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Take a tour of Ray Evernham’s garage

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Ray Evernham garage

The restoration shop in Ray Evernham’s garage. Photo by Jim Fluharty for NASCAR Illustrated.

Though he sold his stake in a NASCAR Sprint Cup team back in 2010, Ray Evernham has no trouble keeping busy. These days, the former racer turned crew chief extraordinaire works part time for Hendrick Motorsports, is a partner in a motorsport talent and consulting agency, and even has his own television show, Americarna, on Velocity TV (which was filming a segment at the recent Hemmings-sponsored Race of Gentlemen). Our friends at NASCAR Illustrated recently had the chance to visit his garage in Mooreseville, North Carolina, and were kind enough to share the video tour with us.

To call Evernham’s complex a garage is, perhaps, doing the facility a slight injustice. Entering from his business office, the first room is really more museum than garage, complete with replicas of both a Texaco service station (since both Ray and his dad worked in Texaco stations) and a 1950s diner. There are about a dozen historic race cars, too, including Jeff Gordon’s Diet Pepsi midget car; a modified built by the Wood Brothers and raced by Donnie Allison; a modified driven by Richie Evans, who Evernham refers to as the “Dale Earnhardt Sr. of modified racing;” and a #24 Jeff Gordon car developed for wind tunnel testing and dubbed the V-Max car. There are also a pair of modifieds from his own career as a driver, including the #9 car that Evernham crashed hard in 1991, ultimately ending his goal of being a professional racer.

Through a garage door in the museum lies the restoration shop, where Evernham’s dedicated team of craftsmen work on everything from race cars through muscle cars and hot rods. His favorite part of the shop may well be the “junkyard,” a corner where Evernham keeps parts he may never use, but just can’t bring himself to throw out. Among the projects currently being worked on is a “mystery car” that may well be an original Ralph Earnhardt race car from the early 1950s. Evernham purchased a pair of cylinder heads that Ralph Earnhardt sold to Speedy Thompson, with paperwork documenting the transaction, in 1951. Shortly after, he stumbled upon an old race car that just happened to be a Speedy Thompson Sportsman car. When Evernham showed the pictures to Dale Earnhardt Jr., he recognized the race car as being remarkably similar to one driven by his grandfather, and even supplied a picture as evidence. His restoration shop team is now trying to document the car’s history, and if it proves to be Ralph Earnhardt’s car, Everham is clear: “If it is his granddad’s car, (Dale Jr.) can have this car. It’s his.”

The important cars are kept in a room that Everham calls “The Vault,” but that’s not to say all the cars here have great financial value. Sure, there are some irreplaceable vehicles, like the Torino Talladega prototype built by Holman & Moody and previously owned by Banjo Matthews (Evernham’s one-time boss) and NASCAR legend Junior Johnson, or the 1964 Plymouth that’s built on a NASCAR chassis and powered by a V-8 pulled directly from a Bill Elliot NASCAR Cup race car. The Vault also holds cars of great sentimental value to Evernham, including a Dodge Viper given to him for winning the 1995 NASCAR Winston Cup championship, a Plymouth Prowler given to him for winning the championship again in 1997, and an Acura NSX gifted by Rick Hendrick for winning two races (Charlotte and Indianapolis) in 1994.

Despite his fame and fortune, Evernham is a genuine, down-to-earth guy (as a few of our staffers learned first-hand at The Race of Gentlemen), and when it comes to cars, it’s clear that his priorities are in order. He only semi-jokingly refers to his collection of cars as “my retirement,” but he isn’t afraid to exercise them, telling NASCAR Illustrated, “The difference between (my collection) and the stock market is that if I feel like driving one of these, I can.”


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