This stock car racing association is now a billion-dollar a year, family-friendly, patriotic institution—but its roots reach back to a rowdier era in Twentieth Century America. It’s Race Day. Not only are the stands around the oval track full, but the fields around the stadium have morphed into a small city. Campers and RVs are packed hastily along improvised “streets,” as smells of fuel exhaust, barbecue, and sun screen blend in the open air.

This is NASCAR, America’s unique contribution to the world of auto racing. It’s not just a race, it’s NASCAR Nation: loud, proud, and unabashedly patriotic. It’s also big business: the association’s revenues from sponsorships, media rights, and merchandising currently exceed $1 billion a year.

With a fan base that spans kids to seniors, it’s the epitome of family-friendly entertainment, American-style. Its roots, however, reach back to another, rowdier era—when America embarked on a national experiment in teetotalism.

It’s 1919 and the Eighteenth Amendment has just outlawed the sale, manufacture, and transport of alcoholic beverages—and made outlaws out of moonshiners who begged to differ. Like other manufacturing businesses, these illicit whiskey makers had to get their product to market. Unlike legitimate businesses, though, their means of transportation had to outrun the authorities.

Thus arose a new era of “rum-runners,” fearless drivers in souped up rods that eluded revenuers along Appalachian country roads laced with hairpin turns. The top choice of chariot in the 1930s was the Ford V-8 (ironically made by a company whose founder eschewed spirits and compelled his workers to do likewise). This model possessed one of the most powerful engines of its time, leaving most pursuers in the dust.

Moonshine drivers turned out to be a competitive lot and so began racing in their spare time, mostly for bragging rights. But many of them soon figured out they could make as much money—or more—from people paying to see them race as from their whiskey customers. Mostly on dirt tracks around county fairs, these races exploded in popularity over the next decade.

An itch developed among racers to organize these patchwork events into something more stable—and driver turned promoter Bill France, Sr. was just the man to scratch it. In December 1947, France brought together drivers, mechanics, and car owners in Daytona Beach, Florida, a popular racing venue even then, to propose a formal organization for promoting and managing races across the region.

The group was all for it. In February 1948 the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was born, with their first race held in Daytona that same month.

In those early years, NASCAR racing still held that moonshine swagger—in fact, many of its drivers after races went back home to their cat and mouse games with law enforcement. That gradually began to change: France, ever the keen promoter wishing to reach a wider audience, worked to distance the new racing group from its bootleg past.

The racecars themselves also evolved. Once brought on the track right off the street with few modifications, they began taking on new features that increased performance and safety. Over time, racing historians account for at least seven distinct generations of NASCAR racers.

Although today’s NASCAR racers are still stock cars produced by a commercial automaker, the racing teams transform them into high-tech machines. What you now see on the track are galaxies apart from what most of us drive.

This summer you’ll be able to see for yourself this 90-year racing evolution all at once as the Savoy Automobile Museum in Cartersville, Georgia exhibits twelve NASCAR racecars spanning the 1930s to the 2020s.

These are the actual vehicles driven by NASCAR drivers: From the 1939 Ford Standard that won races for Gober Sosebee in the 1950s to the 2024 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE that William Byron drove to win the Daytona 500 in 2024.

In between, you can also glimpse the changing face of NASCAR through the actual racecars that won races for iconic drivers like by Richard Petty, Bill Elliott, Jeff Gordon, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Altogether, the From Stock Cars to Racecars exhibit at Savoy tells the story of a uniquely American institution with roots steeped in a rip-roaring past.

From Stock Cars to Racecars runs from June 2-September 27, 2026, at Savoy Automobile Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, just off I-75 between Chattanooga and Atlanta. To plan your visit or purchase admission tickets, visit us at https://savoymuseum.org/.

Photo: 1974 Dodge Charger (On loan from Private Collection)

  • Generation 1: 1948-1966
  • Junior Johnson, #3 Holly Farms Poultry Industries, Inc.