When people see the street stock of Erick Ray, they ask, “What is that?” It’s not a Camaro. Nor is it a GM Metric car. Instead, it’s a 1974 Chevrolet Nova named, “Anderson.”
Is it fast? This past Saturday at Newport Speedway it finished second. Before Ray moved to Murphy, North Carolina, he raced the Nova in California. On the West Coast, Anderson won 62 features. Surprisingly, it didn’t come with Ray when he initially moved to the East Coast.
“We left a member of our family behind — our race car,” Ray said. “It meant so much to us we went back and got it.”
Ray met his wife, Jennifer, because of the car. She was sitting in the grandstands at All American Speedway. Ray’s daughter Hannah was in the stands and noticed a woman cheering for her father’s car. Hannah introduced the fan to the racer. Soon after, Jennifer and Erick had a combined family with six children.
“I got the car in 2007, and won the main event at All American Speedway on the first night,” said Ray. “In 2018, I put my son Billy in the same car, and he won the feature at All American Speedway on his first night out. So much in my life has happened around this car.”
The car also taught Ray life lessons.
“I found my best friend because of the car,” Ray said. “Chris Anderson was taking photos of it from the stands. He brought me a photo. We became friends. He became a track photographer, and was our number one fan. Chris walked my wife down the aisle at our wedding. He died of cancer a few years ago, but he rides with me every race.”
When the Rays brought the Nova back east, they felt they needed to name the car, and they chose “Anderson” in honor of their late friend. Along the way to North Carolina, they visited another old friend from California, car builder Josh Bews. He now operates a shop in Missouri.
“Josh and I rebuilt Anderson, probably spending 1,000 hours on it,” said Ray. “Josh upgraded the suspension. We built a new body, using the stock fenders, hood, and rear of a ’74 Nova. We fabricated the roll cage, interior, crush panels, every brace, every bar, every panel. Josh is the brains behind Anderson.”
Surprisingly, Erick Ray still retained one of his California-based sponsors, Economy Heat and Air Conditioning, despite now racing in Tennessee.
“We’re looking for local sponsors, but we are encouraging our California crew members to come out here,” Ray said. “We’re missing our brother Gene and sister Tina. We keep telling them about the beautiful roads here to ride our Harleys through the mountains, the great fishing there is in the lakes, and now we have a great speedway just a couple of hours away in Newport, Tennessee.”
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.
