Gene Welch Chevy Vega Aussie tour Speedway Sedan

[alan barton]

Here's a  puzzler for you - can you think of an American race car built from an American sedan by an American racer to compete as part of an American team - but practically no American knows about?

Still waiting..........

 

O.K.  The car you see here is one of a four car team of Chevy Vegas brought to Australia for the summer of 74/75 by Gene Welch.  But first, a little history.

Speedway sedan racing, what you guys call late models, only really took off in Australia in the late sixties.  By the early seventies it had taken top billing from the midgets, super mods and solo bikes that were fan favourites in the sixties. Around 1971/72, Californian Gene Welch came out to Australia to race over the summer season, your winter, on the eastern seaboard.  He brought with him his 65 Chevelle and had a pretty successful season, enough to make him want to come back the next year.  This time he brought a 69 Camaro, and like the Chevelle, it was a pretty typical short track racer from the era.

Things took a twist the next year, however, when Gene returned with a purpose built weapon in the form of a shortened 71 or so fibreglass Camaro on basically a modified sprintcar frame.  Reputed to have cost a mind blowing $12.000 back in the day, it was meant to blow the Aussie competition off the planet. It wasn't as dominant as expected but the seed had been sown.

For the next season, Gene returned with a four man team in near identical Vegas.  These were no ordinary Vegas.  Local speedway magazines stated that Gene chose the Vega because it was the smallest car that GM made with a V8.  Heck, those dumb Aussies won't no that GM never made a V8 Vega!!! A magazine article on the build stated that they were a steel bodied car with a NASCAR frame, 3 inch finned drums on all four corners, a quick change rear and injected 350 Chevy powerplants.  Oh yeah, and outrageous steamroller rubber, wider than we had ever seen on a dirt track and crazy wide, like Formula One wide, for the pavement ovals that were popular on the East Coast. The drivers were Gene Welch, Big Ed Wilbur, Mike Klein ( "Hash Brown") and Wayne Sue.

This American tour was all over the local news and as a seventeen year old I made a point of heading to Claremont Speedway to see them race, and hopefully watch the local hot shoes destroy this bunch of Yankee invaders! it didn't quite work like that as these cars were absolute missiles compared to the heavily re-inforced Aussie muscle cars that our guys were racing but it was a great night and I will never forget it.  One thing I remember clearly is that once the locals realised they couldn't beat them, they beat them up instead.  Boy did those lightweight Vegas take a beating!

I always wanted to build a model of Gene's Vega and about twenty five years ago got into it with my childhood 72 Vega kit, with a heavily modified  but unknown AMT NASCAR kit for the frame, narrowed and shortened, and a lot of scratchbuilt and heavily modified parts.  Only problem was, I had no idea how to make the decals so it sat in a plain white wrapper ever since.

Recently I met Jackson Bull, a very pleasant and knowledgeable young man who wasn't even born when I first built this model. I wondered out loud if he thought he could make the decals I needed. In under 2.5 seconds he had found colour photos of the car on his phone and by the end of the week I had my decals, and they were near perfect! There is nearly a fifty year age difference between myself and Jackson but his knowledge and passion for hot rods and models blows me away and I am eternally grateful for him enabling me to finish this model.

So here it is, finally finished after all these years.  There is not a lot of info about these cars on the net.  Most of my reference photos were from old black and white Aussie speedway magazines from the era.  I have no idea what happened to the cars - whether they returned to the USA or not, except that to the best of my knowledge they were never raced here again. (Gene's earlier 69 Camaro was sold to local supermod hero, Alf Barbagallo but it was raced only briefly by him before he returned to supermods). In following years the team returned with Camaros, Monzas, Corvettes and eventually the wedge shaped late models but they were all conventional short track racers of the day - only the Vegas were custom built Aussie killers and that is what has always fascinated me about this team.  I hope you enjoy my model and if anyone can tell me anymore about the cars from an American standpoint I would be all ears!

Cheers

Alan

PS When I built the model I honestly believed the wheels had been gold.  When I finally found a colour photo, it seems they were blue.  On the other hand, Perth seemed to be at the end of the tour and by the time they got here a lot had changed on the cars so maybe I did see gold wheels way back when - who knows?

[bisc63]

Very cool! These things are BEASTS, and are more outrageous than any Mad Max fictional ride! Thanks for the background (yep, never heard of 'em) and the nicely done model.

[ChrisR]

Very nice!

[ozmodeler]

Wow, great build Alan. I'd forgotten how awesome these Vega's were when I saw them back then. It was at Liverpool speedway which was a bitumen oval and they were crazy fast !

[slusher]

Great Vega build!

[PappyD340]

Very cool!

[iBorg]

I miss this era of racing. Great throw back to it.

[Vettegasser]

Man this thing is awesome. Gotta get a vega kit now. I see scratch building in my future 

[Mike C]

Pretty cool old racer.

[alan barton]

Thanks everyone.  It is a very unique part of Australian speedway history - glad you liked it!

Cheers

Alan

[Bills72sj]

Thanks for sharing the story. A little Vega with that much tire and decent power would be a blast to drive.