Ingram's Flat Spot On: Looking back on "Big Bill" Motorsport.com
While southern in character because of the success of NASCAR, the sport of stock car racing has always been an all-American endeavor. It didn't start from the ground up in cornfields with a bunch of bootleggers betting on their cars. The first major stock car race took place in Los Angeles in 1934 -- almost 14 years before NASCAR was born and the same year a young mechanic with racing aspirations dropped anchor in Daytona Beach by the name of William Henry Getty France.
Born in Washington, D.C. just over 100 years ago, France was not a southerner. To listen to the mythmakers, he saved stock car racing from unscrupulous promoters, ramshackle facilities and backwoods ignominy. He was the only man, goes this story, who saw a great sport amidst the reprobates and county fair operators who dominated it in the rural South. And from the crucible of bootleggers, goes this story, Big Bill carried stock car racing to all corners of America.
Well, yes and no. His accomplishments were much bigger than that, because he had able competitors who pursued similar dreams of making a lot of money as the middle men between ticket buyers and track owners. There were established organizations, such as IMCA and the AAA, that jumped into stock car racing as well. The activities of these organizations were hardly confined to the Southeast.
