Noted road-course racer Dan Gurney won the event and Marvin Panch finished second to give Wood Brothers Racing a 1-2 finish in the Motor Trend 500 at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway.

 

The name of the fellow who climbed aboard the car in Greenville, South Carolina, however, has been lost in the mists of time.

 

Say what?

 

The year was 1964 and crew chief Leonard Wood, along with brother Ray, was transporting Panch’s No. 21 Ford across the country, returning from Riverside to the team’s shop in Stuart, Virginia.

 

After a brief stop for dinner in Greenville, the two resumed their journey, planning one more stop in Charlotte, North Carolina.

 

“People were standing around the car, it was 20 degrees,” Leonard Wood told NASCAR.com regarding the brief break for a quick meal just across the South Carolina state line. “Normally you’d stop and talk to them a little bit but it was so cold we just jumped in the truck, pulled away and left.”

 

The first sign that the two had picked up an uninvited passenger, Wood said, came about halfway between Greenville and Charlotte when their truck “started making this noise and we couldn’t figure out what it was.”

 

“Ray said ‘You can even feel it in the roof. It’s vibrating the roof!’ ” Leonard Wood recalled.

 

Initially, Wood said he thought the loud vibration was the result of a jet aircraft, “so I’m looking around to see if I could see an airport,” he said.

 

Neither crewman realized the vibration was coming from the race car, and the engine being revved wide open. But the noise soon stopped so the pair continued on up the road, unaware that a none-too-sober gentleman had climbed inside the race car back in Greenville during the food stop.

 

When they arrived in Charlotte for one final stop, Wood said the noise and vibration had resumed. And this time he realized it wasn’t coming from any aircraft. It was coming from the race car on the back of the open truck.

 

“I looked in the side mirror when we got off the highway and I saw steam coming out the exhausts of the race car,” he said. “I knew something was wrong and I told Ray to stop this thing.

 

“I saw what looked like a person in the car behind the wheel and I thought, ‘Man, one of the crew members is trying to pull a trick on me.’ Of course I bypassed that thought immediately because I thought ‘There’s no one on the crew that’s going to be stupid enough to get in that car as cold as it is.’

 

“I look in there and this guy’s got Marvin’s helmet on. I said ‘What do you think you’re doing in here?’ and he said ‘Let’s go!’ “

 

In the meantime, Ray Wood had gotten out of the truck, still unaware of the inebriated passenger. With help from Leonard they attempted to pull the unwanted fellow from behind the wheel.

 

“I said ‘We’ll let you go in a minute,’ grabbed ahold of him and jerked him out,” Leonard said. “He got his foot hung and was hollering and squalling. We turned him loose and he just settled back in there and got comfortable again. He had a little bit to keep him warm, liquid wise.”

 

As fate would have it, a local law enforcement officer happened by and stopped to see what was going on. After explaining the situation, the officer gave the “would-be racer” another ride — this one in the back of a patrol car.

 

Panch, who would go on to win three times that season for the Wood Brothers, had told Leonard after finishing second at Riverside that the motor had been about to blow near the end of the race.

 

“When I got home,” Wood said, “I said, ‘Marvin, that thing was good for another 100 miles!’

 

“But the funniest thing is Glen (Wood, team founder) had passed us in the station wagon and didn’t see the man in there.

 

“If he had, he would have had a heart attack.”