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The Survivor...
Really cool looking car built and driven by Ralph "Camel" Banghart....
The car still exists today and is one of the best examples of a true
"survivor from The 70's.".... It wasn't wrecked... It wasn't sold off and
repainted or rebodied and then eventually restored to what it originally
was... it is exactly as it was, and here's why:
If I remember correctly, not long after completing the car, "Camel" took the car out for a
few times... (just a few...) and it might have been during warmups... or
maybe during a heat race, but sometime back around 1975, Camel was strapped
inside of his self built #58... ready to do battle once again when he had a
"moment.." He looked over and
saw the the latest Grant King cars..., The Weld Cars... and the other store bought racecars.
He realized how dramatically things had changed from just a few short years
earlier.... It was then that he decided that Saturday Night short track racing as he had come to know it
was over. As cool as it was... As well built as it was... Camel
realized that the #58 could never beat that type of high dollar racecar...
He parked the car...
Fortunately, Camel hung onto this car for all those years and the car looks
exactly like you see it above. It is a beautiful piece of
machinery and while it may not have much much of a pedigree in terms of it's
on track performance, it is at the top of the list here in The Vault, and
absolutely pins the meter for ingenuity... coolness... colors...
lettering...and on what you and I will always love about short track stock
car racing.. and that is the individuality... the ability to fabricate...
the ability to trust in your own abilities to have the confidence in what
you built to go risk life
and limb in it.
Here's a picture of what the car looked like in 2006 some 30 years after its
last race:
An absolute favorite of The Vault. |
