Successful Times

Wise at Toccoa Speedway in Toccoa, Georgia with his first modified, a 1935 Chevy coupe with a fuel injected Chevy engine.

Herman’s second and even more successful super modified was highly influenced by the one in which Wayne McGuire was so successful (profiled in the April 1993 issue of Open Wheel). Herman used a Chevrolet engine instead of a Pontiac like Wayne. With this car, Herman traveled into Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. He won wherever he went, whether on dirt or asphalt.

Herman drove for other car owners at times and built cars for other people. His supers were not legal at a lot of tracks in North Georgia and he filled empty weekends in the seats of other owner’s cars. The frame he fabricated to copy Wayne’s car was actually copied three times. He sold the other two to pay for the third. Both of these cars were successful on the local scene. In the mid-sixties, he helped George Elliott, Bill Elliott’s dad, build a 1932 Ford sedan with a 289 Ford (of course!) to run at sportsman races in Athens, Gainesville and Cumming, Georgia. Later in the sixties, they teamed on a 1964 Ford Fastback for the Permatex race run in February in Daytona. This car was also raced at Lakewood.

Wise winning at Atlanta's Peach Bowl Speedway around 1962.

One of the many friends Herman made while racing was Johnny Ardis of Mobile, Alabama. One time, Herman drove Johnny’s super-modified sprinter in the Mobile 300 at Mobile International Speedway in the mid-sixties. Donnie Allison normally drove the car. In the spring of 1968, Herman won a super sprint race at Byron, Georgia’s Middle Georgia Raceway in the Ardis car.

At this same race, that had a lot of IMCA sprinters in it, were Floyd Trevis and his mechanic Ted Swanteck. They were running a USAC sprinter for Bob Zeigler of Zennopolis, Pennsylvania. Bob was a highly successful cabinet manufacturer in Western Pennsylvania. Herman was asked to come to the famed Reading Fairgrounds for the USAC 1968 lid lifter. Herman, remembering the incident years later recalled, “I didn’t even have a driver’s uniform. I had to borrow one from another driver.”

Herman and the team followed the full USAC sprint car circuit in the East and Midwest that year and finished twelfth in the final standings. During that year, he moved his family to Indianapolis until after the awards banquet in the late autumn. During the winter, they returned to North Georgia.