2008-03-10 06:31:05
On Saturday morning March 8, I was in a hotel room in Laguna Beach with the ocean crashing just outside my third-floor balcony. I could see the horizon through the wide-open sliding-glass door, but my eyes were glued to my laptop screen. I was viewing a live auction in New Jersey, and bidding online. After 30 successful years, the IROC Series had ended and they were selling off all their stuff.
The Pontiac Firebird that Dale Earnhardt Sr. used to beat Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the closest race in IROC history, on Father's Day no less, was the star of the show, and it went for $72,000. That's a steal, for the history in the car.
But I got a steal too. There were six engines on the block, two of them with zero miles, and I got one of them for a price that my friend Udo Horn, the vintage racer (he's at Sebring with his Lister-Corvette as we speak) who restored the Bandit in 2004 (and who drove it to victory at Sebring and Watkins Glen, in its two races), called the "deal of the century."
It's important to me that the Bandit project is spiritually as well as historically correct. I first covered the IROC Series in 1976, for Sports Illustrated, and made friends who are at IROC to this day. IROC was a Penske Racing production, so the engines were built with the best components available: $28,000 in parts alone. The Bandit's new engine meets the rules for the 1983 Kelly Series that I drove it in: 355 cubic inches, dry sump system, aluminum heads, Holley 650 carburetor. So it's the best and most appropriate engine anywhere, 
for this car. It raises the Bandit's historic value by A LOT.
I'm over the moon, right now.
Sam Moses
Previous Blogs:
The Latest Bandit Story
2008-02-16 18:22:52
This piece will appear in the April issue of BMW Roundel magazine, a sidebar to my story about driving a BMW M Coupe to sixth overall with Doug Mill and car owner Mike Helton, in the Four Hours of Pacific Raceways.
At 5:45 in...
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In Search of One Good Motor
2008-02-16 17:36:59
In the final chapter of “Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots,” the Bandit blows two engines in one day at Daytona. One of them was a 550-horsepower motor that came out of the shop of the legendary Junior Johnson, Tom Wolfe’s...
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