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Prior to Smokey
Yunick's death in 2001, Marvin Panch and Smokey Yunick had begun
earnest discussions in regards to the where-bouts and possible restoration
of the Smokey Yunick prepared 1960 Pontiac Catalina that Marvin
drove to victory in the 1961 Daytona 500. After discovering that
the original Pontiac was destroyed by a local salvage yard, Marvin
decided to do the next best thing - find an old Pontiac and reconstruct
his winning racecar using the guidance and original racing equipment
from Smokey and his garage.
The reconstructed
racecar is based upon a survivor 1960 2-door hardtop Pontiac Catalina
originally built at the Pontiac, Michigan home plant. Robert Connell
of RC Restorations in Kentucky performed a majority of the body
restoration along with assistance from Doug Bendle of the Sixties
Owners Society located in Tennessee. Other members of Doug's group
provided help as needed. To ensure technical accuracy, the restoration
used both documentation and photographs of the original car as well
as the guidance from Marvin Panch.
Once the body
restoration was finished in 2002, the car was shipped to Marvin's
residence in Daytona Beach for installation of the original race
equipment (engine, chassis parts, shocks, wheels, exhaust, spindles,
etc) from Smokey Yunick's old garage. Marvin, with the help of Karl
Stairs (one of the original race mechanics) and Karl's sons performed
the majority of the "race prep" work along with miscellaneous
welding provided by Jack Andrus
The only difference
between the original Daytona winning racecar and the one on display
today is the addition of a "In Memory of Smokey Yunick"
memorial hand painted on the rear deck lid by Buz McKim as a tribute
to the late Smokey Yunick.
The reconstructed
racecar was unveiled to the public at Daytona USA on January 1,
2003.
An interesting
note is that this is the only Smokey Yunick prepared racecar that
has a four blown tire symbol painted on the front left fender. In
it's first year of racing action in 1960, Fireball Robert's drove
the racecar as the Number 22 car. During the year, Fireball crashed
the car four different times due to a blown tire. After sitting
idle in
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