Now that Dave Marcis has retired from NASCAR, he splits his time between Camp 28, a resort hotel complete with restaurant in Rib Lake, Wis., and his street-rod business that's housed in his former Arden, N.C., race shop.

Wait a second. Dave Marcis owns a restaurant? Could this be the same Dave Marcis whose appetite is legendary in racing circles? The same Dave Marcis who's been asked to leave more than one buffet, for fear he might shut the place down? Yep. Same guy. Let's put it this way. Dave Marcis with a restaurant isn't much different than turning the keys of the bank over to Al Capone.

That's an irony of ironies if ever there was one, huh?

"Yeah, I guess so," Marcis said with a laugh.

Camp 28 was first a logging camp that operated from 1881 through 1948 that now consists of a bar, hotel ... and the restaurant. The decor maintains the history of the place, with old logging pictures, saws and other assorted items.

The resort suits Marcis perfectly. Both are decidedly old school. Racing, on the other hand, has become so decidedly new school that it's hard to recognize from Marcis' heyday.

"There's no characters any more," Marcis said. "That's the impression that I hear from the customers ... the fan base. Everybody likes to be a cookie-cutter image of each other and keep their mouth shut."

For his last win, at Richmond in February 1982, Marcis collected all of $19,145. These days, most drivers probably make that in a weekend at their souvenir rigs. The sport has taken a different -- and richer -- direction since Marcis last visited Victory Lane.

"The financial part of it, for drivers and crew members, is certainly better than it's ever been from what I hear and see," Marcis said.

Although Marcis has been involved in the IROC program for years as a test driver, he doesn't seem to be a big fan of the Car of Tomorrow because it doesn't allow for creativity and a manufacturer's brand identity.

"We're just trying to get the cars too alike," Marcis said. "We're taking some of the creativeness away from the sport, that I think made the sport grow. Years ago, it was always a big deal, especially if somebody switched brands. Now, we're losing a little bit of the brand identity with all the common templates.

"When Richard Petty went from Chrysler products to Ford, that was a big, big thing with racing fans nationwide. It was the same thing when Junior Johnson brought Chevrolet back. They had been out for a long period of time. That was all big news. I guess I always wonder how good the race is gonna be if every car is identical, and nobody can be creative and do things on their own."

Marcis won a total of five races during his career, and finished second to Richard Petty for the 1975 championship. What an era it was, with characters abounding throughout the sport.

"I guess we all were [characters] in one way or another," Marcis said. "Cale [Yarborough] had his ways, and Richard did. I did, too. Bobby Allison, Neil Castles, John Sears, Clyde Lynn, Cecil Gordon ... everybody had different goals and sometimes were not in it to truly be racers.

"They were in it to make a living. They loved the sport and they could make some money doing it. We never made the money that you get today, but it's still all relative. What we had to spend was big money in those days. It was harder to come by then."

Between his businesses, trying to sneak in some fishing, deer and turkey hunting and testing for IROC, Marcis stays busy. It's a far cry from his days as the last of NASCAR's full-time independents, when he struggled to make it from one race to the next, one season to the next.

It would be hard, he says, for someone to follow in his footsteps today.

"I hate to discourage anybody from trying," Marcis began. "NASCAR's intentions with the new Car of Tomorrow is to kind of help the little guys, but the cost involved, I don't know if a little guy could make it through that. The number of hours involved that you would have to work to make it would be very, very demanding.

"I don't know how many people as individuals today would want to do that. It takes so much more today than it took in my era because ... you've gotta move so many people. The professionalism of the sport -- the pit crews, the cars, aerodynamics, everything -- you can't accomplish with three or four people any more."

If Marcis could change anything about his career, he might not have concentrated so singularly on making it to every race. He would maybe have picked certain events, and concentrated on running competitively rather than simply making the starting grid. Still, he seems satisfied with the way he did play his cards.

"I think what I accomplished, the way I did it and the money I had to do it with, I personally think I done very well," Marcis concluded. "I think that I was a good racecar driver, a hard racecar driver. I never gave up. I raced hard every lap ... harder than I should have in a lot of instances.

"A lot of people said I raced them too hard, even if I was a lap or two down. But I always had hopes of getting that lap back and getting some better finishes. I believed that the spectators came to see a race, and I raced. I always put my heart and soul in it, and I raced hard, hard, hard all the time."