Remembering Cotton Owens

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Huneycutt

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Since NASCAR great Cotton Owens passed yesterday, I thought I'd post this. I wrote an article for Mopar Muscle magazine a few years ago about a '69 Dodge Charger that Cotton owned that had been used as a wind tunnel test mule for Dodges development of the Daytona race car. I put it up on the net and thought it might be interesting to some of you.

http://www.horsepowermonster.com/2012/remembering-nascar-great-cotton-owens/

Thanks!
 
Great article, thanks for posting. I encourage all young race fans to do their history lessons so the greats of our sport are not forgotten. People like Cotton Owens we instrumental in early NASCAR. Without them we wouldnt have the sport we love.
 
Very nice, Honeycutt! It's great that this piece of history has survived!

Thanks for sharing.
RIP, Cotton Owens
 
Huneycutt said:
Thanks!
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That is a great tribute to Mr . Owens , Huneycutt , ,thank you for posting it and welcome to the forum . I hope that you will be posting other great stories . By the way ,a story that I heard about Cotton , around Hall of Fame time , was about Cotton telling the tire people at the track to give Wendell Scott a new set of tires and put it on his bill . I thought that said a lot about the man.
 
About a 100 years ago ran into him from time to time, it was a pleasure to have met him.
 
FenderBumper said:
That's cool. Post a Cotton Owens story or what he was like in person.
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In the mid 60s we were at a steak and eggs which was sort of like a Waffle House is today, in Theodore Al. which is close to the Mobile Intl. Raceway at about midnight, eating breakfast after a Saturday night race when Cotton came in asking if anybody had a universal joint. One old guy asked what kind of car and Cotton said aw hell it dont matter I'll make it fit I have to race Five Flags tomorrow and everything is closed. He ended up with 5 or 6. Back then most of us carried spare parts in the trunk, universal joints, wheel bearings, brake shoes etc.. This is not a flashy story but the racers and fans back then were just people and the memories we have are random but mostly good.
 
Johali said:
In the mid 60s we were at a steak and eggs which was sort of like a Waffle House is today, in Theodore Al. which is close to the Mobile Intl. Raceway at about midnight, eating breakfast after a Saturday night race when Cotton came in asking if anybody had a universal joint. One old guy asked what kind of car and Cotton said aw hell it dont matter I'll make it fit I have to race Five Flags tomorrow and everything is closed. He ended up with 5 or 6. Back then most of us carried spare parts in the trunk, universal joints, wheel bearings, brake shoes etc.. This is not a flashy story but the racers and fans back then were just people and the memories we have are random but mostly good.
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great story about a time when people were just people without a thousand gadgets to figure out

thanks
 
Thanks for sharing the articleHoneycutt, I've kept up with Nascar since the early 60's and Cotton Owens is definetly one of the legends and innovators of the sport.
 
pjmolo said:
great story about a time when people were just people without a thousands gadgets to figure out

thanks
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People with their noses glued to a screen are like bugs on a windshield. Today, the story would be more like this...

In the mid 10's, we were at a Latte and enema purge joint, which was sort of like an asylum back in the 60's. It was close to the Mobile Intl. Raceway, and around midnight, we were club purging after eating Hotdogs during Saturday nights race when Cotton Owens came in asking if anybody had a universal joint. We were busy holding each others Agua Blasters, but one old guy who finished early (and didn't have an iPod to isolate with) asked what kind of car. Cotton said "aw hell it dont matter, I'll make it fit. I have to race Five Flags tomorrow and everything is closed." He ended up getting thrown out for using the 'H' word, which revealed his total lack of an adequate vocabulary to express himself in a proper fashion. The whole affaire was very upsetting, and it caused several of our club members to become extremely anal retentive. I was personally involved in 3 purge interventions, which obviously ruined my Cardigan sweater and faux leather skippies.

I'll never forget that night. What a blast!
 
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