There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned promotional film from the late 1960s to brighten our day around here and this is one of the best. The opening sequence alone is freaking awesome with Parnelli Jones ripping around a road course with his Ford FE big block roaring away. Moving right into the 24 Hours of Daytona, we see Jerry Titus, we see Ford GT40s, and we see the Camaro of Mark Donohue getting stomped. The stoic voice of the narrator seems to have little more pop in it when relaying that information.
The close documentation of Cale Yarborough at the 1968 Daytona 500 is great. Seeing his toothy grin, seeing him signing autographs for kids, and seeing him wrestle his car to a (spoiler alert!) win at the event, you know that the filmmakers were high living after that moment. From there we follow the rigors of the NASCAR world at Atlanta and Riverside, and other tracks as well.
The Baja portion of the flick is amazing because as gnarly as it is today, back then it was literal physical torture. The rigs are awesome to look at but there could not have been a single person that finished that race without bleeding kidneys. Absolutely freakin’ crazy.
51 years ago, here’s how it went down…and man do we wish we were there to see it!
