Jack Smith Race Car Driver - The Legend That Nascar Forgot

Other options included dual-speed electric wipers (code 402), windshield washer (code 421), and permanent anti-freeze (North) (code 621).

The Super-Duty Catalina was ordered with non-recommended two-tone paint, Mandalay Red body (code V) and Starlight Black roof (code A). Only 162 '62 Super-Duty Catalinas are documented (155 received the 421ci and 7 received the 389ci), making Jack's NASCAR race car one of the rarest Pontiacs ever made.

According to Richard Parris, the only known living witness to this Super-Duty Catalina's true horsepower, "Daytona had an Autolite dynamometer, and Jack decided to see if his Catalina had more horsepower than Fireball Roberts' car. I was there when we tested it. It pulled 510 hp in stock form, over 100 hp more than Pontiac claimed it left the factory with." Those were the days.

Restoring The '60 No. 47 Catalina NASCAR Race Car
Jack and Lance Smith began working on a '60 Catalina race-car replica before Jack's death. Lance continued the project with the help of Jimmy Kellett. "I found the car that would become the No. 47 replica for Jack back in 1993. It was a '60 Ventura out of South Carolina, equipped as a 389, four-barrel, automatic," Jimmy recalls. "Jack took the body off the frame and had it dipped to strip the paint. After I began working on my '62 Catalina Fireball Roberts race car, Jack asked me personally to build a replica race car for him, but I didn't have the time to get started on it."

According to Jimmy, the project sat in limbo for several years until Lance called him in July 2003, and asked him to complete the race car. Jimmy picked up the car in August 2003, and located the components to duplicate the drivetrain of the original race car.

Gene Moore and Edwin Caldwell, employees of Jack Smith Transmissions, built the engine and transmission, and Lance brought Bud, Jack's mechanic from 1960, to Jimmy's shop to show him how the original race car was set up. This helped Jimmy duplicate the dual-shock setup on each wheel, run the rollbar tubing from behind the X of the X-frame out under the rockers to have side-impact protection, and provide the correct ride height. Bud also explained how to put a trap door on the front right floorboard of the race car to inspect front right tire wear, just like Jack had back in 1960.

The race car was completed in 2006 and shown for the first time at the '06 POCI National Convention. Lance wants to thank these additional people involved in its re-creation: Tim Timmerman of Clinton, South Carolina, who performed the fabrication of the rollbar and shock mounts; Bryant Body Shop in Laurens, South Carolina, for paint; Chris Salters of Greenwood, South Carolina, for lettering; and Bobby Sumerill of Laurens, for upholstery.