Dodge’s latest television commercial is a spot plugging their Durango SUV. Rather than showing the vehicle backing over a flower bed or slowly ambling up a crushed stone driveway, the spot shows two of them flying around an abandoned oval course called Brixton Speedway. Brixton Speedway is a fake place, but the Middle Georgia Raceway is real and what a whopper of a history it accumulated over the short time it was open.
Located in Byron, Georgia and surrounded by peach groves the track lived a short life of only five years. Opening in 1966 and closing in 1971 it was around to see NASCAR grow by leaps and bounds through the direct factory support of the Big 3 as they threw mechanical punches at each other on Sunday in an effort to gain customers on Monday. The NASCAR big boys raced their for five seasons with names like Petty, Alllison, Pearson, and Issac all getting wins at the track.
The most eventful race was the 1967 contest that saw federal authorities invade the track and expose an underground still that was literally in a bunker under turn three. The still was accessed by a trap door in the ticket booth that led to a 125ft tunnel which in turn led to the distillery! Apparently that still was running from day one of the track being operation and may have provided the owners more revenue than the races!
In 1970 a massive concert, The Atlanta Pop Festival was held at the facility and 300,000 people showed up! To put that in perspective, at the time, reports show that Byron had a population of about 3-4,000 people! This was literally a southern Woodstock and as best we can tell, there were no major issues and a good time was had by most.
The track hosted an event in early April that celebrated the history of the facility and shined a little light back on an interesting piece of NASCAR history. We believe that the commercial shoot came after that as they “aged” the walls, added the Brixton name and towed in some junked race cars to give the track a truly abandoned feel.
We dug the heck out of the “Imported from Detroit” Super Bowl ad. The message in this one carries on that same line. We’re a bit confused about Durangos running on a circle track, but overall, we think this is a cool ad!
Yeah, overall I thought it had a cool vibe, but with the 300, Charger, & Challenger still in the lineup how the hell did the Durango make the cut??
When I first saw that commercial I thought they were at the now defunct Saugus speedway north of Los Angeles.
Cool commercial. Saw it for the first time over the weekend, and thought it was another track out west, here in Canada!
But, yeah, why the Durangos? How cool would it have been to have two Chargers actually rubbing fenders.
If you had done your homework you would have discovered that Middle Georgia Raceway was in operation until 1984. Nine NASCAR cup races were run there with Petty winning 4, Bobby Allison 2, David Pearson 2 and Bobby Isaac 1. MGR hosted races for stock cars, sprint cars and the Atlanta Pop Festival. The moonshine still was underground but not under turn three..it was outside the track at turn 3. MGR was the fastest 1/2 mile asphalt oval on the NASCAR circuit during the late ’60’s and early ’70’s.
I find this ad an extremely dpressing reminder of Chrysler taking government money because they didn’t stand up to the unions. They aren’t even an American company anymore. Depressing, very depressing.
Dag nabbit good stuff you whipeprsanppers!
Cool commercial… but effin SUVs still blow chunks. Fugliest vehicles on the road today. What. They couldn’t find any Chargers or Challengers for the ad?!?
And poster #5, leave your political bullchit at home, eh?
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