{"id":489882,"date":"2008-03-01T15:00:28","date_gmt":"2008-03-01T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportscardigest.com\/\/?p=56067"},"modified":"2024-09-06T03:00:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T03:00:39","slug":"the-510-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/the-510-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The 510 Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We had run the Datsun roadsters for a season and a half before we ran the 510 and won the championship with that. And so the team kept building\u2014as far as the personnel, it was really a good team. I wasn\u2019t really enthused about the 510 at first because I didn\u2019t think it could possibly win against good competition. But, by the time we ran the first race, we knew we had a potential winner.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Morton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I originally got hooked up with Pete Brock because he was my driving instructor at Shelby\u2019s Driving School in 1962, so I knew him from there and, then, we both worked at Shelby\u2019s together. I was, basically, a janitor and he was a stylist and did a lot of things for Shelby. He designed tee shirts and logos and instructed at the driving school. So, years later when he was off on his own, he needed a fabricator, and that\u2019s how I ended up working with him again. His best fabricator had left, and he needed someone to build another Datsun roadster. I was working for a company that made oil pans, at the time\u2014it was almost a sweatshop environment\u2014and then Pete called and asked if I\u2019d be interested in coming to work for him. I said I\u2019d come to work for him if\u2014when the second roadster was finished\u2014I got a tryout in the car. He agreed with that, so I went to work for him. I would have rather have worked for him than the sweatshop anyway, but I bluffed that I needed to have a test drive! As it turned out, I got the ride in the other car and, by the end of the season, I was the main\u2026the only…driver left. The other driver was Frank Monise, and although he was good, he hadn\u2019t raced production cars that much, so he eventually moved on. But as we started to run the 510s, it got a lot more interesting, because we had a car that could win professional races.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n