- May 6, 2024
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Volunteer Dan Smith, from the Motor Racing Heritage Association, is working to restore one of the cars at the Ormond Replica Garage.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Dan Smith watched the original Ormond Garage burn to the ground, back in 1976.
"I saw a ploom of black smoke," he said, "so I hopped in my truck. ... It was on the National Historic Register."
But now, Smith, a volunteer from the Motor Racing Heritage Association, is helping to restore not just antique beach racers but also what the former garage stood for.
In the Birthplace of Speed Park, Smith has been working in the Ormond Replica Garage a few hours three to four times a week to help restore a 1903 Olds Pirate replica, to remove the rust, fill in worn-out areas and repaint, to be showcased in the garage with another replica, a 1903 Winton Bullet, which is currently at a body shop and about 85% restored.
He expects work to be done on both in about two months.
"Monuments — they're not cars," Smith said, stepping back from his work in the warm garage, which smells of paint and raw metal. "But the salt air ate them up."
Neither of the cars to be housed in the garage have any working parts. They were purchased by the city in 2003, 100 years after the first documented race in Ormond's history, but removed from the park because of corrosion.
The Motor Racing Heritage Association built and donated the garage in order to give the city a safer home for the monuments. Today, Smith and a team of about four others, volunteer their time every week to make the past look shiny and new again, a trade Smith first learned when he was younger.
"When I was a kid, necessity was the mother of invention," he said, explaining that he started tinkering with cars in high school. And then when he got a bit older, he wanted a 1955 Chevrolet, just like the one he had as a kid. So he bought an old clunker and got to work.
A retired contractor, Smith has been restoring cars as far back as he can remember, he says, and he's always had a few antiques at home. It's a hobby, but he also occasionally makes a bit money off of it whenever he sells a restored car away to start on another.
"It's a labor of love," Smith said. " We just want to keep the history going."
