Day Of The Dirt Devils

Aside from that paved one-mile stretch of the A1A at Daytona, most of the early Nascar races were contested on dirt. Nascar got its first asphalt superspeedway in 1950, and that was at Darlington Raceway. Darlington opened its doors to the young division, hosting the inaugural Southern 500. What is now Daytona International Speedway was still nothing more than a large parcel of swampy land and the Daytona Beach Race still renained Nascars flagship.

In the fifties stock cars resembled clumsy behemoths, staying forever loose on the unkempt dirt surfaces they raced on.Since tires and suspension components had not been developed for such conditions, it was most common to see alot of slipping and baging of fenders. In fact, the bumpy dirt surfaces broke shock absorbers so frequently that racers were mounting two shocks on each side.

As you see in the picture that in the early days, the drivers made some interseting choices for race cars. The car in the background is a...don't laugh Studebaker.

Also in the late fifties, Nascar also had a convertible division as shown in the picture below,

Nascar started experimenting with several new divisions to increase the sports impact.A categorey for opened wheel cars came into effect in 1952. These cars had open canopies, but used stock-block engines. This concept proved to be short lived, was considered to be a sharp departure from nascars original path.