Best Damn Garage in Town
The World According to Smokey Yunick
Ask people who have been around the racing world for sometime about Smokey Yunick and some of the responses you get will include iconoclastic, brilliant, sneaky, uncooth, talented, foul-mouthed, irreverent and womanizer. There is very little that people will agree upon when it comes to Smokey Yunick, except for the fact that he was always entertaining.
With this in mind, it is somewhat ironic that shortly after his death, his magnum opus memoirs “Best Damn Garage in Town: The World According to Smokey Yunick” should be released to the world. And when we say magnum opus, we mean magnum with a capital “M.” Throughout his life, Smokey was never shy about saying what was on his mind and this three-book box set certainly reflects that.
The three books – with subtitles like “All Right You Sons-a-Bitches, Let’s Have a Race!” – comprise Smokey’s experiences, thoughts, prejudices and miscellaneous ramblings on his time in stock car racing, Indy racing, as an inventor and his personal life from literally birth to death.
With surprisingly few photos across the 1,078 pages of text, I have to confess to being somewhat intimidated about wading through that many pages of autobiography. But I have to give Smokey credit where credit is due, I’ve had a hard time putting it down. Granted you can’t always tell what of it is truth and what of it is b.s., but it is immensely entertaining nonetheless. In an era of political correctness, Smokey leaves no taboo untouched and no major racing personality unexamined. If your sensibilities are easily offended, this may not be the book for you. As Smokey himself warns on the first page, “This book is written in ‘Old Southern Racing English.’ Anyone under the age of 18 should read this in the company of a grandfather race fan…”
While he does have a tendency to repeat himself and ramble on a bit on certain topics, his outlandish stories and no-holds-barred descriptions of some of the great names in the last 50 years of the automobile and motor racing make for fun reading.
Available from Carbon Press as a boxed set for $95 or a signed and numbered box set for $275. Call (866) 766-5392 or go to www.smokeyyunick.com
