Vintage Stock Car Racing - Time Traveller

The history of the Earnhardt car alone makes it carry a premium price. "To some people the history means a lot," Felton says. "That is especially true for collectors who want to own an ex-Cup car and sit around and tell lies about it. I sold an ex-Davey Allison car to a collector in California. I had 100 percent of the documentation. It was a car Davey didn't like a lot, so it only got raced a few times. It probably isn't going to see a racetrack. Other drivers don't care much who owned their car, as long as they can race it."

Although they spent most-if not all-of their competition days on ovals, the historic cars are raced only on road courses where there is ample run-off room for drivers of disparate talent and experience. And there are both on-track and off-track conflicts among owners.

"I have a 25 Ricky Rudd car," Felton says. "I know it's authentic because I bought it right from Hendrick (Racing). But in 1992 and '93 there may have been 30 of those cars and there are a lot of folks who could claim to have the same one."

When does an original car cease to be original? "They get crashed and clipped all the time," Felton explains. "If they were raced at all, they were repaired."

Felton says he tries to restore cars to the condition they were in when they were raced in their prime, but that sometimes it is hard to figure out just what that means.

"Cars were changed all the time, and in some cases the equipment was changed based on the track they were at on that weekend," he says. "And the folks who are buying them, well, they are racers. The more the cars are raced, the more they get changed. Big brakes. Different cams.

"Everyone knows what a '90 Thunderbird looks like. As long as it looks right, for some owners it is right," he says. "They keep changing this and swapping that and raising the bar for the drivers they race against."

Felton says changes and updates are more common on the cars being raced on the Eastern Seaboard rather than the West Coast. "They (West Coast) are about five years behind us," he says.

That's just fine with owners like Mark Mountanos, who says that updating vintage cars with non-period specifications is like trying to change history. The California businessman helped bring historic stock car racing to the West Coast and doesn't like where it seems headed.

"At first we said a car had to be a 1990 or older," he says. "Then we said 1991 was OK. Then we moved it to 1995. I'm sorry, but that isn't a historic stock car. It may be someday, but it isn't now."

Mountanos races a 1987 Richard Petty aero coupe while his wife competes in a 1990 Lumina that Earnhardt raced during one of his seven championship seasons, and used for tire testing at Indianapolis.

"Neither one of them are what you might call 'restored,'" he says. "The Lumina still has all the little dents and scratches on it. The inside is full of nicks. It even has the original racer's tape."

Mountanos says the history of the car is what makes it significant. "My Petty car is valuable just because it is the only one left," he says. "It was an era when Richard was having a hard time financially and he only had four cars built for the season. This is the only one left, as far as we can determine. But Petty wasn't doing very well then, so it never won anything. While the owner was significant, the car really doesn't have much of a history.