CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bill Elliott arrived on the scene after the careers of his fellow 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame classmates had already come to an end.
But the man who would become known as "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville" for his exploits on the track has much in common with Fred Lorenzen, Wendell Scott, Joe Weatherly and Rex White.
The five will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame tonight.
A familiar thread connects those who reside in the Hall, one that often includes humble beginnings, hardships and eventually success.
Elliott, 59, and his family are an integral part of that thread. George, the patriarch, ran a small building supply business in Dawsonville, Georgia. "A hole-in-the-wall deal," Bill says today. The elder Elliott also built race cars, helped other local racers and fielded entries in NASCAR as early as the 1960s.
"Daddy carried cars to Daytona in the early ’60s, he would carry two cars down there and run a Sportsman or a Modified or some kind of race," Elliott said.
Box vans used in the family business served as transporters for the race cars. "He’d back the trailer down there to the loading dock and he’d load them up in the van trailers and carry them down there, then try to find a place to unload them,” Elliott said.
"It was like the Clampetts went to Daytona."
It wasn’t much but as Elliott noted, it was a common sight among those who chose the stock car racing path at that time.
"Back then, such a different way of doing things. Anybody could come show up at Daytona with some kind of race car," he said.
"I think those are the things that I look back on and were so much fun early on. You go to our little garage down there, you could just throw something together. I remember going to one of the shops of one of the guys Daddy was helping. They were putting a ’63 Ford together. They had taken a car out of the junkyard, were taking the interior out and welding the roll bar in it, getting it ready to go. But I mean it was just a stock ’63 Ford. Whatever it came with, that’s what it had. And those days are gone."
Elliott made his first start in what is now NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series in 1976, driving for his family-run team that included brothers Ernie and Dan Elliott. But it wasn’t until ’82, when the team was purchased by businessman Harry Melling, that Elliott became an "overnight success."
By the time his career had ended (he made his last official start in 2012), Elliott had won 44 races, one series championship and was voted the series’ most popular driver 16 times.
His wins came on stages big and small — few bigger than the Daytona 500, which he won twice, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Southern 500 at rugged, old Darlington Raceway.
RELATED: Read Bill Elliott’s Hall of Fame capsule
It was at Darlington that Elliott officially picked up another moniker, "Million Dollar Bill" when a Southern 500 win in 1985 earned him the Winston Million bonus.
Elliott’s move into stardom coincided with a rise in speed on the race track. Before the advent of restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladega, speed grabbed headlines. And no one went faster than Elliott, who ended his career with 55 pole positions.
His qualifying mark of 212.809 mph at Talladega remains the fastest qualifying lap ever for a NASCAR event.
But that feat wasn’t the record that stands out in his mind, he said.
"If I was outside looking in at my career, the biggest thing that impresses me was running 210 (mph) at Daytona in 1987," Elliott said. "I sat there and I watched Cale (Yarborough) try to run just 200 (in 1983) and turn over off Turn 4. We came back, ran 205 in ’85 and we came back in ’87 and stepped it up five more mph average. That was with no technology. That was just the luck of the draw and the things we did at that point in time; that’s what really impressed me.
"When I first went there I think I ran 171 or something and I thought, ‘Man I’m out of control. How can you run any faster?’ "
Elliott’s induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame comes just as his son, 19-year-old Chase, prepares to begin his own Sprint Cup career. It was announced earlier this week that Chase would run five Sprint Cup races for Hendrick Motorsports this season, then take over the organization’s No. 24 Chevrolet when four-time champion Jeff Gordon steps down at year’s end.
RELATED: Gordon: Chase is the ‘total package’
The younger Elliott didn’t witness a lot of his father’s exploits as they took place. But he’s relived them through video replays.
"There were a lot of races where he took it to ’em, man," Chase Elliott said. "He wore them out. That’s cool to look back on and see.
"I have a lot of respect for what he has done and for what they did. To do it with what they had (at the time) was very, very impressive. I think a lot of people let that slip by.
"They were kind of on their own there in Georgia and a lot of people don’t realize that. They didn’t have a lot of help; they didn’t have a big team. It was just them. It’s very, very impressive to see what they were able to do."
