O. Bruton Smith

  b. 1927 | American racetrack developer

At The Bottom

— 1961

Broke and discouraged, Smith declared bankruptcy and left North Carolina altogether in 1962.

As a car dealer, Ollen Bruton Smith had grown accustomed to the ups and downs of a life in business, but nothing could have prepared him for the disappointment of watching his first racetrack fail within two years.  There had been problems with the project from the very beginning, when Smith teamed up with a lumber baron and stock car driver named Curtis Turner to build a facility in Charlotte, North Carolina to host contests sponsored by the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR).  As a child, Smith had dreamed of racing cars for a living and was racing and promoting stock car events by the age of 18.  He quit the sport at his mother’s request, explaining years later that “She started praying I would stop.  You can’t fight your mom and God, so I stopped driving.” Still, Smith loved the sport and continued to work as a regional promoter.  When the chance came to build a new “superspeedway” in Charlotte, Smith jumped in with both feet.  Financed by Smith’s wealthy brother-in-law, the project broke ground in 1959.  Within a few weeks, excavation workers had struck a massive slab of solid granite — a half million square yards of it — that increased the cost of the speedway by hundreds of thousands of dollars.  When the track opened the following year, the surface crumbled after a few races.  Combined with poor turnout, the costly repairs sent the shareholders into a mad frenzy, leading to Smith being ousted from the company.  Broke and discouraged, Smith declared bankruptcy and left North Carolina altogether in 1962.  The Speedway was turned over to a wealthy furniture dealer, and Smith headed off to Illinois.