Tiny Lund´s 1959 Chevy Impala #88

[Michael F]

Something new from my workbench:

Tiny Lund´s ´59 Impala. Reference pics of this car are hard to find, so i don´t really know,
if he drove an Impala or a Biscane.

Thanks to Dave Van for the cool decals! They are still in great condition after all those years
of storage. The six-lugs are from PPP.

Hope, you like it!

Thanks for watching.

[David Bogard]

More of your tasty work from Deutschland Michael! Crisp and clean, a gorgeous tribute build.

[Maineboy]

Michael,    A truly nice piece of work. The decals are stunning and the entire model is the same. You captured the look of it real good. I loved the 58 Impala, thought it was a gorgeous car. Didn't know what to make of the 59. I always wondered if those wild fins gave any handling problems at high speed.  Tiny lund was one of the "boys from Harlan, IA" who tore up Iowa and other early midwest dirt race tracks starting in the late 1940's. He and Johnny Beauchamp drove cars prepped by Dale Swanson, also of Harlan. They often shared a car and took turns at it when Tiny got a week end pass from his Air force post. All three of them ventured into NASCAR and had some good successes. I just looked around and could not find any pics of that car either. I used to follow Junior Johnson real close and he would drive a number of different cars in a season. Suspect Tiny was the same.

Tiny  was one of my top few favorite NASCAR drivers in the 60's and early 70's. I liked Tiny for the same reason as the others. Tiny was not afraid of anything and would push a car and get everything out of it that he could. Both Tiny and Beauchamp sort of traveled around driving a car here and another car there. There was tons of NASCAR racing all over the south back then, on shorter tracks particularly.  Tiny Lund won the 1963 Daytona 500 in a Woods Bros car. He had several other wins in later years. Sadly he died in a fatal accident at Talladega in 1975. As always pushing as hard as he could. If Tiny had a good car he would be always near the front of the pack at the end.

A man who always gave racing everything he had to give.

tinylund by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

RIP my friend!

MB

[john2]

   Very nice.  I got to see Tiny race.

[Dirtman]

Super model of one heck of racer!
Rett

[Maineboy]

Michael questioned whether or not the real stock car was a 2 dr hardtop, as he built it, or a 2 dr Biscayne or Belair sedan. I have google searched this morning and found photos of several 59 Chev stock car REPLICAS and ALL seem to be 2 dr sedans. In a given auto make in the 50's and 60's the 2 dr sedan body was often the lightest body style of any particular car. Drag racers have known that for years. 2 dr sedans were also the cheapest cars to buy. If a racer was buying  a car to race himself the 2 dr sedan I think was often bought for that reason too. But look at photos of the NASCAR races in the late 50's and you see lots of 2 dr hardtops. I think there was a good reason for that.

As the speeds increased aerodynamics became vastly more important in a given car. The 1958 Chevy Impala was a wonderful creation, many have described it as the first custom car from an American manufacturer. It was long, and low and sleek and covered in chrome and extra tailights and could be had with a continental spare tire at the rear. A friend in HS had an old one with the 348 engine in it. He was working under the hood one day and got mad at something and threw a half inch-nine sixteenth wrench onto the cowling. It hit and broke the windshield. He was disturbed but figured there were lots of 58 chevys in junkyards and we used to go take the glass out ourselves back then. Not so lucky, the windshield in a 58 Impala was a couple inches or so shorter than all other models of that year. That was done to enhance the overall design, as it lowered the height of the roof making the car sleeker. At 180 mph on a big track that aerodynamic improvement would make quite a difference I bet. The windshield on the 59 and 60 Impala 2 dr hardtop was also shorter than all Chevy models of those years.

In looking quickly this morning at old NASCAR race pictures in the late 50's there were quite a few GM bodied 2 dr hardtops running in those races. Chevy's, Olds, Pontiac etc. I bet that was the reason why.  It would be nice to see a photo of the actual race car to see if that was done that way too. Circle track guys have always been looking for that little bit of an edge for a very long time now. Lee Petty's 59 olds was a hardtop, Fireball Roberts 59 Pontiac was a hardtop, Junior Johnson's 63 Chevy with the mystery motor was also a 2 dr hardtop. Hmmmm.

The only criticism I have heard re Tiny Lund was that he was hard on a car as he pushed it so. This may well have kept him from getting driver jobs with top teams. I saw records last night, in searching around that Lund was the owner of the cars he raced in 1959. That may have led him to buy the 2 dr sedan as it would have been a fair amount cheaper, and perhaps would led to his lack of success. It has always taken big money to win. We will probably never know for sure. Fun to speculate on issues like this.

MB

[john2]

   In 1963, when I was in the USAF, and stationed at Charleston AFB, SC, one Sunday afternoon I went to a quarter midget race track for kids, between Charleston and Folly Beach.  Tiny was there as a "guest flagman."  One of the kids flipped his car upside down.  Tiny threw the red, dropped the flag, ran across the track, and picked up the car, kid and all, and turned it over on its wheels.

I saw him race several times while I was there.

[Michael F]

Thanks guys for your kind comments on Tiny´s #88.

John, very cool sunday afternoon story on him helping to turn a car back on it´s wheels.

Nathan, thank you very much for such a bunch of background informations !
Some great drivers were racing the ´59 Chevy as Junior Johnson (sedan), Jim Reed (HT-Darlington winner)and Rex White (a convertible!).
I have two more Impalas, one coupe and one convertible, in my stash and decals enough to do the all three of the above.
I think, i´ll do the Jim Reed and Rex White versions.

And thanks for posting this nice photo of Tiny, in front of his Mercury!
If you like Tiny, you may like these two models i built, as well:




Man, how i like this pic :

[Maineboy]

Michael, I just love the history of this sport. Tiny was a total daredevil on a short dirt track.  He always wanted to win so badly that he would take chances to get there. That is probably what it is all about for quite a few of those old legends. Just about everyone of those early heroes of NASCAR were terrors on the short dirt tracks first.

Tiny won the 63 Daytona 500 in a Wood Bros car, the #21 63 Ford. Marvin Panch was the regular driver but was injured in a race car crash a few days before, almost burning to death in it. Several men, including Tiny, rushed to the  crashed car and ignored the flames. They tried several times and almost gave up but Tiny told them to lift the car and he reached in and grabbed Panch by the leg and dragged him out saving his life. He and the other men were awarded medals for their heroism. Leonard Wood asked Tiny to drive the car in that race. Tiny finally had a car with a top team. Tiny ran the entire race on one set of tires! No pit time lost changing tires. He came in for fuel roughly every 42-45 laps so they knew how far the car could go on a tank full. The last time he fueled there were only 40 laps left so they knew they car could make it. Tiny was running in third place towards the end. Both Fred Lorenzen and Ned Jarret were ahead of him but had to stop for fuel with just a few laps left. Tiny cruised to the win in the #21 63 Ford. He ran out of fuel as he crossed the finish line.

If you want to know the kind of man Tiny Lund was and why I have always admired him you need to watch the fantastic story leading up to his 1963 win at Daytona in this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGFalmlx8UA&ab_channel=autoracing1com

He went on to have a fair amount of success in shorter tracks and other competitions where he drove a lot of Camaros. The #55 was a number that he brought with him from the old Harlan, IA days in the old stock cars on dirt tracks.

MB

[ARCA Guy]

Very nice replica - loved a lot of Tiny's rides in all divisions he completed in. Keep them coming...

[Dirtman]

Well done Michael! Super looking car and a super great driver.
Rett

[Bob P.]

Excellent replica build, well done.

Bob

[Michael F]

Thank you, Gentlemen 

[TLouis]

One sweet build! My kid of late model!