Ken Buck, 57, and Bill Sherwood, 75, run as teammates, racing Volkswagen Sciroccos. Buck, with his 1984 VW won last Friday’s 4-cylinder feature at Linda’s Speedway in Jonestown, Pennsylvania.
Both Buck and Sherwood have two wins apiece this season.
“I’m a 50-plus-year-old driver in a 40-year-old car,” Buck, of Bernville, Pennsylvania, said. “Bill’s car is a ’78 Scirocco. Bill built the cars in 1994, and both of them had been through hell and back.”
Buck’s “hell and back” with his car refers to the night he drove his Scirocco clear through an infield telephone pole and continued to race to finish fifth. He saved the section of pole that broke off and it now hangs in Buck’s shop.
When Linda’s Speedway cancelled the class in 2007, Buck and Sherwood parked their Volkswagens. The track resurrected the division in 2022, and the two veterans went back to work on their old rides.
“The rules now allowed 2.0-liter engines, and we had 1.8 liters,” said Buck. “We searched junkyards and found two 2.0-liter VW engines. The tires on the cars were rotted, so we found some new tires. The only other thing we had to purchase was over-the-counter shocks.”
Compared to today’s 4-cylinders, the vintage VWs stand out.
“The Sciroccos are peculiar looking — they sit really low,” Buck said. “They have a lower center of gravity than most cars.”
However, the Sciroccos have proven to stand the test of time.
“Some guys go through two cars a season in the FWD class,” said Buck. “We’ve gone through 30 years with two cars. After sitting for 15 years, we found it became tougher to find VW parts. Most of the cars of our vintage have rusted away. My first win with my car was in 2004. Most of those years it has been tires and gas to race. We are always having an eye out for spare parts for these old things.”
Ken Buck and Bill Sherwood enjoy racing in the 4-cylinder class at Linda’s Speedway.
“We will keep racing as long as we can,” Buck said. “Bill is mentally and physically a young man. Between the two of us, we’ve won four of the seven features at Linda’s Speedway this year. It’s great to be back.”
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.
Photographers
The Outside Groove contributor from Macungie, Pennsylvania, has covered the sport since 2012. Sabo serves as the official track photographer of Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania. Photography is a family ordeal for Sabo. He shoots with his daughter, Abby, at Shellhammer Dirt Track in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. At Grandview and other venues Sabo travels to, he and his father, Stephen “Poppa Pepper” Sabo Sr., capture the night’s action with their cameras.
