The Gartner brothers, Scott and John Jr., turned heads during the Bristol Dirt Nationals at Bristol Motor Speedway. They brought Mopar-bodied IMCA stock cars to compete in the event. Scott, a road sign designer from Jamestown, North Dakota, raced a No. 0 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger. John, a garbage man from Bismarck, North Dakota, steered a No. 147 1967 Plymouth Barracuda.
“People loved them,” said Scott. “It seems like everybody’s got that [Chevrolet] Monte Carlo body look. They’re something different, with an old-school-cool look.”
The cars feature authentic bodies, sans aftermarket noses, on GM metric chassis. Under the hood, Scott runs a Chrysler 360-cid power plant while John has 340-cid engine. Finding 50-plus-year-old cars for bodies and engines can be a challenge.
“Word of mouth is big,” Scott said. “People know we run Dodges. Everyone knows somebody trying to get rid of something. They come to us. We also have a couple of ads on Facebook Marketplace. We’ll put out that we’re looking for old bodies.”
Tracks near the Gartner brothers do not allow them to race the cars they had at Bristol. They’ll run their IMCA-legal stock cars when their schedules allow them to travel, but most of the time they race other divisions. Scott races an IMCA modified (sorry, no Mopar here) while John steers a 1978 Chrysler LeBaron in the hobby stock class.
Bristol marked the debut for John’s car while Scott got to dust off his. Scott missed making the A-feature by one spot,. John exited the B-main early with engine troubles. Nevertheless, besides the hurt engine and a few tire marks, they brought the cars back to North Dakota relatively unscathed. That’s a feat in itself for a track where one small error can total a car. That fact wasn’t lost on the Gartners nor some onlookers who expressed concern over using historic, hard-to-find bodies.
“There were older people who came up to us [and said,] ‘I had this car in high school. How could you do this?’” said Scott. “Overall, nobody was mad. Everybody appreciated the work we had into it. It’s a lot of work. You can re-body a regular Chevrolet stock car in a night. It sometimes takes me all winter to get that stuff done.”
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
