‘Smokey’ Yunick; Pioneering Racing Car Builder and Mechanic

and Wire Reports

Henry “Smokey” Yunick, an innovative stock car mechanic and owner who helped develop Chevrolet’s original small-block engine in 1955, died Wednesday in Daytona Beach, Fla., of complications from leukemia. He was 77.

The Stock Car Racing Encyclopedia credits Yunick with eight victories in 61 starts as a car owner. He won more than 50 races as a crew chief, chief mechanic or engine builder.

The International Motorsports Hall of Fame inducted him in 1990, and called him a “sly mechanical genius whose reputation as one of the premier mechanics in NASCAR hasn’t diminished over the years.”

Yunick grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and became interested in all things mechanical. By the time he was 13, he had cobbled together a makeshift tractor from an old Dodge car, the rear axle of a Model T Ford truck and some other parts. He found work as a mechanic and welder and started racing vehicles early. He got the name “Smokey” from a racetrack announcer describing Yunick’s ride on an oil-belching Indian motorcycle.

After flying bombers in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Yunick settled in Daytona Beach and started building race cars, working with Hudson Hornets, Fords and Chevrolets. In addition to his racing activities, Yunick ran a car, truck and diesel-equipment business.

He was the last owner to win at Daytona when the race was run on the beach, in 1958. He fielded winners at the 1961 and ’62 Daytona 500s and won four of the first eight Winston Cup races at Daytona International Speedway.

“He was about as good as there ever was on engines,” said Marvin Panch, who won the 1961 Daytona in Yunick’s car. “He was a pioneer.’

Yunick never agreed with NASCAR on its increasingly strict rules, and some of his attempts to circumvent the rule book have become legend.

One year, as the story goes, figuring his car had been illegally modified, NASCAR inspectors removed the gas tank of Yunick’s Chevy, drained it and measured its size.

Told that his race car was illegal on nine counts, Yunick told them: “Make that 10!”

He hopped in the Chevy, with the empty gas tank on the ground, started the car and drove it back to his garage.

“That’s not exactly the way it happened,” Smokey told a reporter years later.

“As any mechanic knows, there’s enough gas in the carb and lines to start the car and drive it without the tank connected, which is what I did. And I didn’t drive it back to the garage, I drove it to my tow truck to leave the track.”

Decked out in a flattened cowboy hat and chewing on an old corncob pipe, Yunick fielded stock cars through 1968, with such drivers as Fireball Roberts, Banjo Matthews and Bobby Issac behind the wheel.

He also knew the open-wheel racing game, taking cars to the Indianapolis 500 for several races between 1958 and 1973. In 1960, Yunick won the Indy 500 as a crew chief.

“Back in the old days, I would’ve pulled my car to Indianapolis with a rope if I had to,” he once said.

“That was the ultimate, to stand there on the starting grid on race day at the Indianapolis 500.”

Funeral services are pending.