NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Treasures from the NHRA Vault, an amazing collection of artifacts from the history of the sport of hot rodding, are now up for auction here in an unprecedented online auction event this April and May via Mecum On Time.

The items include jackets, artworks, and keepsakes that mostly have previously been on display in the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by the Auto Club of Southern California, and have been stored in an off-site warehouse, as the museum reached capacity and displayed items were rotated.

Monies earned from the auction offering will be funneled right back into the maintenance and preservation efforts of the museum so it might continue to serve out its mission of historic conservation and sharing the stories of motorsport’s most memorable trailblazers and their many momentous achievements. Museums have been hit especially hard by the restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a nonprofit entity, the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum wasn’t spared from that fate.

Dale Coleman, member of the NHRA Museum Board of Directors and retired vice president of Fairplex — home of the L.A. County Fair — has stepped up to help organize the efforts currently underway to inventory and prepare the collection for auction. With personal involvement dating back to before the museum was founded more than two decades ago, Coleman is one of a small number of people able to explain the origins of the mysterious building and its contents.

“Twenty-five years or so ago, at Fairplex, we decided to help NHRA launch a museum on our grounds,” he said. “So we committed a building to them while the founder of NHRA, Wally Parks, was still living. Wally was a wonderful man, he was universally loved and respected throughout the world of motorsports. The museum was his dream, and we wanted to make it happen while he was still alive so he could play a major role in the planning and execution. That’s how the museum came to be, and this storage building dates back to the early days.”

Coleman said he and Cromwell were initially stumped by what they might do with the vast array of relics contained within the warehouse as all 28,000 square feet of the NHRA Museum are already filled and accounted for, and yet the treasures they found at their fingertips were valuable artifacts just as worthy of preservation as anything on display within the Museum walls.

“There are a number of vintage jackets from some of Southern California’s earliest car clubs that are in pristine condition,” Coleman explained. “These jackets are 60 or 70 years old, and they are the real things — just absolutely beautiful. We have hundreds of pieces of artwork — fine art, very high-end representations of classic races from the past, some high-end photographs, which probably are a result of Wally’s relationship with Robert Petersen and Petersen Publishing. We have some really great high-end, large-format, mounted photographs of Carroll Shelby and his team when they were building the first Shelby cars, including Ken Miles driving a number of the vehicles. There’s a leather championship jacket from the 2013 NHRA season signed by each of the four national champions of the 2013 NHRA championship drag racing season in ‘as-new’ condition.

“There’s several jackets from Lion’s Drag Strip; Lion’s is one of the most iconic drag strips ever, and we have several of the lettermen’s jackets from Lion’s, including Gordie Bonin’s jacket. Gordie Bonin was one of the first Funny Car guys to regular go 240 mph, hence the nickname ‘240 Gordie.’ ”

Coleman said there are also jackets that once belonged to Tony “The Loner” Nancy, Chris Karamesines, and other big names from drag racing history, including the 1968 Car Craft magazine All-Star Drag Racing Team jacket owned by “Big John” Mazmanian.

“We also have car club jackets from the Long Beach Renegades, a car club that goes back to the ‘40s and ‘50s but broke up in ’62 — it’s just absolutely amazing, perfect condition,” Coleman added. “We have a jacket from the Ridgecrest Dust Devils — that was the club that ran the dragstrip at Inyokern through the ‘50s until about 2005 when it finally closed. These are also in pristine condition.”

And the list goes on. In all, Coleman estimates that approximately 200 to 300 items will be gathered up for the auction offering, including selections of the art, the jackets, and more. For any fan or participant of the sport of drag racing, the selection is certain to have something that will speak to their speed-hungry soul.

All of the approximately 200 to 300 items from the Treasures of NHRA Collection, rescued from the forgotten vault of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, will be offered via Mecum’s timed, online auction platform: Mecum On Time. The auction went live for viewing on April 1, and items will begin closing for bids on May 19 in conjunction with the close of Dana Mecum’s Original Spring Classic auction in Indianapolis. While there is plenty here to inspire enthusiasts of any persuasion to place their biggest bids, there is certainly no time to waste. Museum artifacts such as these don’t come to public market often, and a vault-find offering like this one isn’t likely to come around again.