Spencer put rear-engine supermod in record books

PHOTO COURTESY JOHN SPENCER

Ontario-born John Spencer raced in the Budweiser Classic for supermodifieds at Oswego (N.Y.) Speedway at least 10 times and one of them was in the rear-engine car, above. He was the first driver to put it in victory lane.

Norris McDonald

MOTORSPORT WRITER

When he was in his 20s, John Spencer of Cobourg used to get his kicks by driving a supermodified racing car around New York's famed Oswego Speedway at speeds of well over 100 miles an hour.

Now 66, he satisfies his need for speed these days by riding a 10-speed bicycle around Eastern Ontario at a somewhat slower pace.

But not that slow.

"There were about 20 of us out on Shelter Valley Rd. (east of Cobourg near the 401) the other evening," he said this week while we were talking about tomorrow's 53rd renewal of the Budweiser International Classic 200 at Oswego – a race Spencer drove in 10 times.

"We had a real freight train going – nose to tail. We got up to 55 clicks," he laughed.

But this is now and what I wanted to talk to Spencer about was then: way back to the late 1960s and the '70s when more than a dozen drivers from the Toronto area – Warren Coniam, Norm Mackereth, Ken Andrews, Joe Hlywka, Jack Greedy, Dave Morton, Andy Brown (the NHL goalie) and Spencer himself, among others – won much of the money and glory at Oswego.

The competition was fierce at that famous northern New York Speedway where guys like Gordon Johncock, Sammy Sessions, Bentley Warren and, later, Joe Gosek and Davey Hamilton, polished their skills before going on to the big time at Indy.

As well as the top-calibre drivers attracted to the place, Oswego was also famous for something else: the anything-goes supermodified class (as distinct from the somewhat regulated division today).

As a result, Oswego attracted innovators who let their imaginations run wild: they built upright supers, rear-engine supers, mid-engine supers – you name it, they made it and took it to Oswego to race it.

Which brings us to 1970 and Johnny Spencer, the auto mechanic who learned his trade at Toronto's Northern Secondary School and who chummed around with guys like Doug Duncan and the Flynn brothers, Paul and Barry, and who started his racing career at the CNE Speedway "as soon as I could, which was in 1961 when I was 18."

Spencer and Duncan and the others not only raced cars, they also designed and built them. Duncan, a member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, first took a crack at a rear-engine super in 1964, but scrapped it when he realized it wasn't going to work. It was the late '60s before he – and they – tried again.

"I'd won a hobby car championship at the Ex back in 1963," Spencer said the other day, "but I didn't get into a super until 1968, at Flamborough Speedway (near Hamilton). I don't remember much about my first race but my second race was at Oswego and it scared the hell out of me.

"It's pretty intimidating to go from a regular racing car to a super in the first place, but then to go to a high-speed place like Oswego ... well, it was scary."

It didn't take him too long to get himself dialed in, however, because he qualified for the first of his 10 Oswego Classics that rookie year. His best results were three straight Top Five finishes in 1972, '73 and '74.

But that isn't why he's famous at Oswego: it's because of what he did on June 20, 1970, when he became the first driver to wheel a rear-engine car into Victory Lane.

"While I was running an upright super in '68, Doug started working on another rear-engine car," Spencer said. "We finished it over the winter and it was pretty strong right out of the box. We were pretty competitive and had a couple of second-place finishes.

"But I didn't want to push it. The car was kind of fragile compared to front-engine supers and so you had to be extra careful out there. There were some guys I was racing against who didn't like the rear-engine cars and some of them had no qualms about sticking you in the wall."

Spencer recalls it was "a perfect night of racing" the night he won his feature. "I won my heat, the semi and the feature. It was pretty neat, but I don't remember us having a big party or anything. We might have had a few drinks but we'd worked so hard to get there that the win was enough."

Despite the initial success, the rear-engine car proved to be too much of a challenge as the sport evolved, and Spencer and Duncan eventually reverted to designing, building and racing conventional front-engine supers.

But in 1979, legendary designer and driver Jim Shampine of Syracuse finally "got it right."

Although an oil leak prevented it from winning the Classic that year, the car – a killer rear-engine rocket ship with Canadian star Coniam driving – so dominated the race that Oswego management promptly banned it and all other rear-engines.

That move thoroughly annoyed a number of high-profile racers who either had cars finished or under construction, including future NASCAR star Geoff Bodine and TV racing pit reporter Dick Berggren.

Spencer says Oswego probably did the right thing.

"It would have cost an awful lot of guys an awful lot of money to keep up (with the rear-engine revolution)," he said. "The track would have lost a lot of cars because people couldn't afford it."

But what about the argument that more short-track speedway racers would be driving Indianapolis-type cars these days if supers, midgets and sprint cars had been allowed to evolve?

"No, it's always been a money deal when you get up to that level," Spencer said. "I don't think it would have really made a difference. I had rear-engine experience but I didn't have any (money) and who was I going to run with?"

Spencer said he gave up active participation in the sport in 1980, although he continues to watch racing on TV and rarely misses the Classic. In fact, he and his wife Barbara were getting their motorhome ready for the trip to Oswego as we talked.

"I had a lot of fun racing and I don't regret a minute of it," he said. "But it was 1980 and I had nothing. I really had nothing. It was time to settle down — to buy a house and put a life together."

And to ride his bike.

Norris McDonald writes about motorsport for Wheels. He can be reached at nmcdonald@thestar.ca

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