NASCAR garage of Bud Moore lost in fire after housing cars for legends
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Losing NASCAR history is always sad. In this case, it was a place of interest rather than a specific artifact.
On Monday evening in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the shop once used by former team owner Bud Moore was heavily damaged by fire and is a total loss. Located on North Fairview Drive, the abandoned building was the former home of Bud Moore Engineering, dating back to the early 1960s when he fielded Fords in NASCAR’s then-Grand National Series when Joe Weatherly first began driving his cars.
A police officer driving through the area at around 11:15 p.m. Monday evening saw smoke coming from the building and dispatched fire department personnel to the scene. Within minutes, the structure was engulfed just as fire trucks arrived. Firefighters worked until 4 a.m. to fully extinguish the blaze.
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Many race fans who live in the Spartanburg area most certainly have passed by the building countless times and didn’t realize what was once housed there. They also possibly didn’t realize that so many auto racing greats had strolled around the hallowed ground to talk strategy, possibly turn wrenches on the cars that were once kept there or were there to be fitted for race seats being bolted into cars set to be taken to the next race on the schedule.
Moore also collected four SCCA Trans-Am wins out of the building in 1967 with Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney and Peter Revson; three wins with Jones and George Folmer in 1969 and an SCCA Series championship with Jones in 1970. Tiny Lund also won NASCAR’s Grand Touring championship with driver Tiny Lund with Moore in 1968.
Moore had not operated a race team out of the building since leaving NASCAR’s Cup Series in 2000. All told, his team collected 63 victories in NASCAR competition with his final victory as a team owner coming on May 16, 1993, at Sonoma, California, with driver Geoff Bodine. Through the late 1990s, Moore ran a limited schedule of races until his final start coming with driver Ted Musgrave on April 16, 2000, at Talladega Superspeedway.
Moore died on Nov. 27, 2007, at the age of 92. NASCAR was formed in 1948 and Moore quickly found a spot in the sport after serving in World War II. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943 at 18 just after graduating high school in Spartanburg. His role in the military was that of machine gunner assigned to the 90th Infantry Division.
Only a year into his military service, he was part of more than two million American and Allied forces involved with the D-Day invasion, the largest military exercise in history.
Moore earned two Bronze Star Medals for heroic actions and five Purple Hearts for being injured in combat by war’s…
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