Thanks, Dickie. Lot of great info in your post. That chassis had an amazing history. Will never forget the sound of the "Bumblebee" car at Southside Speedway. This David Bentley posted photo of the Bumblebee car from the Scott family is the car I remember seeing:
I know which of these cars you could pick out from the stands on the Daytona and Talladega backstretch and which you couldn't:
Bobby, below is how I laid out our 1983 Wrangler racing sponsorships to our retailers. How much of this would $5-$6 million buy today?
It is absolutely beyond me how any sponsor today justifies the sponsorship cost in a major racing series against the return. In 1983, for instance, my Wrangler budget included $800,000 to sponsor Bud Moore for a full Winston Cup season with Dale Earnhardt, who was being paid about $125,000 for a personal services contract. A dollar here and a dollar there and we were spending a million dollars on the Cup sponsorship to owner and driver. Our entire ad budget that year was approximately $17 million. We were spending about 3 times the Cup sponsorship on advertising and promoting the sponsorship, which took it up to $4 million. That didn't include customer tickets, suites, Busch Series sponsorships to Robert Gee and Ed Whittaker. The entire cost of our Richmond Cup race sponsorship was being paid by Cluett-Peabody Co., owner of the Sanforized and SanforSet processes to keep denim from shrinking and wrinkling. Throw in travel, etc. and we were spending probably $5-$6 million for a total program... about 35% of our ad budget. We had full grandstands and wonderful blind customer survey numbers. I guess a minimum figure today would be $20-30 million just to get your feet wet. Back then, we had full car sponsorship, no associates, for the entire season. Again, I don't understand how a company can justify it.
Went out to dinner & tuned in late. Wife walked in den. She mentioned good crowd. Had to explain the multi-colored seats now at Charlotte to make it look like there were spectators.
Those speeds last night were absolutely incredible. And, brother Kurt set a new 1-lap stock car speed record for a 1-1/2 mile track any time, any place. Those Charlotte lap speeds are over 30 mph faster than when I used to stand on pit road there. I think NASCAR is headed in the right direction next year putting the brakes on a bit. Remains to be seen whether their methods will produce better racing.
Kurt Busch's fast lap of 198.771 mph was 40.022 mph faster than David Pearson's pole winning run of 158.749 mph for the same race in 1974. Unbelievable!
How about a $18 Winston Cup reserved grandstand ticket and a $15 unreserved grandstand ticket?! Paul Sawyer was definitely not getting rich on what he charged race fans for tickets.
Dennis, another thing about that brochure. Dan Henley at RJR/Winston in Winston-Salem paid for it and we printed it at our Wrangler printing facility in Greensboro and shipped them to Richmond for distribution. Another example of the huge budgets Winston provided behind the scenes that no longer is available for tracks to tap.
Dennis, thanks for the brochure photos. I don't know when that victory lane sign was erected. That victory lane disappeared when Paul enlarged the track in 1988 and victory lane ceremonies started taking place in the grass between pit road and the front stretch.
Winter of 1984 I met Kyle Petty in Fort Lauderdale and we did a deal for southeastern 7-Eleven franchisees at the community college. It had a rising stage in the auditorium that we unveiled a race car on. Afterwards we had lunch in a hospitality tent on an athletic field. I was wearing yellow golf pants (I don't play golf) and Kyle grabbed me out of the food line. Both of my pants legs were covered in fire ants. Ran across the field to a restroom coming out of those pants at the same time. Kyle shook the ants from my pants while I doused my legs in water!
