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Vintage Volvo's Racing Ascot Park

hiperfauto

The Librarian
Joined
Nov 18, 2011
Location
So Cal
I just ran across this video of a race at Ascot in June of '89. We fielded 2 cars in the race and finished 1st and 2nd. The ES (yes, an ES) was fielded by a Volvo wrecking yard called Eurocar Express. The owner, Terry Pike, commissioned me to build the roll cage for the ES, so I had a hand in all 3 Volvos.

The driver of the yellow 1800 (which was my personal DD), Eric Easley is initially identified as Hamlet because he had been using my bothers' NASCAR license to race the last couple of events (he was too cheap to buy his own license). The cars start in reverse order of their points standing, so Easley started on the pole, it being his "first race" and Bruce Penny, my ex-partners brother, started last since he was leading in points.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_q8CXG_TmTw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
That video brings back a lot of good memories of the fun times we used to have at Ascot, damn them cheap Agajanians for not forking out the dough to keep it open.

For those of you who didn't know Terry Pike, he was a fellow Volvo nut who at one time had a Volvo junk yard with nearly 100 cars as well as his repair shop. He was fun to be around and we lost him to ALS, Lou Gehrigs disease way too soon.
 
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Definitely very cool

My local track recently changed their 4cyl class from FWD only to include RWD. Super tempting to set up a banged up 142 or 242
 
Very cool! Awesome that you where a part of this, we have a dirt track like this 10 minutes from my house, they sure as heck don't race vintage volvo's at that track though! Thanks for posting!
 
So I wanted to say thank you for posting this about my Dad. That ES actually went to Vegas and won Championships out there. It was funny because we built the car then when we took it to our first race they almost didn't let us run because they tried to classify it as a station wagon but Dad had the whole Volvo write up on the car and it was classified as a 3 door sports car... Pretty cool history here. I actually missed this race that year but remember it very well. My dad was having a hard time on this day. But he won a few races that year in that car.
 
My dad used to run 122s and 544s too before we decided to build the 1800s then the ES. My uncle Stevie was his partner in the late 70s and he is the best mechanic I ever saw. They ran #48 for steve demello and #49 for Dad.... They used to go to mexico and race too... I have sone good pix of his 122 from abput 1979 or 1980 that he used to run at mesa marin.
 
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