Bobby Allison has died at age 86.
I'm not a fan of the sanctioning body NASCAR, but it sure was nice that they recently gave him the W for the Bowman-Gray Stadium race in 1971 and moved him to 4th all-time in victories while he was still alive.
I've missed my opportunity. I have a photo of the two BRE 510's coming through a corner, with John Mortons autograph. I always thought it would be cool to have Bobby sign it too, since he sometimes ran the second car.
I bet that's a TIL for some of you...
Bobby and Donnie suffered a lot for their racing passion. Most people would have given up after all those setbacks, but they always had a pretty good outlook.
Many, MANY years ago, my dentist was Eddie Allison's son, Edmond, and the very first racecar I drove was built by a local Toyota dealer that built a Celica for Davey Allison to run in the Goody's Dash series, along with the Corolla that I later drove in SCCA GT-4 (now GT-L).
I worked for a NASCAR diecast collectibles distributor at the time, so my teeth cleanings usually ran long as we talked about racing a whole lot.
I met him back in the 80s at the Atlanta speedway airport had a short chat with him about airplanes (I hadn't discovered the joys of racing yet). He was flying a Piper Aerostar that he'd swapped the piston with a couple of Allison turboprops. He told me a little about how he did it and said it hauled ass!
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