DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — You walk through the door into the office and it feels as if you’re stepping back in time. The walls have wood panels, there’s a rotary phone sitting on the wood desk, a small RCA black-and-white television off to the side, a couch like the one your grandparents used to own — minus the plastic protector — and a large standing globe that is deceiving because it opens and is, in fact, a mini-bar capable of holding three bottles and an ice tumbler.
It’s such a splitting recreation of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr.’s office that a longtime employee was brought to tears when she first stepped inside last summer. The only missing element is the aroma of heavy cigarette smoke.
Formerly located inside Daytona International Speedway, the office is now the showcase piece inside the ISC Archives and Research Center, just down the road from the track that Sunday will host the 58th Daytona 500.
Now housed inside a nondescript orange building with signage, the center is home to more than 5 million photographs, thousands of periodicals (books, magazines, media guides, rulebooks, newspaper clippings, etc.) and a seemly infinite amount of NASCAR and sports car memorabilia so vast it can’t be properly counted. (The late France was a big proponent of sports car racing.)
Many of the photos and trinkets came via donations. A Dale Earnhardt Sr. die-cast collection came from a woman whose husband had died and she thought the center would be a good place to preserve the collection.
There are also programs from every Daytona 500 and approximately 75 percent of all NASCAR races, some appraised as high as $1,500, old trophies — the oldest is from a 1903 touring car race held in Atlantic City, N.J. — artwork and even whole race cars. The vehicles currently on display include Marvin Panch’s 1961 Daytona 500-winning car and Malcolm Campbell’s 1931 Blue Bird that he used to set the land-speed record (245.736 mph) along the Daytona beach.
Photo courtesy of ISC Archives
If the center gives an aura of a time capsule, it’s because it feels like one. You cannot turn your eyes without catching a glimpse of an artifact from way back when, or something from a momentous moment in NASCAR history. An engine component off Jeff Gordon’s inaugural Brickyard 400-winning car, or an original workbench from the Daytona garage that has seen the tools of countless legends placed upon it, one of only three in existence.
Although not the official NASCAR museum, which is located in downtown Charlotte, N.C., the center could certainly function as such.
After founding NASCAR just after World War II, the France family began compiling a hodgepodge of stuff as any small business would. And as the sanctioning body slowly grew, the idea struck that maybe some of these keepsakes were worth saving.
“They didn’t know that they would make history, but they had an inclination,” Herb Branham, the center’s curator, said.
Although not open to the public, fans can gain entry through a VIP tour package ticket that includes a behind-the-scenes tour of Daytona International Speedway, which just underwent a $400 million remodeling of its entire front-stretch grandstand.
But the center is more than just a way to showcase NASCAR’s rich past, it also acts as a safeguard.
Because beyond France’s office, the library and the small garage, is a vault protected by a steel double door. It is in here where reels stacked to the ceiling, videotapes upon videotapes and an abundance of DVDs are amassed.
The climate-controlled room fixed at 73 degrees with the humidity never climbing above 40 percent is not just the greatest assembly of old NASCAR races, but includes races running the gamut of motorsports from IndyCar to dragsters, Midgets to motocross some dating all the way back to the 1940s.
As a self-admitted NASCAR history buff, it was the vault that captured Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s attention when he visited the center for the first time last summer. His passion — he pursues footage of vintage races, preferably prior to the 1980s since most of those events were televised — is so great he trades tapes online with other devotees.
“I didn’t get to steal anything, but I wanted to carry all the tapes out of there, all the video, and go catalog it myself,” Earnhardt said Tuesday at Daytona 500 Media Day. “I got room if they would like to store it where I’m at. It would be pretty cool to be in charge of the archives, all that video.”
That task falls to Branham, who cherishes his role as the center’s senior manager where he acts as the quasi-gatekeeper so those in the present can connect to NASCAR’s past.
“This is a special place,” he said. “To be able to look around and see everything that’s here is quite incredible.”
