In the October 1987 issue of Circle Track, Smokey wrote an article about his newly refurbished stock car that we covered recently. I was unaware of this previous piece, but...
A reader, after seeing our recent Expose' on that car, pointed out that Smokey had done an article in that issue way back. I immediately asked editor Rob to find the issue (we have all of the past issues in archives with me holding onto the very first issue ever!), scan it and send it to me. Did I get it right on my reporting? I was naturally worried.
When I read the story, I found that I was on the money about most of the innovations he incorporated into the car. And I missed some of the details. Ports that were placed behind the rear window and in front of the truck lid were in fact holes to access the weight jacker bolts and not special aero vents as some have suggested.
The car, it turns out, was not downsized, just the motor. He ran a 404 CI, de-stroked from the 427 motor, most of the time. The frame was in fact totally custom and the body was offset on the chassis. And, Smokey put as much weight on the left side as he could even moving the driver closer to the left door to increase left side percentage, something no one else was doing at that time.
So, I was relieved to find that for the most part, I got it right. And we all learned that Smokey was a true genious and one of our very first engineer/scientist stock car mechanic.