One of NASCAR’s earliest stars who was also named one of the organization’s Top 50 drivers of all time, Marvin Panch, has died at the age of 89. He was reportedly found unresponsive in his car New Year’s Eve day, and was pronounced dead of natural causes.
Born in Menominee, Wisconsin, he attended high school in Minnesota, where he played baseball and football, then later boxed without any great success. After relocating to California, Panch found himself working in an auto repair shop that naturally gave him exposure to the local auto racing scene.
He started out as a car owner, but when his driver didn’t turn up one day, he drove, won and thereafter was a driver. He won the California NASCAR late model championship in 1950 and ’51. In 1957, fresh out of the service, he landed in Charlotte where, driving Fords, he finished 2nd in the points to Buck Baker in NASCAR’s then top division, Grand National. Continuing to race Fords he registered seven wins in the late ’50s, but then won 1961 Daytona 500 in Smokey Yunick’s second Pontiac after team leader Fireball Roberts’ engine blew, effectively gifting Panch the victory.
By 1963 he’d returned to Ford as part of the company’s Total Performance campaign, driving for the Wood Brothers. He was also scheduled for a select schedule of endurance races in a Ford-engined Maserati (above) entered by Briggs Cunningham, but it all went wrong during practice for the Daytona Continental when the car flipped and caught fire. Trapped unconscious in the inverted car, Panch was rescued by a group of bystanders that included Tiny Lund, Steve Petrasek, Bill Wimble, Ernie Graham and Jerry Rayburn. Unable to drive in the 500, Panch insisted the Woods hire Lund to take over his car, and Tiny completed the fairy tale by winning the 500.
Upon healing, Panch returned to the Wood Brothers ride and took it to Victory Circle that fall, winning the 400-lapper at North Wilkesboro, the ninth of his 17 NASCAR wins over his 15-year career. He left the Woods in March of ’66 and then won his final race, for Petty Enterprises, at that May’s World 600 in Charlotte.
Panch — by then living in Port Orange, Florida — retired at the end of the year and turned his attention to his business interests, living out his days until New Years Eve when it all came to an end. To his family and many friends in and out of the sport, Vintage Racecar extends its sincerest sympathies,
