Holman Automotive's New Race Cars - New Classic

A fragment of the famed Holman & Moody race team is still in operation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Step back in time as Holman Automotive's new race cars provide a near perfect reflection from racing's glory days

Many younger fans of stock car racing mistakenly believe that the big corporate operations are a modern phenomenon. But teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing weren't the first so-called 800-pound gorillas on the racing scene. Long before there was a Nextel Cup, or even a Winston Cup, back in the '50s when NASCAR's top stop was known as the Grand National Series, most race teams operated out of service stations or small shops behind the family home and struggled to make enough money to keep fresh tires on their cars.

But a very few found such success in racing that they became small corporations. These teams were invariably marked by forward thinkers and inventive leaders. They saw stock car racing as more than just a way to spend a Sunday afternoon driving faster than the law allows. Instead, they saw racing as the perfect exercise for engineering innovations and as a means to push the technology and thought processes during the sport's formative years.

Unquestionably, one of the most successful operations in those early years was Holman & Moody, which, at its zenith, employed well over 350 people. Holman & Moody not only fielded champions (David Pearson in 1968 and 1969), but the operation also brought to the scene many innovations in competition and safety, such as the window net and the fuel cell check valve, still common in racing today.

Interestingly, Holman & Moody wasn't simply a manufacturer-supported team. It was actually born from the need to help Ford improve its results in NASCAR racing. In 1956, John Holman joined Peter DePaolo Engineering, Ford's stock car racing arm, to help improve the Blue Oval's performance on the track. Holman pulled all the cars and had them rebuilt to his specifications. When the cars returned to the track, the wins started coming regularly.

But by 1957 the auto manufacturers decided as a group to withdraw from all racing activities. All Ford factory racers were given a race car and a pickup truck in order to continue racing, and Holman was given the option to purchase what was left.

"Ford offered to sell everything else to my father, but he couldn't come up with the money," explains John Holman's son, Lee. "But Ralph Moody [who also worked for the racing operation] had an airplane that was paid for. They mortgaged that and started Holman & Moody.

The pair formed Holman & Moody in 1957 and had immediate success. In the Daytona Beach & Road Course race the next season, Holman & Moody entered two cars, driven by Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly, and finished Second and Fourth. Moody was the setup specialist and Holman handled the engineering duties. As Ford returned to the sport-first clandestinely and later officially-it funneled money, cars, and high-end parts to Holman & Moody to help the racing operation and to distribute parts to other Ford teams. Soon, Holman & Moody was not only a race team, but also a car manufacturer and parts distributor.

"This became a factory producing the components that were unique to Holman & Moody, but we didn't just use them ourselves," says Holman. "The exact same components we were using ourselves, we sold to any race team that wanted them. Nobody else did that. At one point we had over 350 employees and made and sold everything from racing wheels to complete race cars. I have photos that show nine Ford Thunderbirds all in a row being built into race cars in 1958. There wasn't any place on the planet at that time building nine race cars at one time other than Holman & Moody."

As Holman & Moody's success in stock car racing continued, the executives at Ford continued to look to the operation whenever it needed improved performance in other motorsports endeavors. Thanks to its relationship with Ford, Holman & Moody became involved in racing everything from the GT40 at Le Mans, to powerboats, to drag cars, and even rally cars. Besides John Holman and Ralph Moody, there was even more brain "horsepower" on staff, as the operation produced some of the sport's greatest minds. Those included Robert Yates, Herb Nab, Jake Elder, Dan Ford, and Waddell Wilson. Irrespective of the car or race, you could be guaranteed that the cars Holman & Moody fielded would be innovative.

One of the biggest challenges that faced Holman & Moody-and stock car racing in general-was the advent of the unibody cars in the mid-'60s. Unibody cars didn't use a traditional body-on-frame construction. Instead, the body was used as part of the frame and, instead of simply being an outer shell, provided rigidity. Unibody construction meant that an over-the-road car could be lighter and less expensive to produce, but it was a poor replacement for the older body-on-frame style when it came to racing.

"Ford started making unibody cars around 1964 with the Fairlane and Falcon," recalls Holman. "At the time we were racing the Galaxy, which had a big, full frame and the body could be lifted off the chassis, but we could see that the smaller unibody cars were coming. I don't remember if it was from Ford's push or NASCAR's push, but we developed a couple of prototype versions of a '64 Fairlane race car. One version had the unibody in pretty much standard configuration. That car wasn't strong enough and broke apart pretty quickly in testing. You couldn't make it strong enough to survive.

"The second version was a Fairlane that we built with a modified front snout. We reinforced the unibody lower frame sections and modified the lower A-arm with a spring bucket to accept the springs. [In stock form, the Fairlane's front springs bottomed out in the top A-arm.] This change allowed us to use screw jacks so you could adjust the car.

"NASCAR wanted to see how the car ran, so we took it down to Daytona and entered it in the Continental race because they didn't want it in the 500. That was the sports car race they ran before the Daytona 500. That's kind of like the 24 Hours of Daytona today. We put a 427 Ford engine in it, which was NASCAR legal at the time, and modified the rear suspension with a four-link to make it a little better for road racing. Everyone thought that big, boxy car would fall all over itself racing against Corvettes and Porsches, but it finished Second in that race.

Holman & Moody's prototype Fairlane became the standard for construction when unibody cars came on the scene. The cars were constructed with a center rollcage and front and rear supporting substructures, which came to be known as clips. Today, Nextel Cup cars are constructed with a purpose-built frame and a sheetmetal skin that provides absolutely no support, but the term "clip" has survived in discussions about the front and rear portions of the chassis.

Of course, after the prototype proved itself worthy, Holman & Moody had little use for it. It was sold and raced in Europe in sports car events, where it won races before disappearing.

Fortunately, however, that's not the end of the story. Today, Holman & Moody still exists, run by Lee Holman, the company's president, but most of the related business is taken care of by a separate company called Holman Automotive. Recently, Holman Automotive began reconstructing new '64 Fairlane race cars based on the original prototype that raced at Daytona. Holman Automotive has already built two, one of which is racing and winning vintage FIA races in Europe. Because the prototype raced in the United States and Europe in FIA-sanctioned sports car races (although it was really only because NASCAR didn't want it competing in a stock car race), Holman Automotive's "new" Fairlanes are once again legal to compete against Vettes, Fiats, and other more traditional sports cars. And, by the way, Holman says its doing quite well competitively.

Of course, sports car racing doesn't matter too much in this publication, but Lee Holman's '64 Fairlane shows an accurate picture of what NASCAR's top-level stock cars were like in 1964. (The Fairlane isn't a replica, but simply next in the production run, although there was a gap in time between numbers 1 and 2.) Big-block 427 iron is heavy, but it puts out power like a freight train. A simple cockpit is spartan and lacks many of the safety features mandatory today, but it's functional. Even the Corinthian White paint is consistent with the car that raced in 1964. Only a few safety features, such as the rollcage, have been upgraded.

This car was incredibly difficult and expensive to build, since many of the parts are no longer current. Many may consider it a museum or collector's piece, but this car was built to race and most likely will be raced. Like the original '64, this Fairlane almost certainly will find its way to Europe to compete on the sports car tracks. Won't it be nice to see an old stock car whipping up on the fancy European cars again?

Six-Cylinder RacingLee Holman: "Holman & Moody always had such a strong relationship with Ford, and many people think that's all we ever raced. But for one race, Holman & Moody actually fielded a Plymouth Valiant, and it was even a V-6.

"Valiants weren't considered much of a race car. Richard Petty was messing with them at the time. We were trying to race Ford's Falcon in the early '60s, but it wasn't doing much. It might have been a period that we were grumbling with Ford over something, but at one point we got a Plymouth Valiant from Lee Petty. I can't remember if we bought it or just borrowed the thing.

"We entered the Valiant with Joe Weatherly at Bowman Gray [in Winston Salem, North Carolina], and the NASCAR rule book only said it had to be a competent race car, so we used a V-6. At Bowman Gray, the track was so narrow it was really hard to pass. But that little Valiant could pass on the track, so Weatherly finished Second.

"By the next race, NASCAR had ruled that the engine had to have a minimum of eight cylinders. We never raced the car again.