Former NASCAR team owner Bud Moore's garage in Spartanburg destroyed by fire

Losing NASCAR history is always sad. In this case, it was a place of interest rather than a specific artifact.

On Monday evening in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the shop once used by former team owner Bud Moore was heavily damaged by fire and is a total loss. Located on North Fairview Drive, the abandoned building was the former home of Bud Moore Engineering, dating back to the early 1960s when he fielded Fords in NASCAR’s then-Grand National Series when Joe Weatherly first began driving his cars.

A police officer driving through the area at around 11:15 p.m. Monday evening saw smoke coming from the building and dispatched fire department personnel to the scene. Within minutes, the structure was engulfed just as fire trucks arrived. Firefighters worked until 4 a.m. to fully extinguish the blaze.

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Many race fans who live in the Spartanburg area most certainly have passed by the building countless times and didn’t realize what was once housed there. They also possibly didn’t realize that so many auto racing greats had strolled around the hallowed ground to talk strategy, possibly turn wrenches on the cars that were once kept there or were there to be fitted for race seats being bolted into cars set to be taken to the next race on the schedule.

Moore also collected four SCCA Trans-Am wins out of the building in 1967 with Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney and Peter Revson; three wins with Jones and George Folmer in 1969 and an SCCA Series championship with Jones in 1970. Tiny Lund also won NASCAR’s Grand Touring championship with driver Tiny Lund with Moore in 1968.

Moore had not operated a race team out of the building since leaving NASCAR’s Cup Series in 2000. All told, his team collected 63 victories in NASCAR competition with his final victory as a team owner coming on May 16, 1993, at Sonoma, California, with driver Geoff Bodine. Through the late 1990s, Moore ran a limited schedule of races until his final start coming with driver Ted Musgrave on April 16, 2000, at Talladega Superspeedway.

Moore died on Nov. 27, 2007, at the age of 92. NASCAR was formed in 1948 and Moore quickly found a spot in the sport after serving in World War II. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943 at 18 just after graduating high school in Spartanburg. His role in the military was that of machine gunner assigned to the 90th Infantry Division.

Only a year into his military service, he was part of more than two million American and Allied forces involved with the D-Day invasion, the largest military exercise in history.

Moore earned two Bronze Star Medals for heroic actions and five Purple Hearts for being injured in combat by war’s end in 1945. Those medals were given because of his bravery and the suffering he sustained from four shrapnel wounds and the fifth wound from bullet fire. He was humble about his military service, citing that he simply served his country proudly.

When it came to racing, Moore often referred to himself as “a country mechanic" who loved to “make ‘em run fast.”

All told, Moore entered 958 NASCAR Cup Series races and logged 298 top-fives, 463 top-10s and 43 pole positions with some of the greatest drivers in NASCAR. Those names include Bobby Allison, David Pearson, Buddy Baker, Dale Earnhardt, Ricky Rudd, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough and Weatherly, to name only a few.

Teamed with Weatherly, they won eight races in 1961 and 12 times during their back-to-back championship seasons. Weatherly died on January 19, 1964, during a race at Riverside International Raceway while driving a Mercury for Moore on the road course there. Weatherly was going through a turn and crashed hard on the driver’s side of his car when his brakes failed.

Moore did not win another NASCAR title during his career but did finish second in points with Allison in 1978.

Allison drove in four NASCAR races for Moore in 1967 and then returned to Moore’s team for full schedules in 1978, 1979 and 1980. Together, they added 92 starts and collected 14 of Allison’s 84 career victories in his cars.

Moore’s greatest victory came when Allison drove to victory in the 1978 Daytona 500. That weekend, Allison had been involved in a crash in one of two 125-mile qualifying races and suffered heavy damage to the team’s No. 15 Ford. Moore’s crew worked two days to make repairs and came back to score the organization’s biggest triumph.

Allison, now 86, recalled driving for Moore and spending time in the Bud Moore Engineering shop that now sits in ruins.

“These days, NASCAR shops are huge, state-of-the-art facilities that we only dreamed of in our era of racing,” Allison said. “Bud’s shop was certainly spacious and adequate. It was a place where cars were built and rebuilt and made to race. Engines were also built there as well. I would go and meet with Bud in his office there at times. I didn’t know the shop had burned until a reporter called me and told me about it and hearing the news makes me sad.

“We had great success out of that shop, as did other drivers, such as Buddy Baker, Dale Earnhardt, Ricky Rudd and many others. Bud hadn’t raced out of there for many years. Still, it was a part of NASCAR history. I just hate that it happened. It’s too bad the building was lost. I have great memories of cars being built and raced out of that place.”

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NASCAR garage of Bud Moore lost in fire after housing cars for legends