When I buy a vintage muscle car magazine, it’s usually for the road tests and car ads. But scattered throughout magazines – usually towards the back – were a mixture of smaller ads touting parts, racetracks, dealerships, speed shops, and more.

Image: BangShift.com

Maybe they lacked the color and flash of the full-page spreads, but I’d be willing to bet these little ads did a lot more to create aspirations for the guy on the street. After all, if you’re a fan of Sox & Martin, why wouldn’t you be motivated by “If it’s used in a Sox & Martin race car . . . we have it in stock!”

An amusing ad is this item for the “Dodge Material” wheelstander pickup driven by “Cool Richie” Travers of Massachusetts whose ad calls out the “Philly Puddle Jumper.” Context follows when you discover a similar ad with a similar wheelstanding pickup driven by Frank Monaghan – he’s talkin’ smack about someone named “Coolie” something or other. Doing some research, we found these two original photos of these exhibitionists, one of them a schticky backwards wheelstander.

Another ad is for Pfeiffer’s Speed Shops, who has “most items in stock!” They were one of the more prominent shops in upstate New York until the catalog companies started to give them a run for their money. With stores in Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, there’s a good chance their customers spent weekends at Lebanon Valley Dragway.

Chances are good that these racetracks, dealerships, and speed shops are no more, but there’s plenty of memories scattered around the Internet to learn the racing histories of days gone by.