Evernham Unearths A Piece Of Racing History

Ray Evernham has done it again.

For a number of years, the former championship-winning NASCAR crew chief and team owner has been on a one-man crusade to find, purchase and restore vintage race cars of virtually every kind. He has saved a number of vintage racing machines from the scrap heap over the years; open wheel and full-fendered machines alike. Some of them are famous, others are decidedly not. But each represents at least a tiny piece of the sport's history. A trip through Evernham's Mooresville, NC, race shop/museum is like a trip back in time, with gleaming (and some not-so-gleaming) examples of racing's bygone era.

For a number of years, enthusiasts and historians of NASCAR modified racing have searched for car builder Don House's famous XL-1 1937 Ford Coupe. The white and pink XL-1 -- which stood for "Experimental Lincoln Number One" -- was the terror of the East Coast short tracks for nearly 15 years, wheeled into Victory Lane by a virtual "Who's Who" of championship drivers that included Don MacTavish, Wally Dallenbach, Sr., Lee Roy Yarbrough, Tommie Elliott and Joe Kelly.

The car was eventually retired, and like so many machines of its era, vanished. For decades, people assumed it had rusted into oblivion in some anonymous barnyard, or been dropped into the car crusher at a long-shuttered salvage yard. Amazingly, they were all wrong.

Unbeknownst to virtually everyone, the car lay dormant in rural Halifax County, VA for decades. For the last 10 years, the skeletal remains of one of modified racing's legendary machines sat rusting next to a junkyard filled with vintage auto parts owned by former racer Ned Stebbins.

Little more than a rusted frame, cage and body, the car offers no outward clue to its pedigree. A crude #360 is painted on its doors in flaking blue paint; the number run by its final owner, the late John Chandler. Stebbins, who worked on Chandler’s pit crew, recalled to the Halifax County and South Boston Gazette Virginian how the historic car came to reside in the Old Dominion state. “Don (House) was running the car down here at South Boston (VA) Speedway one night… and John bought it. (He) had that car probably 10 years.”

The car remained a winner in Chandler’s hands, claiming a number of trophies in NASCAR Modified competition at South Boston in the early 1960s before eventually being parted out and mothballed. “(John) took all of the running gear out from under the car and left it sitting in the honeysuckle,” recalled Stebbins. “(Vintage racer) Bill Mangum bought it, then let me have it.

“I put it on the side of the road, up on a pedestal,” explained Stebbins. “Everybody got to see it (and) the people that knew about the car flipped out over it, because there is a lot of history surrounding that car.” Stebbins said he initially wished someone local would take the car and restore it, but now is pleased to see it in Evernham’s hands. “Everybody I saw just wasn’t interested in it. To many people it’s just a pile of tin, but (Evernham) saw something in it.”

Stebbins says he looks forward to seeing the XL-1 restored to its former glory, adding, “I was really proud to see that thing go away from there, knowing what they were going to do with it.” The car now resides in Evernham’s NC shop and a restoration will begin soon, bringing the car back to its original, race-ready condition.

The original builders of the car, House and Al Gerhum, both survive, and Evernham has had the first in what will likely be a long series of discussions with them, in an effort to ensure that the restoration is as accurate and faithful to the original car as possible. There's plenty to be done. Engine, drive train and running gear must all be located and painstakingly restored to what they were a half century ago, with attention given to each of the million different details required in a restoration of this type.

"Locating and being able to purchase one of the original XL-1 racers is one of those things you only think about," said Evernham. "It's like winning the lottery. I had heard so much about the legend of the car -- and Don House -- while growing up around the local tracks in Jersey. It was like an urban legend. People always said how far ahead of its time it was. It was like a Top Secret Ford project: the XL-1 Experimental Lincoln 1."

It will be a time-intensive project, but in the end, the sport will be blessed with a rolling, fire-breathing piece of history. "For years, every modified built in New Jersey was compared to the XL-1," said Evernham. "Finding this car is like finding the Holy Grail of northeast modified racing. I walk back in the shop and look at her several times a day, and I am committed to seeing her on the race track again."