When driver Ray Guss Jr. and car owner Keith Simmons go vintage racing, they tow with a period-correct hauler. The 1975 Ford C900 COE rig carries a late 1970s Chevrolet Nova-bodied vintage race car.
The Hauler
“We bought an old fire truck with only 12,000 miles on it and converted it into a hauler,” said Simmons, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Now, it has 40,000 miles on it. A lot of guys had these. The COE Fords were the most common haulers across the country in the 1970s.”
Guss and Simmons certainly don’t flinch on adding to the odometer. This past weekend, they hauled 1,000 miles one-way to Lake View Motor Speedway in Nichols, South Carolina.
“We had never been to Lake View Motor Speedway,” Simmons said. “It was a big trip for us, and we wanted to go there to race against some different cars.”
Guss, who was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2012, loves a challenge.
“I’m a little bit over the hill,” said Guss, of Milan, Illinois. “I’m just racing in the vintage class now, but I’m still having fun racing.”
The Car
The race car pays tribute to John Connolly, who had raced for Simmons. Connolly died in 1981 from a heart attack while racing at the Cass County Fairgrounds in West Fargo, North Dakota.
Simmons built the car with Dave Hammond, of Hammond Motorsports in DeWitt, Iowa, in 2019.
“I had the plans, Dave fabricated the chassis, and it is as close to what I ran in 1977 that we could make it,” Simmons said. “It’s nothing fancy — we don’t race for much money.”
The chassis uses a 1968–72 Chevrolet Chevelle front stub with coil springs and stock lower control arms. In back, it has leaf springs. The body is from a 1975–78 Chevrolet Nova. A 400-cubic-inch engine built by Simmons powers the car.
“Sitting in Keith’s car takes me back to the fun days of racing,” said Guss. “With leaf springs there is not a whole lot of changing to do at the racetrack. The fun comes in when it gets slick — you are skating and sliding and finessing the gas pedal instead of mashing it. You got to work at driving to be successful in one of these cars.”
Southern Excursion for Ray Guss Jr. & Keith Simmons
Simmons and Guss said they were the only entry from the North at Lake View Motor Speedway. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship of their hauler and car — and their performance — earned the respect of their Southern brethren.
Guss won both vintage features — one for full-bodied cars only and the other for the North vs. South feature that had full-bodied and modified cars.
“In the full-bodied feature, the guy who set fast time, Shaun Mangum, battled us hard — he was on his game,” Simmons said. “For the feature, we raised the car up because it was bottoming out, moved some weight around, and added more gear. Ray got into the corners fast at that track. Magnum had to settle for second.”
The two wins provided a sweet way for Keith Simmons and Ray Guss Jr. to end the year.
“We’ll keep racing again next year with the same car as long as Ray agrees, and I’m sure he will,” said Simmons. “We may venture out a few more times next year, just to see where we fit in in the vintage racing world.”
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.
