Bowling Green Stock Car Racing

by Larry Upton, Jonathan Jeffrey

Overview

Bowling Green became the city of speed immediately after World War II as America began its love affair with the automobile. Stock car racing took the city by storm in its inaugural season of 1951, drawing crowds of up to 7,000 in a city of only 18,000. Soon thereafter, the city attracted the Chevrolet Corvette assembly plant followed by the National Corvette Museum. Images of Sports: Bowling Green Stock Car Racing documents the history of stock car racing in Bowling Green and the emergence of the raceway at Beech Bend Park.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439626191
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	06/21/2010
Series:	Images of Sports
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	40 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Larry Upton is a bank executive in Gilbert, Arizona. He has written for the Journal of Commercial Bank Lending and the Journal of Arizona History. Jonathan Jeffrey, special collections librarian at Western Kentucky University�s Kentucky Library, has written a number of books about the city�s heritage. Many of the images used in this book came from the collection of Marshall Love Jr.

Editorial Reviews

Title: Bowling Green: What Other Color Is There?

Author: Staff Writer

Publisher: DRIVE! Magazine

Date: April 2011



The Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by Automobile Club of Southern California has announced a major change to the schedule for the 9th Annual Holley NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion. Instead of the Friday through Sunday format, the event will now run Thursday through Saturday. The reasons for the one-day move up are many, but primarily it was done because people said they wanted to be with their families on Father's Day. Also, many of the long-distance attendees wanted to be on the road heading home on Sunday. Consequently, the event has been moved up a day. The action is now scheduled for June 16-18 at the historic Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Beechbend.com.



If you're interested in Bowling Green history, check out the book Bowling Green Stock Car Racing by Larry Upton and Jonathan Jeffrey. Published by Arcadiapublishing.com, it tells a great story with tons of historic photographs of the early years of racing at Beech Bend.



Not only is NHRA celebrating 60 years of drag racing this year, but 1951 was also the year that the drag strip opened at Beech Bend. Back then it was dirt; since then it has become hallowed ground as one of the oldest surviving drag strips in the U.S. and, of course, home to one of the best Reunion events on the calendar.



Every year the Reunion honors a number of legendary racers and this year is no exception. The grand marshal is Bruce Larson, who enjoyed a long and successful career culminating with an NHRA Funny Car World Championship title and three years racing for Don Garlits. Bruce is joined by honorees Dave Boertman, Jack Doyle, Jim Oddy, Bill Pryor and Tom Raley. This year's Reunion Spotlight presented by Justice Brothers Car Care Products falls on the Cluster Busters of Indianapolis. Formed in 1948, the Cluster Busters Hot Rod Club is still going strong, Clusterbustershotrodclub.



If you have never been to Beech Bend or a Hot Rod Reunion, this is your chance to see nostalgia drag racing at its best with more than 400 race cars and almost 2,000 street rods. As they say, it's way cool.



To learn more about the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum and the 9th Annual Holley NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion go to http://museum.nhra.com or call 800.884.6472. You can also visit nhra.com.

From the Publisher