There are barn finds, and then there’s this, which really did come out of a barn. The barn was hidden away in a real shot-and-a-beer town. And it went under the rafters really rocked, because in that town, people raced stock cars.
We found it last weekend, being displayed for the first time in 40 years at the Motorsports 2011 expo in Oaks, Pennsylvania, presented by the staff of Area Auto Racing News. The 69 is a 1937 Chevrolet coupe, still riding on an original 1937 frame and fitted with a carbureted Chevy 283. Best as anyone can tell, it was built in the late 1950s and raced out of Julian’s Auto Body in South Amboy, New Jersey, apparently by a guy named Charlie Lindmar.
Lee Allen of Old Bridge, New Jersey, now owns it with his brother, Christopher. When we spoke to Lee, he told us that the car ran at tracks including Old Bridge, Wall Stadium and Fort Dix in New Jersey, plus the tiny Weissglass Stadium on Staten Island in New York. It then went to Jim Longstreet, who raced it until crashing it on the dirt at East Windsor Speedway in New Jersey around 1968. The 69 then went into the Longstreet barn in South Amboy until Jim’s widow, Lynn, sold it to the Allen brothers. Lee told us, “If you don’t paint it eventually, the thing will rot out, but we’re going to keep it original as long as we can.”
