holman-moody: The Legendary Race Team
By Tom Cotter and Al Pearce
This second edition of a book originally published more than a decade ago chronicles one of America’s all-time great racing teams. The story begins in 1957 when two guys with a shared dream became partners and shortly found themselves guiding Ford’s efforts during arguably NASCAR’s finest era, when factory teams from Detroit’s Big Three battled for victory every weekend.
They didn’t stop there, however, instead reaching out to tackle endurance racing, drag racing and the Can-Am, as well as initiating a project that would have taken them to Indianapolis, and many pages here catalog their efforts with Ford GT40s for Sebring and Le Mans. Like Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, HM was a university where young technicians could learn their craft, and there was even a marine division for prepping nautical engines.
Southern Stock Car Racing remains understandably the focus of this book, as HM’s “Competition Proven” logo graced the front fenders of countless winning cars as they built the template upon which today’s super teams are modeled. Despite a stellar list of race-winning alumni—Fred Lorenzen, Fireball Roberts, Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, Nelson Stacy, Dick Hutcherson, Bobby Allison, Gurney, Mario Andretti—HM did not claim a NASCAR Cup championship until David Pearson replaced the retiring Lorenzen for the 1968 season, and then repeated the feat in ’69.
Intimately illustrated with superb photography from veteran Don Hunter and others, this book is available for US$75 from better bookstores or directly from publisher Octane Press at www.Octanepress.com
