Long Island Sound. Each day’s exhibits are unique: domestic marques on Saturday, imports on Sunday.
However this year was especially distinctive in that for the first time, Saturday’s Concours Americana included Hot Rods and Customs, signifying a major shift in the Greenwich Concours’ lineup. A special presentation discussing the concept and creation of these vehicles by Velocity Channel’s Chasing Classic Cars host Wayne Carini, Custom Car builders Rob Ida and Rick Dore, along with historian Ken Gross, drew a large crowd.
But it was a special feature of Sunday’s International Concours that really caught my eye. A collection of vintage and historic race cars honoring the Lime Rock Historic Festival, an event that takes place Labor Day weekend at the picturesque race track in Northwest Connecticut.
The thing I find most exciting about vintage race cars is the fact that they were never designed to be exhibited on sprawling green lawns in Greenwich; never meant to be displayed on pedestals as art. These machines were built expressly for one purpose: to win races; to be faster than the competition; to win the checkered flag. In this world, form definitely follows function, speed always comes first, and the fact that they are so beautiful is a testament to the artistry and ingenuity of the builders.
But make no mistake, these cars were driven fast and driven hard, and in the heat of the race, parts were not necessarily recorded and cataloged for history’s sake, they were cobbled together and put back onto the track as quickly as possible. Which, I believe makes them all the more interesting. We may know about a famous car, in an important race, driven by particular driver, but the car has it’s own road to that race, and it’s own story afterwards.
And many times the history of race cars after the race are not always filled with celebrities and paparazzi. Far too many race cars, after serving the owners and drivers well, ended up as rusting hulks behind the shop, literally put out to pasture, gutted for parts, or even worse, mounted atop a shop as advertising.
It is a relatively new phenomenon to revere the history of race cars, to celebrate their wins and losses, and to study their beauty and historical significance, and I’m glad we are. Whether they are being thrown around a track at high-speed or admired behind ropes at the Greenwich Concours in Connecticut, these dogs deserve their day.
–Tomm Scalera
As my Car Show Safari colleagues were taking in the automotive majesty of the Greenwich Concours, I was on the opposite side of the Long Island Sound, taking in the automotive mayhem of the Riverhead Raceway. Riverhead Raceway is a banked quarter-mile oval, built in 1949 on the west side of the town of Riverhead, the county seat of Suffolk County, New York, at the point where the North and South Forks of Long Island begin. In 1949 the area was rural; today the speedway is surrounded by shopping malls and hotels and restaurants and car dealers.
Long Island has a long and rich racing history, dating back to the inaugural Vanderbilt Cup race in 1904, carrying through the mid-century sports car events at the Bridgehampton Race Circuit, and including top-tier NASCAR races at Islip Speedway, a track from which demolition derbies were televised on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. While there have been more than three dozen racing venues on Long Island, today only Riverhead Raceway remains – and it is hanging on by a thread.
Riverhead’s story is not unique. Local short-track racing is in trouble nationwide, hobbled by shifting demographics, land-use pressures, burgeoning entertainment choices, and the ready availability of racing on television among other reasons. Against this, the new management of Riverhead Raceway – the track began operating under new ownership last year – perseveres.
On the date of our visit, our first trip to Riverhead in more than 15 years, a whopping nine different classes of cars were in action, ranging from the top-dog NASCAR-sanctioned “Modifieds” down to the entry-level “Blunderbusts.” The Modifieds are purpose-built machines that for some drivers have been a stepping stone to professional racing, while the Blunderbusts are retired full-size American passenger cars giving their last gasps to hobby drivers beating and banging their way around the small oval.
In between, there are “Late Models,” somewhat of a hybrid between the wild Modifieds and a stock-appearing car, plus “Legends,” motorcycle-powered small cars with bodywork resembling cars of the 30s and 40s, and “Street Stocks,” the distinction from the Blunderbusts being hard to discern. Throw in a Vintage division and three classes of open-cockpit “Midget” cars, and you have a full slate of racing and a full pit and paddock.
This is the way for short-track racing these days. Cynics call it “back gate racing,” where the entry fees paid by the drivers, car owners, and their crew members via the “back gate” help sustain a race track in the face of dwindling spectator admissions via the front gate. Where once bleachers filled to capacity would watch a tightly-presented card of races for one or two classes of cars, today pit areas filled to capacity race long programs in front of audiences counted in the hundreds if not dozens.
It is a bit of a chicken-end-egg conundrum: Do fewer spectators lead to more car classes, or do more car classes lead to fewer spectators? Add that question to the list of issues facing short-track operators. It’s nothing new at this point, but on what was a beautiful late-Spring afternoon and evening even we were shocked at the paltry turnout of paid spectators at Riverhead. The Modifieds had run a headline-making race a week early with a popular young winner, and the visiting Midget series, which race at the track only once per year, were conducting well-publicized races in memory of former competitors. But such “buzz” appears to be lost in the rest of the noise found in the world today.
Those few who did buy a ticket saw an entertaining evening of racing. The excitement began early when the throttle stuck wide-open in a Late Model car, which then pounded the concrete retaining wall and burst into flames, not five feet from where we and several others were standing. (No injuries, except to the car owner’s wallet.) A front-row seat at Riverhead puts you close to the action, and as the night went on the main event for the Modifieds was won by a young Long Island driver whose car is owned by a retired Long Island champion, and the feature race for the NEMA Midgets was by a driver who experienced heartbreak here last year and redemption on this night.
A Pennsylvania-based driver, who had never so much as seen the Riverhead track before arriving for the race, took home the trophy for the ATQMRA Midgets. The Late Model race saw a driver earn his first-ever victory. The main event for the Legends cars was hotly-contested and then the outcome was altered when the cars of four of the top-ten finishers, including that of the apparent race winner, were disqualified in post-race inspection.
As entertaining as the racing was, and a perfect as the weather was, we could not help but worry. The development surrounding the race track, and the disappointing spectator turnout, makes us fear that the future is bleak for the survival of this track. Through the years we have visited a number of tracks comparable to Riverhead, including Long Island’s own Islip Speedway and Freeport Stadium, plus Riverside Park and Westboro Speedways in Massachusetts, and today these other tracks no longer exist. For the sake of the hard-working new owners, and for the sake of Long Islanders who love racing, we hope our pessimistic view proves incorrect. Bob Marlow