AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY – DECEMBER 14, 1947 - NASCAR Founded

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was founded at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was the first formal organisation for stock-car racing, a sport said to have begun with souped-up bootlegger hot-rods during Prohibition. Starting in 1953, the major auto makers invested heavily in racing teams, producing faster cars than ever before: good results on the stock-car circuit were believed to mean better sales on the showroom floor.

In 1957, however, rising costs and tightened NASCAR rules forced the factories out of the sport, and the modern era of the NASCAR superspeedway began.

Nascar’s history is as colorful as the logo-emblazoned stock cars that have made the sport famous. Its roots go back to Prohibition when runners—people who delivered moonshine, a home-brewed whiskey distilled from corn, potatoes or anything that would ferment—souped up their cars so they could give the slip to the federal tax agents determined to bust them (think Dukes of Hazzard), according to David “Turbo” Thompson, an associate professor at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, who has also raced stock cars. “Runners built their reputations by outsmarting and outdriving the law,” he says. For bragging rights, he adds, they held informal races to determine which runner was fastest.

By the end of the 1940s, those contests had become an organized sport, largely due to the efforts of one driver, Big Bill France. Big Bill organized a meeting of drivers, car owners and mechanics at the art-deco style Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla., on December 14, 1947, to establish standard rules for racing.

There and then the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (Nascar) was conceived. Two months later, on February 15, 1948, the first official Nascar race was held on the beach in Daytona. Red Byron won it in his Ford. A week later, Nascar was incorporated, and Big Bill appointed as its leader.

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