NASCAR in the South, Part Five: May 11, 2017--The Curb Museum for Music and Motorsports and Kannapolis

Another full program was in store as we rolled off to Kannapolis, North Carolina for the day.  First stop was the Curb Museum for Music and Motorsports, a rather odd combination on the face of it but there was a good explanation.

Mike Curb, who was born in 1944 and lives in Nashville, has had a very interesting and varied career.  Leaving college at 19, he started his own record company which became instrumental in launching a number of successful acts on the West Coast, including the Stone Poneys (which featured Linda Ronstadt).  He became President of MGM Records following a merger and composed scores for more than 50 films and wrote some 400 songs.  He formed his own musical group, the Mike Curb Congregation, which had a hit song "Burning Bridges" in 1971 and the singers were weekly regulars on the popular Glen Campbell television program.  In addition, the Mike Curb Congregation was also featured on the huge 1972 Sammy Davis Jr. hit "the Candy Man."  Curb wrote and produced songs for many of the big acts in the 1970s, including Roy Orbison, the Osmonds, and Lou Rawls.

His career took an unusual turn when, after being encouraged by Ronald Reagan, Curb ran for office and was elected Lieutenant-Governor of California in 1979, serving until 1983.  A motorsport enthusiast, he is currently a team co-owner (Curb Agajanian Performance Group) but has an impressive history in NASCAR, being the only owner to win in all 10 NASCAR auto racing series in the United States.  As a sponsor, his drivers have included Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.  In 2011, Curb's team won the Indianapolis 500 with Dan Wheldon at the wheel.

Car in which Richard Petty had win No. 199

Dirt track racing cars

Winning car, 2011 Indianapolis 500

As a record company executive, Mike Curb has worked with many of the big names in popular music and the museum includes the Dodge Viper that Leann Rimes bought when working with him (when she was only 12 years old!).  

The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame was in financial straits when Curb rescued it and provided space in his museum, so the collection not only covers his stable of entertainers but musicians who have come from the state or where it has had a big impact on their careers.  Displays, including costumes, records and personal effects, were devoted to people like Roy Clark, Ray Stevens, Patsy Cline, Andy Griffith, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Kenny Rogers, and many others.  We met an old musician who had performed blues and he chatted with us about his life.  A walk down Memory Lane...

Billy "Crash" Craddock

Andy Griffith, who began his career as a gospel singer

Kannapolis, located around 35 kms from Charlotte, has an interesting history.  It was the location of an enormous textile mill owned by the Cannon Manufacturing Company, founded in 1888, and which, by 1924, had become the world's largest producer of textiles.  The town, which was founded in 1906 but only incorporated in 1984, was created from housing that the company constructed for its workers.  It was thought that naming the town with a "K" rather than a "C" was more stylish but still recognized the contribution of the company.  By 2003 the company, which continued to own downtown Kannapolis, was bankrupt.  Soon afterwards, the mill (covering an area the size of the Pentagon) was torn down and in 2008 the North Carolina Research Center, a public-private institute, was opened.

North Carolina Research Center

Kannapolis has a population of around 47,000, but one would never have guess this from the original downtown area.  It has many fine buildings, most in excellent condition, but almost all are vacant.  Needless to say, parking our fleet of Corvettes was not much of a problem.

Having arrived early after our visit to the nearby Curb Museum, we wandered the totally empty streets and then rested for a while in the Dale Earnhardt Plaza, named after the town's most famous son.  Dale Earnhardt Sr. was born here in 1951 (Dale Jr. was also born in the town, in 1974) and decided early on that racing was far more preferable to working at the Cannon Mills plant.  The local A-level baseball team is named "The Intimadators" after his nickname and the square where we sat featured an impressive bronze statue of the local hero, who died in a crash at the Daytona 500 in 2001.

Our day in Kannapolis concluded with an excellent buffet dinner at the oddly-named Restaurant Forty-Six, an upscale place whose moniker comes from the number of chromosomes in the human body.  The science theme continues with quotations by famous scientists stencilled on the walls, a salute to the nearby research center.

Restaurant Forty-Six

Continue on to Part Six here...

NASCAR in the South, Part Four: May 11, 2017--The Gary Artis Collection

Gary Artis' Magic Garage

After breakfast at the hotel, the "Museum in Motion" caravan hit the road at 8:00 am and headed south towards the South Carolina boundary.  Our destination was a private car collection specializing in Corvette Indianapolis Pace Car replicas.  It is owned by Mr. Gary Artis, a successful entrepreneur in the business software industry.  

Upon our arrival we were treated to refreshments and received a printed booklet about all the cars in the collection.  Mr. Artis (noted on the booklet as "Curator & Janitor" of the collection) was most hospitable and clearly enjoyed having a group of enthusiasts with Corvette Religion who would appreciate his cars.

Mr. Artis' first Corvette was a 1977 Coupe purchased in 1985.  However, the Pace Car collection began in 2001 with the purchase of a 1998 Corvette, one of 1,158 Pace Car Replicas built that year.  It is highly distinctive, with its "Radar Blue" exterior colour and yellow wheels and it was purchased in celebration of Mr. Artis' 40th birthday.  He thought that a collection of Pace Car Replicas would be fairly easy to do as at that point there were only four different ones.  He clearly has had a lot of fun in spite of being wrong, but collecting tends to do this.

Where it began: 1998 Corvette Pace Car

Chevrolet made things more challenging as in the following seven years the Corvette was named Pace Car six times and the collection expanded.  And expanded.  With business being good, Mr. Artis started to add some other Pace Cars--Oldsmobile, Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Viper, Pontiac Fiero (!)--until the day we visited there were 20 Pace Car Replicas in his 36 car collection.  Also at the time of our visit it was announced that once again Corvette would be the Official Pace Car at Indy 2017, with a nice red-white-and-blue Grand Sport flying the colours so Mr. Artis will have to dig into his wallet again to keep the set going. (And as I write this in January 2019, it would be remiss not to point out that the 2018 Official Pace Car was, yes, another Corvette: the super-fast ZR1.)

2007 Pace Car 

2014 C7 Corvette with lettering added to resemble the 2013 Pace Car, which was not available as the new generation was only being introduced at that time

2003 C5 50th Anniversary Edition Coupe with Pace Car graphics

This gorgeous 2004 Pace Car Convertible was used at the Indianapolis 500 as a "festival car," but is more celebrated as the survivor of the sinkhole collapse that wrecked eight cars at the National Corvette Museum in 2014, where it was on display at the time.

1978 Corvette Coupe--the first Special Edition Pace Car

2005 Corvette Pace Car, No. 8 used at the Indianapolis track as a "festival car"

Special Edition Corvettes: 1996 Grand Sport (foreground) and 2007 Ron Fellows Edition C6 Z06

Along with his terrific cars, Mr. Artis has lots of collectibles, including posters and lots of model cars.  One thing that really stands about the collection is that the cars were plugged into battery tenders and in fact are regularly driven.  A really nice C5.R replica, the only one produced by the company that was selling body parts, has more than 90,000 miles on the clock. 

1997 C5.R replica by C5West, designed to look like the C5.R that won its class at Daytona in 2000 and there driven by Dale Earnhardt Sr., Dale Jr., Kelly Collins, and Andy Pilgrim

We enjoyed a real family atmosphere with Mr. Artis and the neighbours he invited and spent the morning admiring the cars and talking Corvette.  The collection is a reflection of his personal interests and is nothing like a warehouse of untouchable cars.  We were grateful for the chance to see the cars and meet him; a Southern hospitality highlight of our North Carolina "NASCAR in the South" tour.

Chevrolet Camaro Pace Cars

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air

1996 Dodge Viper GTS Pace Car Replica

1970 and 1972 Oldsmobile Pace Car Replicas

Continue on to Part Five here...

Stutzes and Baseball! In Downtown Indianapolis: June 24, 2016

In the early days of motoring, the state of Indiana could make a good claim as one of the centres of American auto manufacturing, and the record shows that somewhere in the order of 198 different builders operated in 42 cities. Of course, many of these would have been of minor importance—some mechanics assembling a few cars from parts purchased elsewhere—but certainly there were notable large enterprises. Studebaker of South Bend was one of the longest-lived, Crosley one of the more eccentric, and Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg possibly the most glamorous. But one of my favourites is Stutz, which produced high-quality cars in Indianapolis from 1911 until the Depression shut it down in 1935, with some 35,000 cars having been built.

1914 Stutz racing car at the Indianapolis 500, Earl Cooper at the wheel

The company acquired a degree of fame when one of its new cars finished in 11th place at the 1911 Indianapolis 500 race, giving rise to the company's rather hyperbolic slogan of "The Car That Made Good in a Day."  Wags, of course, retorted with: "You gotta be nuts to drive a Stutz!"

The fabulous Bearcat model was introduced in 1912 and had an impressive racing history, winning 25 of 30 events entered that year.  The company's "White Squadron," whose drivers included the famous Barney Oldfield, won national championships in 1913 and 1915 with these powerful and lighweight cars.  In 1915 Earl "Cannonball" Baker set a transcontinental speed record in a Bearcat, travelling from California to New York in 11 days, 7 hours and 15 minutes.  This inspired the famous Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Day of 1971 (to be Hollywoodized as "The Cannonball Run" in 1981).

1914 Stutz Bearcat

Harry Stutz and the original investors sold out in 1919 to a group headed by steel magnate Charles M. Schwab and the new owners brought in Frederick Moscowics, formerly with Daimler, Marmon and Franklin, to run the operation. The new Stutz models put an emphasis on safety, with safety glass and a low centre of gravity, but the cars still boasted impressive performance for the day, with one of them coming second at the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1927; three more were present in 1929, with one finishing fifth. Stylish bodies were provided by the most noted coachbuilders of the day but ultimately the market for luxury, high-performance cars dwindled after 1929 and eventually Stutz joined Pierce-Arrow, Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg, Marmon and Peerless in bankruptcy.

The factory that was built in 1912 and expanded over the years still exists in Indianapolis. Used by the Eli Lilly company as a packaging centre until 1982 and then left empty for decades, it has been re-purposed as a home for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Opened in 2004, it has some 150 tenants. The current developers note: “The former automobile factory occupies an entire city block with seven buildings, five freight elevators, and 11 loading docks!  Artists, architects, attorneys, graphic design firms, advertising firms, internet firms, engineering firms, and other small business owners enjoy flexible space and lease terms that fit their budget.” 

One of these tenants is a nice little neighbourhood restaurant named, naturally, “Bearcats” and we enjoyed an excellent dinner there. It is primarily a lunch spot as it was empty this Friday evening; the area around it is not very residential. After talking with the staff, the owner of the restaurant took us for a quick tour of the building so we had the opportunity to see Mr. Turner Woodward's (the building developer) own collection of Stutz cars, along with some non-Stutz worthies. Definitely something to see if you are in Indianapolis!

1929 Auburn Boattail Speedster, built for the English market

1929 Stutz Dual Cowl Phaeton

1927 Stutz Safety Sedan

1933 Stutz DV32 Hollywood Sedan

1920 Stutz Fire Truck

1928 Stutz Blackhawk Special, a replica of the car in which Frank Lockhart (winner of the 1926 Indianapolis 500) perished in a crash at Daytona Beach while attempting to break the Land Speed Record.  Stutz left motorsports after this.

Excalibur Series IV pseudo-classic, built in Milwaukee from 1980-1984, powered by a 5.0 litre Chevrolet V8

Any Corvette blog entry needs a Corvette: here is a 1978 Indianapolis 500 Pace Car Replica.  6,502 were built, or one for every Chevrolet dealership!

After dinner, we made our way to beautiful Victory Field, opened in 1996 and considered one of the nicest Triple A baseball stadiums in the country. The Indianapolis Indians (of the International League) were founded in 1902 and the club is the farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The stadium, centrally located in the heart of the city, has 12,000 seats and a large picnic area. It was a beautiful June evening as we watched the visiting Buffalo Bisons defeat the home team in a 1-0 yawner, perhaps the dullest baseball game I have ever seen. But it was great to just soak up the ambiance of the park and afterwards there was a most excellent fireworks show.