Exploring the Rarest Race Car Collection in the US! (Ray Evernham's Garage)

have you ever ran into a car collection that was so amazing that you couldn't even believe that you ran into it this is rey he was crew chief for jeff gordon in the 90s and he won three winston cups with the rainbow warriors team and that is just one of his achievements in motorsport the guy has done it all and he has one of the most incredible collection of cars i've ever seen including jeff gordon's rambo nascar and the daytona that set the 200 mile per hour record while editing this video i realized that it's just better to kind of just let the camera roll and let ray talk because the guy is just so full of knowledge and so fun to talk to and listen to so this is gonna be a very laid-back video and we're just gonna be going through the collection and hearing all the stories that rey has to offer so hope you guys enjoy it and let's check it out hey everybody david here and today we're here at ray's garage how's it going it's going good man good to see you good to see you so introduce yourself in your history and what you do nowadays but i'm ray everham and i've been working on cars since i was 14 or 15 years old and uh man i've done everything from nascar to indycar to off road to pikes peak to hot rods and street rods and now we just we just hang out and have a lot of fun as you can see there's a lot of stuff so what we are going to do today is just take a fun super laid back tour of mr ray here and he's going to tell some good stories and some history because i'm a car history buff that's what i'm here for so first things first what would you like to talk about first oh wow well you know this is we're still under construction this our new building this is going to be a converted showroom but what we brought in here right now are a lot of a lot of my short track cars and and vintage stock cars i've i've i love the open wheel modifieds there's some of these cars that i race and some of these cars i raced against that have a lot of history in the northeast this car was actually built by jeff bodine the daytona 500 winner revolutionized the nascar modified racing in the northeast in the late in the late 70s totally changed the way uh everybody looked at everything and you know it's it was jeff's personal car and actually had him drive it again at pocono speedway last year oh that's cool it's like full circle around you know yeah so it's great to be i saw some of these cars race that uh number 71 nascar uh monte carlo arrow coupe that's a dave marcus car i actually changed tires on that car uh one of my first jobs in nascar even back when i was at iroc but charged tires at watkins glen and then riverside we actually ran riverside and as you can see looking through the top just a lot of projects waiting so that's a jack ingram monte carlo that car the the number 77 there is a 64 chevelle but that's the way they've raced the stock cars these guys right here yeah actually made the front end in that car well it's kind of like what's funny to me is like i think that's where a lot of people don't know it's like stock car racing like legitimately meant stock car racing yeah modify them and then that red white and blue car sure that's a bobby allison actually probably drove that car won some races in it one of them the daytona uh firecracker race but dale jr and i are partners in that car were were trying to find the time and the money to restore it there's a modified that i drove out i'm fortunate enough to have um several of the cars that i won my last oval races in uh i won some races with this car in the late 80s and my last race ended in 1991 and then my last pavement uh oval win was in that number two car and then my sprint car so i've been able to keep some of the cars that i actually drove and uh and and and raced in this is a wood brothers car they built this in the mid 60s that again for those modified battles these guys the the nascar guys did this stuff for fun race modified yeah it looks like you like a lot of the open wheel stuff well i do that's where i grew up and you know that's where a lot of my heroes came from uh and back in those days this was the way to get to come right you went through either sprint cars and midgets to get to indy but these things you went through modifieds and late models to get to them to get up there this is an iroc car we just did a mechanical restoration on it and got it ready to go for a good friend of mine that we've done some road racing and things with so this baby's all ready to go but it's one of the last iroc cars of that series that they they made you know early in my career i ran with the iroc folks that's a car that kenny well built kenny well the weld wheels genius again changed the way modified racing on dirt was in the 1970s everybody knows well now you know the guy the guy really amazing this is a vintage uh car gary steinemann actually won championships asa in this car we're going to convert it into a vintage road racing car so so my buddy can go and and have some fun with it the vintage road racing stuff with the hsr series and and some of the others are really taking off around the country and it allows old guys like me to be able to go away you know when i look at nascar's like this it makes me think of like when i grew up you know like that's like the golden age of the 90s and everybody batting each other well gary gary was quite a champion and big winner in the asa series back here well you know again kind of neat up top there some indy car projects the number 24 car is a car that george fulmer and art pollard both drove at indianapolis if you look there's a blue camaro and a yellow camaro both those cars are the mid the late 70s to early 80s i rocked cars oh really they were both eye rock cars and then both of them went on to have some history and trans am oh so they just kept kept on trucking so we're again waiting for restoration this is just a fun car to drive just a really cool all stock 1936 chevy as you can tell i might have a little infinity for chevrolet yeah coupes and sedans okay this car again really proud to have it one of my heroes was a guy named charlie josembach uh just a great great racer in the northeast this car particularly he won a tri-trac championship in new york i slipped new york long island freeport and riverhead and won uh he he won the point tri-trac point system with this car and it was restored by by his brother ricky and again i modeled a lot of the cars that i built off the stuff that charlie did in the 70s and 80s sure you know just a great guy unfortunately lost his life in a racing crash in martinsville virginia but uh certainly a legend for for what we do yeah you can tell it had plenty of action on the tires oh yeah yeah that that little gray that caught my eye i was like i wonder what that is it was just these guys started building that thing in in like the 30s or 40s oh wow wheel drive car it's front-wheel drive it was going to be a front-wheel drive dirt and it's made up of like john deere tractor parts and they just made it work i don't know if they ever got it running but like it was just it was so cool that i i i bought it i don't know what i'm going to do you're just like i don't care it's because i think okay that's just like one of those things where i feel like i would hoard it just because i think it's cool what the everybody's like what it's just cool a lot of things that you've seen here like the carwood the leopard skin top and the yellow number seven car those are cars that i watched race when i was a kid so yeah they mean something to me 303 car is just as it came off the racetrack in 1973 and i got that man's autograph uh probably a little bit earlier than that but i always loved that car and when you know i bumped into his son and i said how's your dad she said he's doing great i used to love his car and he said you know he still has it and i said will he sell it and he gave me his phone number and i i i talked to me about six months but i talked him in together yeah we were helping an elderly lady move some things around helped her sell it and this was her husband's wow so i helped her sell her collection and i actually bought this because i did again it's just it's cool it's an original 1924 convertible model t pickup truck oh yeah i didn't even realize it's a pickup truck these are arden cylinder heads and they once belonged to ralph earnhardt oh really dale earnhardt's father yeah this motor who knows how many races it won this was frankie schneider's 1952 modified champion who went on to win a gazillion races yeah up in the northeast you know frankie ran this motor three or four seasons wow i've got his car and you know this was one of his motors as far as we know uh talking to the folks at um aar and justin gurney this was one of two prototypes of bernie westlake prototype for i've got a gurney indy car that has a a gurney west lake in it but these are slide injectors and this was prototype slide injector and they were hand built back then i think you know this when you you're looking here if you're going to mess with cars you you've got to have a place to put parts and you've got to grab parts when they become available and i've got a lot of parts yeah you know as you know when we're restoring things you never know what you're going to come up with these are i love fuel injection again for some reason like if i'm if i'm if i wasn't married and just could decorate my house where i live i would have fuel injections sitting around rather than like show pieces yeah you know like you walk somebody into your house and in your kitchen you've got some you know fuel injection but you know there's there's small block fuel injection vintage there's big block fuel injection vintage we have actually fuel injection for ardent heads we've got a couple other sets of of arden cylinder heads again very rare and hard to find but as i see this stuff i just it's neat i love it and get it you know and i always tell everybody i'm spending my kids inheritance on it and you know big we've got big block chevys you know what i think we own about 14 big block uh chevrolet's what race did this one in history this uh that won a lot of races around the backyard so very very important uh early in career and as i said i keep my vintage race car so my daughter her first bicycle we're going to keep that that's cool this is a gurney mustang motor you know they were going to do they were going to put these in regular street mustangs sure at one point and that deal fell through this is another gurney eagle uh motor uh backup from my indy car a drake often hauser motor um a dodge r5 oh wow and this is a complete arden a complete running arden motor for a hot rod with uh that has um eight weber carburetors on it oh wow indy car wheels tires marked because when you're restoring a vintage race car you got to have the right tires and wheels is that a park excuse me is that a difficult part of the process very difficult yeah you know you know finding especially if you know if you can find new old stock tires and wheels it's gold because otherwise a lot of people are making re-pops and things like that yeah but uh again just the the number of of wheels and tires and things that we have inventoried it's it's yeah it's pretty incredible out of all the things i think about like restoration of these old race cars and stuff the last thing most people probably think of is the tire they probably go oh you know the body panels and everything else and the motor but then you're just like wait what were the sizes of the tires and the wheels like yeah yeah it'll look weird without it these i had shipped all the way out of california you know and you're like what the hell did you buy that thing for if i told you that i paid um about two thousand dollars for this set of wheels wow they are original oh okay so yeah original holman moody stock car wheels back then holmen moody built them by doubling up the centers and welding that so they wouldn't fail and these things are as rare as hens teeth and i don't even have a project for these just in case but it you know again that's why i ended up with so much stuff what every guy wants right every dream you ever had you know i think there's this this shop has been it's been a really good change over for us the guys have done a good job this is the this is dc 93 that is the real car that set it broke the world record for 200 miles per not miles per hour on a closed course with not called booker available finished uh fourth in the 1994 daytona 500 and that car sat in original condition in the museum so it is one of the most original 24 cars i think that exists really do a clean and mechanical restoration on it we we needed to find some more correct engine parts and that's what we're doing but as far as everything else on that car it was pretty much the way it left the daytona speedway in 1994. dick trickle 1975 that's pure racing car that that's uh over there it's actually a 73 merc and this car here the ferret uh we'll talk about that in a bit but that that is amazing little car with an incredible amount of history and more so the man who built it peter dawson has a ton of history in racing uh because of his designs he worked with the goldenrod and the bonneville yeah oh wow did a huge project for chrysler all right this is a the one huh this is it this is dc 93 and it was pretty rough condition when we've got it we've been working on it now for about a year and a half and it has many of the original parts including many of the engine pieces that are currently uh was we're supposed to be running a dyno this week oh well we took the engine to petty yeah and have we thought okay how cool would it be to have petty do the engine actually do it yeah the dick trickle car we're waiting on on we we have uh a uh person i've been trading a lot of parts with sure you correct a period correct engine for it including the old bud more box manifold so we're waiting on that trevor's just going ahead right now and you know fitting things like windshield and and whatnot but this car is pretty much done other than uh other than the drivetrain arriving and we're actually going to have a friend of mine come in that does all of the hand lettering and hand lettering they were done in the 60s this car still has so many of the original parts on it including jeff gordon's driving seat the electronics you know many of the things that we did there's a lot of work that i actually did on this car that still exists so as i said i believe that this is one of the most original number 24 cars lumina that exists from that you know what's funny is uh my dad and i we were in the stands at the richmond nascar race and behind it this is back in the 90s and behind us was a guy wearing a dale shirt and another guy wearing a jeff gordon shirt and they literally almost got a fist fight this car this is the original body the original body has been aluminum and magnesium so oh baker who who's been my lead fabricator cut this car apart it was gas welded and then re-english wheel all of the metal to to take the dents out and the shape and he's been working really hard this car is really cool because as i said it's a combination of magnesium and aluminum it was built off of a crashed seattle which those seattas are like a oh yeah ferrari anymore and so it's got a lot of the seatta uh and fiat suspension parts on it and the the history of this car is really really amazing you know if you look it up just peter dawson ferret it just and we're digging more and more things up and we're hoping to get this finished and take it to the amelia island concord oh that'd be cool again i'm very fortunate to have some guys here that can take metal like this or like that indy car and take the original stuff and fix it because when you you know you know anybody can when you bring something that's basically you've duplicated or put a brand new body on it it's nice that it but it's not the same as it's not the same the real car yeah it's the metal that was there that's the metal that was there that car's become a celebrity of its own and it's been invited to goodwood so we're actually going to probably to go out and race we might race these two cars for fun and then that would be mostly uh for exhibition i just don't want to damage it anymore in jeopardy as i said that that car has its own global following and that's why i know we're doing a little bit of stuff for valvoline but you see the the v on it honestly if it hadn't been for valvoline believing in that project that car may not exist yeah yeah for real and it has really um it has really reached a lot of people and a lot of interest uh around the world and we we it as i said it it's it's got a bigger following than me they don't care whether i'm with it they're just careful so when it comes to valvoline i'm part of team battling as well growing up right you i grew up really being an indycar fan yeah so if you look at when i'm growing up in the 60s you know the valvoline stickers were all over the indy cars right right ready to floyd till whatever like that was it so when i started driving you just you know that the valvoline that red white blue your heroes use it so you use it right i used valvoline um in my own stuff you know i can't say exclusively because when you're growing up you know you you know different things yeah whenever i had to go and buy motor oil i bought uh valvoline when i first started at hendrick it we we were with valvoline we won our first chance championship with valvoline and valverde worked really hard with us to develop to get better and better i never forgot that constant development and that way when i started my own team in 99 with dodge valvoline was one of the first people that i went with because i knew i had a lot of development and i needed a partner that would work with me and they were incredible and i can tell you that some of the work that we did not just at the 24 car but specifically at the dodge number nine in 19 cars still today there's tons of guys on the nascar circuit that are getting they're taking advantage of the work that was done back then and development and valvoline has always been that legitimately i have worked side by side with them in the laboratory if i called them up today and said hey i i need i need this this and this because we're going to race the ghost on the moon yeah get on it yeah be like um what kind of gravitational force is there but this is this is a really cool car i'm embarrassed that it's toronto that was me and i'm ran out of talent oh but it's incredible it's an incredible car it has done some amazing things including a win at pike's peak we would have been our win at pike's peak would have been 2018. okay yeah 17 or 18. i can't remember um 18 i think but so we want our class up there every road race that they've let us enter we won we run the hsr and they've been very gracious but uh you know when you've got a 1936 chevy that flies past 750 000 aston martin people start to wonder where they went wrong so again she's she's becoming an exhibition car which is pretty uh pretty amazing because it it has run some incredible times uh it's run uh a minute 48 seconds around the daytona that's fast feel that's it's around a minute 22 seconds at road atlanta mr ray thank you so much for your time it's been awesome i know and it's it's great to see young people like you that really love the history and understand the passion for this because it's uh you know once you get hooked and get and understand the emotion that surrounds these things it really it's incredible so thank you yeah it's been awesome definitely check out this man's entire history he's an awesome guy thank you guys so much for watching this video and i'll see you guys next time [Music] later [Music] bye

Channel: ThatDudeinBlue

Views: 277,875

Rating: 4.9361944 out of 5

Keywords: thatdudeinblue, that, dude, in, blue, gtr, plasti, dip, 240sx, mazda, rx8, car, need, for, speed, 2015, nissan, ford, taurus, sho, hellcat, project, cars, spray, paint, 300zx, r32, lexus, is300, focus, st, how, to, pontiac, g8, rx7, mitsubishi, evo, adamlz, adam, lz, tj, hunt, evan, shanks, 1320video, cleetus, mcfarland, ray evernham, ray evernham jeff gordon, ray evernham car collection, car collection tour, insane car collection tour, rare car collection, thatdudeinblue car collection, my car collection tour, car collection garage

Id: waZVUQ4j-Ps

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/orangutan9]

Grinds my gears when someone refers to the cars as "nascars" gonna just start calling football players nfls

[u/jhealey0909]

Kinda OT but Ray in the thumbnail looks just like Martin Sheen’s character in The Departed

[u/24rubikscube]

I could listen to Ray talk about cars for hours. Similar to Pete Rose with old baseball or Belichick with football strategy. He’s an encyclopedia.

[u/Jrnation8988]

It's. Not. A. NASCAR.