RPW Column: Jerry Wildrick’s Fifth Vintage Dirt Car Nearing Completion

RPW Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – NEWTON, NJ – In the sport of racing, there’s always going to be a debate about who is the best or at the top of the list. But when it comes to producing Vintage Cars, nobody does it like Jerry Wildrick.

His first four cars are fabulous and his fifth car is just about complete.

Jerry is a quiet, shy type of individual He really does not want to be in the limelight. When he brings his cars to an event, he just prefers to unload them and sit back and just relax and watch while people enjoy them. But his contributions to the sport have been fantastic in recent years. And the story behind one of his cars is truly heartwarming.

Jerry first got his interest in racing at a young age. Coming home from an air show in Pennsylvania with his family, they stopped for ice cream and they could hear the roar from the engines at the nearby Nazareth Raceway. They went in and checked out the action. From that point, the family would often travel up to the Orange County Fair Speedway to take in the weekly racing.

Jerry started racing himself in 1986, driving a former Leroy Amy #27. He raced until he married his wife Melissa in 1993. Around 2005, Melissa started a small farm with goats and that eventually included a donkey, a miniature horse and two horses. Jerry decided if that was her hobby, then he was going to get back into racing competition as his hobby.

In 2005, he bought a pair of Olsen cars to race at Moc-A-Tek, he wanted to keep his racing low key. But when Moc-A-Tek closed, Jerry took his cars up to OCFS.

Jerry had a pair of rough crashes in 2009, one in the first turn and a very hard hit in the 3rd turn. Jerry suffered some cracked vertebrae in his back and neck from that 2nd crash, it was a tremendous hit. The cars were rebuilt for 2010. Despite racing the full 2010 season, it just wasn’t fun for him anymore, so he ended his driving career.

With his driving career finished, Jerry still wanted to have a hobby. He thought it would be nice to put together a vintage car to have in his garage. So he started buying some vintage stuff and stored it in his garage.

“When I started, I really only wanted one car,” Jerry said. “I thought it would be great for on a Sunday afternoon to sit in the garage, have a cold beer and just look at a vintage car.”

“I had a friend that used to go into upstate New York and pick up car shells like Pintos and Gremlins,” Jerry said. “He brought back a Falcon shell and I bought it from him for $500. I had an old Troyer sitting around, so I decided to do a Tom Hager #43. I always thought Hager’s car was cool looking. I took the Troyer and Falcon body to Bill Lowden Sr.’s shop and asked him to make it as close to Hager’s car as he could.”

The #43 Hager car made it’s debut at the Orange County Fair Speedway’s 2013 Nostalgia Night and it was a huge hit with the fans.

Soon after, Jerry came across a ’35 Chevy sedan. He traded one of his older Olsen cars for that shell.

“I always thought the Lou Inzeo #80 sedan (with driver Bob Pickell) was the best looking one out there,” Jerry said. “It was another project that I put into Bill Lowden Sr.’s hands and he along with his son, Billy Jr. did a great job with it.”

“Joe Sulpy did the painting on the car and what a job he did,” Jerry said. “He used some type of yellow dust and painted the burnt orange over top of it. When the sun hits it, you see a yellow and gold glow. It was the same process that Joe had done for Lou back in 1972. We went to great lengths to get this one as accurate as possible.”

That car made it’s debut at the 2015 OCFS Nostalgia Night. And like the Hager car, it was another huge hit. It brought so much joy to Lou and the Inzeo family to see what Jerry and his team had assembled.

Jerry’s 3rd car is the Henry Verity #76, driven by Bruce Hooper in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

“When I was still racing, I found out that the original car was for sale,” Jerry said. “I went to look at it and I bought it, The car was pretty much intact. Some pieces from the inner body had to be replaced. It is the only one of my cars that is the original.”

“Scott Kania did the original lettering on the 76,” Jerry said. “I thought it would be neat for him to do it again. And Scott thought that was really cool because the 76 was the first car that he ever lettered. And again, he did a great job.”

The 76 made it’s debut at the 2016 OCFS Nostalgia Night and like Jerry’s others, it was once again well received. So many fans at nostalgia type racing events like to see the cars in the way that they were in the past and reminisce about those days of racing. After three cars, some may have wondered if that was the last of Jerry’s cars. But he wasn’t done by a long shot and the next car has such a great story behind it.

“The first car I bought after I quit racing I got from South Jersey, a mid 70’s Tobias,” Jerry said. “It sat out there for years and years and I really didn’t know what to do with it.”

“I didn’t know Bob ‘Shelly’ Shoenberger at all, I had never met him,” Jerry said. “But I had always read about what a great guy he was. I heard that he had cancer and that his outlook was uncertain. I called him up and introduced myself to him. I made him a deal. I told him that when he beat the cancer, I would do a replica of his #43 Vega. I wanted to give him something to shoot for, some incentive to push ahead.”

Bob beat the cancer and along with Jerry, they went to work to gather the necessary pieces for the #43. It was going well until Jerry and Bob could not find a proper Vega roof.

“We found hatchback roofs for a Vega, but it just wasn’t what we needed,” Jerry said. “We both searched for 2 years. I even got swindled by someone in Oklahoma for $600. He took my money and I never heard from him again. After that, I told Bob that it was over, we just couldn’t find the correct parts and the project was no longer active. Bob was okay with that because he knew how hard we had looked for the roof.”

“But I never stopped looking and finally, without Bob’s knowledge, I found the correct roof out in Texas,” Jerry said. “I had it sent to me and Billy Lowden Jr. started to work on the car. I gave this information to Bob’s wife Donna and we agreed that we would give Bob a big surprise upon it’s completion.”

Very few people knew that the project was once again active except for those few people involved with it’s production along with Donna and the Shoenberger’s daughters.

At the 2018 OCFS Nostalgia Night, the #43 was unloaded and covered up. Nobody wanted any pictures of the car showing up on social media until Bob’s arrival. When Bob and Donna made it to the track, he still had no idea what he was walking into. The cover up for the project had worked to perfection. When Bob rounded the corner of the building and he saw the #43 sitting under the tent, his reaction was priceless.It was a great moment for all of us who were there at OCFS that day to see Bob’s shocked expression and to see the sheer joy that he and Donna had that night. It was so great that Jerry was able to keep his promise to Bob and complete this car. It just shows the type of awesome person that Jerry is.

Jerry’s latest project is a throwback to his first ever car he raced back in 1986. the former Leroy Amy #27.

“The #27 back then had a whole sheet metal body. I always liked the look of the Grant King cars and the similar looking Harraka cars,” Jerry said. “The car we used for this one at one time belonged to Tom Unagst. It was sold to Bob Banghart and I bought it at a good price from Wyatt Jacobus. Once Shelly’s car was done, I wanted to do a Harraka duplicate.”

“Jay Aten did the fabrication on this car from start to finish,” Jerry said. “I showed him a photo of what I wanted and he’s gone to great lengths to get all of the measurements proper. Bob Cosgrove, who has done the lettering on 3 of my other cars, matched the lettering from the photos spot on. All of his lettering on all three cars has been fantastic.”

In addition to the great thing he did for Shelly, Jerry has been involved for many years keeping alive the memory of a race fan who was lost too soon.

“I only met Marky Traverse once when I invited his family down to my shop to see the Hager car,” Jerry said. “He touched my heart and I was heartbroken when I learned that he had passed away. I just felt that I wanted to do something for him and his family.’

For years, Jerry along with his business, Fredon Development Industries (FDI) of Newton, NJ along with Melissa’s business, Salon Bleu of Augusta, NJ, sponsored the Marky Traverse Menorial Race for the OCFS Street Stock division. It was so much appreciated by the competitors and the Traverse family.

There have been occasions when Jerry has towed 4 cars up to OCFS for the Nostalgia Night festivities. Jerry has a great group of people who will always lend him a hand to get his cars to the track, unloaded and displayed then loaded back up and transported back to New Jersey. Jerry’s group includes his sister, Lee Wildrick-Ziegler and her husband Nelson and Jerry’s nephews Corey and Travis Ziegler.

With the Covid 19 restrictions still in place, it is unclear when the public will get it’s first opportunity to see the latest of Jerry’s cars. But when that day comes, it will once again be another great day for those fans to love to look back at days gone by when it was rare to see two cars looking exactly the same.

Jerry likes to downplay what he has done for the sport with not only his driving career, but with his group of vintage cars and his memorial race sponsorship. But his contributions cannot be overlooked. When these vintage type cars of his and other vintage cars show up at an event, they become the centerpieces for the evening. Many times at a Nostalgia Night, many fans don’t see much of the on track racing. They are having too much enjoyment just being out on the midway, hanging out with the cars, talking with the drivers, owners and even with other fans of about a great era of racing. And Jerry’s contributions have been tremendous and I thank him for what he has done for the sport.