Bruce Brantley: “A Complete Racer”


Short Track Savvy

By the late sixties, Brantley had put this Camaro body on a modified ’55 Chevy frame and began a successful assault on Georgia’s short tracks.

Later on Brantley realized he needed something to run the short tracks.

“That’s when I took the frame of my ’55 Chevrolet, cut a section out, moved the engine back an inch, dropped a 1967 Camaro body over the top, and welded it all back together,” he said.  “Now that car made me some money.  I ran it mostly at the Peach Bowl, Jefco, Macon and Middle Georgia.”

Brantley also built a couple of Chevy IIs, selling one to Harry Adams, who dominated at the dirt track in Albany, Georgia with drivers Skip Nichols and Thomas Hudson.

“The car was affectionately called ‘Captain America’,” Larry Adams, Harry’s brother, told us.  “Max Thompson of Alpharetta, Georgia painted it with candy apple red strips, cobwebs and such.  It really stood out in the crowd at tracks such as Albany, Panama City and Cordele Speedway.  My brother also was a very good driver, but with this Brantley car, he got instant success.”

“We took to Jefco a unibody Chevy II with a suspension Bruce designed,” Davis told us.  “It had a two-barrel carb, stock cast iron exhaust on a 327 engine and outran the field.  We were protested by runner-up Jody Ridley, who was driving an ex-Baby Grand Mustang with much more sophisticated equipment and a bigger motor.  Later that night, though, Ridley went home with his second place money.”

The Camaro was for all intent the last car Brantley personally built and drove, running it in the final event at the Peach Bowl in September of 1971.  Cleveland Electric Company bought the property from Roy Shoemaker in November of 1970 and later sold it to the city of Atlanta.

“I raced that car when T.C. Hunt and Ike Bowen leased it from the new owners and promoted the last event there,” Brantley said.  “Ironically, Mr. Shoemaker, who had operated the Peach Bowl for two decades, died in November of 1971, exactly one year after he sold it, and only a month or so after the track closed down.”

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