"You'd turn right, and it was trying to go left," Purvis says. "You were fighting the car as much as you were the racetrack. It's a completely different situation now. You've got all the store-bought parts now where you had the junkyard parts then."
Smith, 55, who has won more than 750 features since he began racing in 1966, and Purvis, 42, both have fond memories of the radical wedge-bodied cars.
"Actually, suspension didn't really come into play that much," Smith says. "It was the body and spoilers. If you wanted to tighten the car up, you put more spoiler into it."
The sheets of Lexan attached to the left side of the car had the same effect as the vertical stabilizer on an airplane, slicing through the air and keeping the vehicle pointed straight ahead. Meanwhile, the wedge shape created tremendous downforce, planting the tires on the track surface. That created the perfect setup-a car that would turn, but was virtually impossible to spin out.
Taming The BeastSwitching to today's less-radical bodies caused drivers to adjust their driving and made crews work harder on setups.
"About '83, we went to these little cars and you could spin out before you got to the corner," Smith says. "We built one and came to Atomic Speedway (near Knoxville, Tennesee, where Smith now lives) for an NDRA race. I spun out two or three times before I got going. I thought, 'What's the matter with this thing?'"
The focus turned to mechanical setup. Angle adjustment on the four-link rear suspension, Smith says, "is 90 percent" of handling.
Tires for dirt cars have changed over the years, from low-profile Grand National-type rubber to the oversized, soft-sidewall "humpers" of the '70s to today's variety of special tires. Depending on rules and local preferences, drivers experimented with dramatically different tires on the front and rear, in addition to left-right stagger. Most cars today run the same basic type of tire on all four corners, with stagger (larger circumference on the right side) as the driver prefers. "We don't run anything under four inches-four to seven (stagger)," Smith says. "We're getting the cars so tight, you've got to have that in it to make it run around the corners."
Tread compound selection remains a key ingredient for a driver's success. "You can go buy a $50,000 motor and put in your race car and you might pick up a couple of tenths (of a second in lap times)," Wright says. "You buy the right compound tires, and you can pick up a half second."
Veteran drivers agree that today's cars drive much better than the older ones, but Smith admits that the drastic body roll that is common nowadays would spook someone who has not been competing on dirt regularly.
"If you get a driver that drove 10 years ago and put him in a car now, he wouldn't drive it," he says. "He's never experienced anything like that in his life. But you take a young guy that's never drove a race car, he's at home. He don't know any different. It takes anybody some time to get used to this thing."
A long-legged shock that opens quickly and compresses more slowly is the key to the radical body roll. As the left side rises, changes in the suspension geometry actually cause the left-side wheelbase to contract, making the car turn. Driver preferences vary, but few successful drivers set up their cars to corner as flat as they used to-and as pavement cars still do.
"They drive better than you think they will," Smith notes. "They transfer the weight so much quicker like that. It sticks the wheels so much harder."
What's Next?The sport has a strong core group of competitors and fans. Smith believes dirt Late Model racing is only a couple of big-money sponsors and a television-exposure deal away from breaking out as a major form of racing.
No matter what may happen with the future popularity and growth of dirt Late Model racing, it's likely the cars will continue to change.