NASCAR HOF inductee Rex White made more money selling cars than driving them
Rex White says he made far more money selling cars then he ever did racing them.
But that doesn’t detract from the signature accomplishments he amassed in his relatively brief NASCAR career.
He’ll add another when he is inducted Friday night in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, one of five members of the Class of 2015. The others are Fred Lorenzen, Bill Elliott, Joe Weatherly and Wendell Scott.
White, now 85 and living in Forest Park, Ga., won 28 times in what is now the Sprint Cup Series over a nine-year career, beating Hall of Famer Richard Petty to win the season championship in 1960 and finishing runner-up to another Hall of Famer, Ned Jarrett, the following season.
White was among the first drivers to focus on winning the series championship by competing in most or all of the events of the season. That was no easy task in 1960 with 44 races on the schedule.
White entered all but four that season, when no driver entered them all. The only other driver to enter as many races as White was Petty, who finished second in the standings.
“To run all those races was a big accomplishment in itself,” said White. “To build the car and tow the car to all the races was a big chore. It took a lot of time to do it and it made for a lot of sleepless nights.”
The payoff came in performance and trophies if not in monetary awards.
White won six times in his 1960 championship season and finished with 25 top-five and 35 top-10 finishes in 44 events. He also won three poles.
White’s take for winning the 1960 title? A check for $13,000.
This past season, Kevin Harvick collected a champion’s bonus of $4.8 million, just part of his nearly $12.8 million total haul for the season.
White, a native of Taylorsville, made his premier series debut in 1956 on Daytona’s beach/road course. In the early days, he raced without a sponsor, pooling money with his crew and sleeping in his car to get by.
In 1958, White moved to Spartanburg, S.C., to team with crew chief Louis Clements in an “off the books” program by General Motor’s Chevrolet Division. They won twice in 1958 and five times the following year. The 1959 season also saw the debut of White’s iconic No. 4 gold and white Chevrolet.
At one point during the 1960 season, White and Clements built a car for a competitor and sold it for $2,000 to put toward their own Chevrolet.
“You’ve heard the old adage, ‘Win on Sunday and Detroit sells on Monday?’ Well, Rex would win on Sunday and sell his own car on Monday and I guarantee he made more selling the car than he did racing with it,” said former Charlotte Motor Speedway president and now consultant Humpy Wheeler.
Between 1959 and the 1963 seasons, White won more races than any other driver, including the likes of Lee and Richard Petty, Jarrett, Fireball Roberts and Junior Johnson.
White competed until his sponsorship dried up from Chevrolet. He ran six races in the 1964 season driving a Ford Mercury, the last five for legendary car owner and Hall of Famer Bud Moore.
He finished his career with 110 top-five and 163 top-10 finishes in 233 career starts – an astonishing feat of consistency at that time in NASCAR’s history. His 28 wins rank him 22nd all-time.
With his racing career behind him, White took a job with a car dealership and never looked back.
“If I had the money to keep running, I would have,” he said. “I started making more money at the car dealership than I did racing – especially what I was able to keep in my pocket – and just continued on at it.”
White was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998 and has been inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame and the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame.
This story was originally published January 26, 2015 at 3:59 PM.