Racing in the 1970s was just as awesome as you think it was

it was like Boogie Nights meets Days of Thunder so one of my favorite racing stories of all time and most people really haven't heard of since they're not geeks like me are the Whittington Brothers now the Whittington Brothers were three brothers who were into plane racing and adrenaline junkie stuff in the early 70s and they decided to become sports car racers because why not right and they went to 1979 24 hours a little mall and got a seat two of them bill and his brother got a seat on the crumber team and crumber was building the special porsche 935 s slightly modified from the factory with their own little tricks like an air-to-air intercooler instead of an air to water and cool at the factory car had which gave them an extra two or three percent which over 24 hours as up to something and they were brilliant and they used to drive their cars from Germany to the track in France to shake them down which I would love to have seen that so the winning brothers show up and I think they bought their seats for like 20,000 dollars each which was a lot of money then like a seat was probably about 10 grand for something and they didn't care they go to the first meeting and Kremers like okay Klaus their driver he's he's gonna go first and then bill and Liz and they're like wait wait wait wait no why is your driver going first because it's my car my driver goes first then you then you I go what if he crashes we don't get to drive the car we spend all the money because that's racing they're like no it's fine well don't drive they're like well what does it take for us to go first and lightheartedly he goes by the car and he was already selling his cars it was in the business was selling and selling race cars so he threw a crazy number out of like two hundred thousand dollars which was more than what the car was worth just to shut him up and they go okay and he's like what like go back to our trailer go with a duffel bag take out $200,000 and not a penny more okay so they did and they went to Lamont 79 and they won Kloss looook who was the the driver for creme er did most the heavy lifting and he was brilliant and this was the first production car to win at Lamar since 1953 when the the Jags were running it was unheard of because the Porsche factory 936 s are out there and their prototypes and there's other prototypes out there running but it rained so they had something those prototypes didn't have windshield wipers and the car was wicked fast in the rain and they ended up taking it and it was huge absolutely monstrous and it was the last production car to win like a street product based production car to win a limo so creme overnight there's orders for like 1214 kiiis and that's what lined up the next year and 80 there's all kiiis like the famous k3 that was the Macintosh sponsored car like the only Carver sponsored by Apple they were all out there so the Kremers are on top of the world so they're like great we want a couple more and criminally absolutely whatever you want they're like go back to our back to our trailer take the rest of the money and get we'll have a couple more of these kiiis so they had broad estimate but a half a million dollars in cash in 1979 to the mall so where did they get this money right and that was always the thing like they operated in a whole nother realm of the everybody else it was found out later actually but one of the advantages they had allemaal was they were fueling what appeared to be faster than everybody else and all the fuel outlets are regulated have regulators on them it's only flow at a certain speed so it's equal for all teams well it turns out they gave some guy like $25,000 cash was probably this entire year's salary for his stamp and they took the seal off and they were adjusted with a stamp on and so they were filling up twice as fast I don't I don't know how it happened just happened they were used to working outside the rules and got full into sports car racing they actually went to got a NASCAR racing and they got into Indy and a lot of the cars didn't have a lot of sponsorship on them or they had sponsorship that didn't exist they would make up companies like one of the funny stories is that they they got girls with perfume bottles to walk around with labels on them and spray people in the pits and say oh this is the beautiful new perfume there was no perfume but they put labels on another perfume to make it look like they had a sponsor to kind of people put a people aside and it was just absolutely brilliant and they did actually really well they were talented drivers so they bought road Atlanta and run Atlanta has a special feature from all the tracks the United States as well at that point had the longest straightaway you could get now they also owned a plane company that you could rent their planes no this is all unofficial history right so the planes won over the top of another would fly in one would land on the racetrack and the other one would fly into a local airport middle of the night and unload things now there were these trailers in the back these container trailers you see them in all the shots of the track and you weren't allowed to go out there or have anything to do with them they were philipot like just stacked up supposedly with marijuana and it was like they were they were running drugs and they're driving cars it was like Boogie Nights meat stays a thunder like it was just like it should be a movie like it was just absolutely brilliant they get a couple more cars for the run and they because famous yellow 9:35 that they became now the lamont winner became one of those cars and he would go to Daytona and they took the Lamar car and it set a scorching qualifying time like almost impossible and when the car was restored a couple of years ago this sill was obviously wasn't but it had been opened so they opened up the sill and nothing in there so call the original Mechanics for advice on how to restore the car and they're like oh yeah you found the hole like okay say more and they had put a nitrous bottle inside of a k3 now III made 750 horsepower you know maybe 800 you turn the boost all the way up so they were going around Daytona on the banking and hitting the boost and they'd have over a thousand horsepower temporarily and it was quite commonly they they turn a lap they turn it up in this monster lap and they would just come across the finish line the car would go and die and it was it the engine melted it's a $40,000 engine back in the day right and and teams would take care of them they just take it out and they'd have another one they'd slam it in and go racing and there were couple teams that did like Athena and Gaius would burn up the the Interscope cars Interscope the same way I think another engine shove it in the back everything's fine such blatant you know spending such blatant money that was untraceable people knew they were rich but no not quite why so it finally government caught up with them but it wasn't until after they had one of the greatest indie failures ever builds brother wanted to go any racing the other brother was like I want to go too and he was actually really good and he qualified really well up towards the front coming around there in the formation lap they come around three they come around four and indeed he they wave the flag and everybody jockeys through the start he loses it younger brother lose it takes out everybody it's a huge calamity it's one of the great indeed mess ups like in 66 when Dan Gurney had the first Eagle crash and it was like 11 14 cars crash same kind of thing just everywhere and suddenly their name is in the dumps and unser comes out and he's ready to punch anybody cuz he was always ready to punch people that was kind of the end I would have been like the perfect end of the movie where everything starts falling apart they finally got indicted and they they go to jail and the lamothe car gets given to the indy museum that should have been that and that was-- stuff was divested and sent away and when they got out of jail they're like oh we didn't give the car to the indian museum we loaned it to them we'd like it back and any museums like no and then a decade long legal battle went on and filed the Indian Museum won but they're still round you know it and they still have their plane company which had an investigation about three years ago again they're absolutely brilliant but they were such a shining moment of that 70s 80s Inza and aims of the joke is that it was at the time stood for international marijuana smugglers Association so they were the epitome of that and someday they need a movie about their life [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 826,137

Rating: 4.9204197 out of 5

Keywords: 1979, Le Mans, France, Whittington Brothers, Indianapolis, 500, 24 Hours of Le Mans, Kremer, Porsche, 935, Apple, Sponsors, Road Atlanta, Prototype

Id: 2U8Uy_0qFuk

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bl1nds1ght]

God those mesh dish wheels are BEAUTIFUL.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/swoofswoofles]

Found the crash he was talking about in the start of the Indy 500. Jeez, what a dummy.

https://youtu.be/k33sBpPsAu0?t=3m49s

[u/[deleted]]

Guy's a great story-teller.

[u/Icyrow]

damn i could listen to this guy all day, he was the one who did the special driving car thing for tom cruise right?

he's a great story teller.

[u/chipssmellyleg]

I'd pay to watch this movie

[u/Fairazz]

I never thought I’d be the one who said it. But it was first time seeing it for me.

[u/Sheldor777]

Had to look at that gift to Indie. To me it seems unfair, because there is no proof that car was transferred to Foundation yet these guys hadn't been able to get it back. Plus they had to prove they didn't give the car away. Might be they really did give the car away but if there is no proof of transfer then Foundation should prove car is theirs not the other way around. Seems like car was with them long enough and now it's theirs.

[u/ich852]

I love that the mechanics years later are like yeah about that hole. We we're running nitrous.