Thomas Placey (22) isn’t afraid to crinkle his 1930s coupe body. Nor are his competitors — Earl Maxham (43) and Josh Harrington (71). The three duked it out in the sportsman coupe class at Bear Ridge Speedway in Bradford, Vermont.
“We compete with each other in these things like the race cars that they are,” Placey, a bread deliveryman from Bradford, Vermont, said. “There is no give and take in this division. We even stove them up pretty good. I got past Earl and Josh, and then came up on a spinning car. I took my car to the infield and wound up crashing into a construction tire. [It ended up] breaking a leaf-spring bracket and ratcheting the rear end.”
Underneath Placey’s steel body off a 1937 Dodge is a 2008 Northeastern-style dirt modified chassis from Teo. A Chevrolet Performance 602 crate engine powers the ride.
“We had to move the motor six inches forward to accommodate the crate engine,” said Placey of the chassis that once carried a small-block engine. “That’s only a small part of the project. We had to shorten the front and rear clips to make the body fit and to install rear leaf springs.”
Some divisions across the country use replica fiberglass coupe bodies. The sportsman coupes at Bear Ridge Speedway use actual bodies from former passenger cars built from 1932 to 1948.
“We find these old cars in the woods up here in the North country,” Placey said. “Often, we piece them together because they are damaged and rotting. There was an estate sale last week and I bought three more ’37 Dodges that I have to go retrieve from the woods.”
Using actual bodies from nearly a century ago comes with other challenges, too. But, the unique class stands out among so many other divisions that feature the same type of body, but with a different engine.
“A lot of work goes into making the steel coupe bodies near perfect, and it sucks when you crash,” said Thomas Placey. “I rolled my car last year — it was not an easy fix. This week, there wasn’t too much damage. I’ll have the coupe fixed and ready for Saturday night. I’m two points out of second and 30 from first — and, we’ll all be racing as hard as ever.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
