Sherry Chandler

National Dirt Late Model Hall Of Fame

Morgan Chandler (left) with driver Billy Teegarden in 1973 at Northern Kentucky Speedway. Photo by Mike Roland.

This Saturday, at the Florence Speedway in Union, Kentucky, my brother Morgan Chandler will be officially inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall Of Fame. Here’s Bill Holder’s write-up from Stock Car Racing:

Morgan Chandler’s was a shining career that lasted through two decades (1965-1985) as a car owner and showed a total of 189 victories with an impressive collection of 20 talented drivers, half of them already in the Hall of Fame.

This was not a full-time deal for Chandler, though, as he also had a regular job.

“Didn’t get much sleep during many of those years, sometimes getting home in time to go to work,” he says.

It was a time, says Chandler, when the driver was a lot more important than the car, quite different from today.

“There is a lot more technology today, but there are still similarities,” he says. “Heck, I used to have the left-front tire up just like today.”

Chandler laughs when he recalls that he once built a 539-cubic-inch engine derived from a 427 truck engine. “It made about 750 hp, something that small block engines can make today,” he says.

Through most of his career, he converted street cars to build his racecars. His built his first car from the ground up in 1978.

Chandler says that he ran with NASCAR in 1968 at Clay City Speedway, Kentucky. It was a dirt track, of course, but he also competed on pavement, using his dirt cars rather than a purpose-built pavement car. “Won a big race on the paved Dayton (Ohio) Speedway,” he recalls.

His top driver was Floyd Gilbert, and they won 27 races in a row and 42 overall in 1972 and ‘73. And there was Ralph Latham, who was behind the wheel of a Chandler car for 25 wins in 1970.

More at Dirt Fans. A couple of his drivers talk about working with him, too: Billy Teegarden, Flyin’ Floyd Gilbert

There is also a nice write-up about Morgan in the local paper, but it doesn’t seem to be posted online yet. In the article, he says that the sport has been taken over by professionals now, that amateurs such as he could no longer compete.

Chandler’s 1973 Camaro, #28, in its party clothes at the 1973 Cavalcade of Customs.

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