Yahoo Autos Meet the ‘57 Chevy “Black Widow” NASCAR Saved, Barely, From The Crusher
Jack Smith might have accumulated more than 20 wins over a 15-year career in NASCAR, but he recalled his losses, his parts failures, and his crashes with far more clarity. That trait led one enthusiast to the discovery and restoration of one of the few remaining Black Widow 1957 Chevrolets, a car scheduled to cross the auction block next January.
Smith, an Illinois native, had competed in the first NASCAR race in 1949, but his racing career had a slow start. It wasn’t until 1956 that he notched his first win or earned more than a couple grand in winnings. That would all change in 1957 when Nalley Chevrolet in Atlanta—acting on behalf of, ultimately, Chevrolet itself—handed Smith the keys to his No. 47 fuel-injected 1957 Chevrolet 150.
As the calendar flipped from 1956 to 1957, Nalley found itself at the hub of a hubbub of clandestine activity. No less than Vince Piggins, Chevrolet performance engineer and the man who led Hudson to NASCAR championships in the early 1950s, had set up shop at Nalley under a venture named Southern Engineering and Development Company and had begun development of a super-duty race car for the 1957 NASCAR season.
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Piggins started with a Model 1512 utility sedan, a version of the 150 two-door sedan that Chevrolet introduced for 1957 and that came without a back seat and with fixed rear windows; at 3,168 pounds it was the lightest car Chevrolet offered that year. For a powertrain, he specified the fuel-injected 283-cu.in. V-8—factory rated at 283 horsepower but blueprinted and tweaked to 310 to 315 horsepower—a Saginaw close-ratio three-speed manual transmission, and a 3.90 gear in the rear axle.
According to George Swartz, 1957 Chevrolet expert and owner of the Jack Smith car, Piggins beefed up the chassis using heavy-duty springs, six-lug rear axle, spindles and brakes meant for the heavy-duty limousine version of the Chevrolet passenger car, a thicker radiator from a Buick or Cadillac, a 20-gallon gas tank from Chevrolet’s taxi version, and four additional shock absorbers. Piggins added Fenton cast-iron exhaust manifolds and ran the exhaust through the frame rails, then gusseted or braced just about everything he could.
A thousand other modifications, from the bolster on the bench seat to the cage meant to keep the fan from plowing into the radiator in an accident, added to the car’s durability and longetivity on the track.
Chevrolet itself couldn’t build the cars directly for the teams racing Chevrolets in NASCAR. Following the disaster at Le Mans in 1955, organized racing around the world became suddenly less popular, and with the folks in Washington, D.C., talking of banning racing outright, the folks at Chevrolet knew to take a low profile.
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Thus the company shipped a number of Model 1512s to Nalley Chevrolet, where Hugh Babes and Dale Swanson at SEDCO then worked to prepare them according to Piggins’s modifications. Exactly how many Chevrolet sent to Nalley and in what configurations nobody knows, but SEDCO ultimately built five for Daytona and as many as 15 to 20 by the season’s end. Nor does anybody know who came up with the cars’ long-lasting nickname: the Black Widow.
Jack Smith racing in 1957 at Daytona. Photo: Racing One/Getty Images
Smith didn’t finish at Daytona, but he went on to a breakout year at the wheel of his No. 47 Black Widow, finishing 25 of 40 races and winning four. He also crashed out twice, and while SEDCO was able to supply Smith with a fresh car after each crash, it did so by stripping the crashed car of most of its heavy-duty parts before sending the bare hulk off to a wrecker.
Smith finished fifth in the standings that year, and for the first time in his life accumulated more than $10,000 in winnings—more than he’d made in the previous seven years combined. (Though he didn’t win any of the six races he entered in the convertible series that year, he did net another $2,200 in winnings from that series.)
Jack Smith in 1957. Photo: Racing One/Getty Images
SEDCO, only a paper company to begin with, dissolved in June 1957, not long after Chevrolet joined the Automotive Manufacturers Association’s ban on automakers’ official support of motorsports activities. For the rest of the season, the Chevrolet teams were more or less on their own, though Nalley continued to support them.
After 1964 Smith retired, and until 1990 or so, nobody apparently asked him for the whereabouts of the Black Widow he crashed. Not, at least, until Swartz found himself in South Carolina helping out a friend with a Chevrolet fuel injection unit and met Smith, who was then running a transmission shop.
“He took me to meet this old guy in Georgia who had a sort of junkyard behind his house with about 20 other race cars there,” Swartz said. “The old guy wouldn’t sell nothing—every one of them he was gonna restore.”
As it turned out, the old guy had the wrecker contract with the Atlanta Speedway during the Fifties and got paid in the old cars he towed away for the speedway and, presumably, for Nalley Chevrolet.
The old guy wasn’t long for this earth at that time, either; Swartz said the only way he was able to prise the banged-up black-and-white ‘57 Chevrolet out of that junkyard was to intervene during the narrow window after the junkyard owner’s death and before the rest of the cars were sold for scrap.
He knew he had the right car, though: an actual Black Widow. Despite the damaged right side and the missing drivetrain and other goodies, Swartz noted the additional straps for the bigger gas tank and the additional crossmembers welded to the frame, among other minor modifications.
He took the car back to his home in West Chester, Ohio, and began to carefully gather all the right parts from swap meets, parts hoarders, and even from Smith himself. “Jack had the center crossmember—the one that bolts in—in the back of his shop,” Swartz said. “He told me, 'I don’t know why I kept it, but I did.’”
Perhaps most important, Smith introduced Swartz to Bradley Dennis, one of the principals at SEDCO, who not only provided some authentic Black Widow parts but also firsthand accounts of how SEDCO built the cars and advice on how to go about authenticating and restoring one.
Swartz completed the restoration in about 1998 and shortly afterward took the car, swathed in No. 47 livery, to Smith’s shop to let him inspect it and even drive it around. Since then, Swartz has shown it a number of times, including at the 2012 Ault Park Concours, where he took first in class among the race cars.
Facing retirement, Swartz said it’s now time to downsize his collection so he and his wife can focus on traveling. He’s already pared the collection down from 21 cars to the six Corvettes and six 1957 passenger cars he currently owns, and he recently consigned the Black Widow and six other cars to Barrett-Jackson’s 2016 Scottsdale auction. Among those other cars are the serial number 1 1955, 1956, and 1957 Corvettes as well as a 1957 El Morocco.
While other cars in the group will have a reserve, the Black Widow won’t. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I’m going to miss it—even with the El Morocco, the Black Widow gets the most attention—but whatever it sells for is whatever it sells for.” Of course, estimating what a Black Widow will sell for isn’t that easy: Swartz said he figures perhaps two or three Black Widows remain these days, though he’s never seen another one personally, and he doesn’t know how long it’s been since an authentic Black Widow has changed hands.
Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction will take place January 24 to January 31. For more information, visit Barrett-Jackson.com
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