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*"THE CARS AND STARS OF YESTERYEAR"*

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TRASH TO TREASURE
While the harsh winter of 2013-14 hasn't been good to many, that wasn't the case for the boys at Hidden Valley Motorsports. The story starts a couple of years ago when STAR 2013 Modified Rookie of the year, Gregg Massini found a 1985 Banjo Matthews Pontiac Grand Prix Winston Cup car on ebay. After talking to racing partner David Moulthrop, the two decided that as bad as the looked in pictures it might have some potential. Gregg made an offer to the owner after the car failed to get any bids and to their amazement the offer was accepted with the then owner agreeing to hold the car until a plan to get it home from Florida was worked out. The car was being prepared for the 1985 Daytona 500 in the Tampa, Florida area but never made it to the track as it's past owners ran into trouble with the law, which forced the car into storage. According to the story they were told when David went to look at the car while on business in Daytona, the former owners received a substantial jail sentence and the car was stripped of many of it's major components before finding its way to a salvage yard where it was discovered by a Hot Rod Shop that had restored many stock cars in the past. The project got scrapped when they also discovered a land speed record Thunderbird from the Beach Days of Daytona and decided to move to that project and sell the Pontiac to help fund the Thunderbird restoration. As fate would have it a local moving company just down the road from Gregg's shop had a load going to Florida with no return load and agreed to bring the car back for a very reasonable fuel cost. The car was disassembled and stripped before it got put on the back burned when Gregg bought the current number 19 Vega Wagon Modified from Rick MacDowell and turned his attention to get that car race ready to run with STAR.. When the racing season neared completion it was decided to turn the attention to the Pontiac with Dave Wright ( crew chief on 19) taking on restoring the much neglected a severely rusted body will John Paruta took to the mechanical restoration with Gregg and David taking on the financial and parts finding chores. After close to 1000 hours of labor anda yet to figured amount of money, the Tim Richmond Tribute Car as presented for the 1985 Daytona was completed in late March. The car was restored as a Super Speedway car and rebuilt with out power steering as was the norm in 1985 so the car will not see much short track action but should be on display at many vintage events in 2014.

Tim Richmond Daytona 1985	The Way the Car Was Found

Stripping Began	The Final Project - Completely Restored