Okay, so I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about Fireball Roberts lately, and I got curious about his car. I mean, the guy was a legend, so his ride must have been something special, right? I decided to dig in and see what I could find out.
First, I started with some basic searching. Just trying to get a feel for the general models he drove. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t just one car. Fireball raced a bunch of different ones over the years.
The Different Cars
- 1956 Ford: I found some cool old photos of him with a ’56 Ford. Apparently, he did pretty well with that one in some early races.
- 1957 Ford “Battlebirds”: The supercharged Fords were very fast.
- Pontiacs: This is where things got interesting. A lot of sources kept mentioning Pontiacs, specifically the late 50s and early 60s models.
- 1962 Pontiac Catalina: I stumbled across articles and forum posts talking about a ’62 Catalina that he supposedly dominated with. One that Smokey Yunick built.
- 1963 Ford Galaxie: I found his last car.
So, my next step was to look into this “Smokey Yunick” guy. Turns out, he was a pretty famous mechanic and car builder back in the day. Known for being, uh, creative with the rules. Let’s just say he was a master of finding loopholes.
I spent a good chunk of time trying to track down specific details about the modifications Yunick made to Fireball’s Pontiacs. It’s tough! A lot of this stuff is from so long ago, and the records aren’t exactly perfect. Plus, Yunick was known for keeping some of his secrets close to the vest.
Finally, I found that Fireball died because his car got fire, The fuel safety cell was not yet a requirement in racing at the time, a crash during the World 600 in Charlotte, his Ford Galaxie crashed.
It was kind of a wild goose chase, to be honest. But it was also really cool learning about this piece of racing history. And yeah, Fireball Roberts’ cars were definitely something special, even if I couldn’t find every single nut and bolt detail.
