Career - Page 2

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Go-karts became the next focus for Terry’s interest in racing. In 1975 he raced them at the 13-turn dirt road course at Baja Raceway in Phoenix. He was one of the founding fathers of Arizona Kart Association and served as their first president. He won several open class championships along with the coveted 75-lap endurance race. Arizona Kart Association relocated their racing to Arrowhead 1/8 mile oval after the Baja Raceway property was sold. Terry raced karts there until a new challenge beckoned: sprint buggies. Bob Holmes asked Terry to fill in for him in at a sprint buggy race. He did well and his efforts were noticed by Mike and Debbie Davis. They had built a new sprint buggy and needed a full-time driver. He drove it the entire year. The following year Jack Woods, owner of Woods Wheel Works, asked Terry to drive his Evinrude outboard engine-powered sprint buggy.

 

Terry had just built Ken McIntyre a new off-road racecar. Ken asked him if he’d be interested in co-driving it with him and Terry jumped at the chance. The Air Force sponsored their car. Others he co-drove for include Bill Cookman and Roy Williams, racing at the Parker 400, Mint 400 and other off-road races. This led to co-driving the class 8 truck owned by Bill Howard (Howard Ditching) and built by P.J. Jones. Bill replaced this class 8 with one built by Walker Evans.

 

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Terry pit crewed on the Ken Sherwood super modified driven by ‘Tiger’ Gene Brown. He built Ken the championship super modified that Leroy Birdsong drove.

Next on the scene came ‘Madman’ Don Massetto, a veteran of midget racing in the 50’s. They teamed up and took turns driving Don’s midget until it was sold to Tony and Mark Passerelli. He drove it a few times until they were able to get Gene Brown in the car. Gene turned Terry onto the car owned by ‘Torch’ Larry Mudersbaugh (who preps the track at Manzanita Speedway) and Dave Henry. They ran the car for a few races but could never get the car to run correctly, so ended up selling it.

 

Terry returned to driving go-karts for a while. Soon he began driving a midget for long time car owner Bill Grigsby. In 1981 Terry was Rookie of the Year for the Mighty Midgets of Arizona, & was the first rookie to ever drive Bill’s car. Bill had fielded cars for Al Unser, Sr., Art Bisch, Robert Harrel, Wayne Weiler & Leland McSpadden. Terry raced the midget until the end of the 1982 season.

Terry took a race sabbatical and got interested in street rods. He built a 1934 Ford Tudor Sedan from the ground up. It featured many intricate body modifications, custom pain, Jag IRS suspension and a small block Chevy. He & wife Annie put over 50,000 miles on the car traveling all over the western states.

Next he built a 1940 Ford pick-up truck. Again this had many intricate body modifications and a fuel injected small block Chevy. He drove this daily in his new job with Bowman Distribution, selling maintenance supplies. Annie drove it occasionally to work also. He was the point person responsible for conducting pit tours for Bowman customers at the NASCAR races at PIR and California Speedway.

 

A 1957 Ford T-Bird had always been Annie’s dream car. So Terry started to build her one as a daily driver. But as usual, he got carried away. He sold off all the original engine and suspension parts, and replaced them with a 1991 Corvette suspension and a brand new Lincoln Mark VIII dual overhead cam engine. This was coupled to a Tremec 5-speed transmission. It has custom bucket seats and leather upholstery.

 

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