Things Were Going Great at The King’s Place Until…
IN THE OCTOBER issue we previewed the fifth annual Petty’s Garage Car Show at Richard Petty’s properties in North Carolina with an eye toward two days that draw hundreds of Petty and performance fans along with their powerful vehicles. As you recall, the event starts with a Friday evening cookout at the NASCAR legend’s ranch, Reverie Place, where guests park their cars on some of the Petty landscape for a “show before the show.” The following day the event moves “down the road” to the Level Cross Petty Enterprises Historical Site which includes a show field, the Richard Petty Museum, and Petty’s Garage, a working speed shop where a specialized team builds high-performance cars.
A high point of past shows has been a visit from Petty himself for an autograph session although he hadn’t confirmed his attendance at the 2015 event as of our October press time.
Well, the show got off to a great start with a record 322 people attending a sold-out Friday evening dinner at Petty’s ranch. The following day the seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion was in attendance to sign autographs for a large group of fans, including some who had slept in the parking lot the night before to assure themselves of a place toward the front of the autograph line.
But about two hours into the day an unwelcome gatecrasher—in the form of inclement weather—came to the show as well.
“The only thing missing from this year’s Petty’s Garage Car Show was the sun,” said R.W. Gorman, president of the Automotive Lift Institute (ALI), a trade association of North American-based lift manufacturers that sponsored the show. “When rain moved in Saturday afternoon, it caused us to wrap up the show a couple of hours early…”
But there’s always next time, and plans are being made to hold the sixth annual event in fall 2016 at the North Carolina location. More information will be available this spring.
Meanwhile, some readers have shared their own Richard Petty anecdotes with us and you can find them on this month’s Letters pages.
