Every Sunday before the third Monday in February, the best race drivers in the world compete at Daytona International Speedway for one of the most prized possessions in sport, the Harley J. Earl Daytona 500 Trophy. The Fiftieth Running of the Daytona 500 (NASCAR's Crowning Jewel event) will be held February 17, 2008; go to NASCAR's new Daytona heritage website, click below, to view more info on the legend behind this famous American race trophy.  

This very trophy may tower over other great American sports trophies someday in the future because of the fact this sterling silver prize is truly a work of modern art. Because Harley Earl himself came up with the classic Firebird rocket car theme to highlight the Daytona 500 trophy and then had it hand sculpted inside his Michigan design studio during the absolute zenith of the American automotive industry. Yes, the Harley J. Earl Daytona 500 Trophy is very similar to other modern works of art and/or motoramic masterpieces designed by Earl that have recently sold for millions of dollars at auction. Any one can now see why this provenance helps give the Daytona/Earl trophy a big artistic boost over other famous sporting event trophies. For example, the Vince Lombardi NFL Super Bowl trophy and the iconic Stanley Cup were not conceived and shaped by a giant contemporary artist of the likes of a Harley J. Earl.

The illustrated page below increases awareness on why Harley's name is such a big part of the Daytona 500 experience today. 

Taken from a 1954 article Mr. Earl wrote for the Saturday Evening Post titled, I Dream Automobiles:

"There is a touch of Oldfield and De Palma in most Americans, and frankly I wonder sometimes if there isn't a trace of the old Santa Monica race track in ever car I've ever designed."

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The hottest sport in the country has a new winner

Jeff Gordon (winner in '05 above) and Jimmie Johnson, '06 winner below, celebrate winning Daytona 500  

Of course there are other trophies Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson want to win. Indianapolis. The Coca-Cola 600. The Southern 500. But nothing else in NASCAR carries the immediate respect of a Harley J. Earl in the trophy case. View some other trophy testimonials at the SpeedTV or Valvoline Racing websites: 

News story, below, on how each year's Daytona 500 trophy is hand made for the race winner by Omaha, NE. sculptor John Liba. 

Click image below to not only read the names of the individuals seen in this historic Daytona photo shown above (taken by famous race car lensman C.V. Haschel), but also to find out how Harley Earl took many of GM's most famous car brands into modern stock car racing.

Noteworthy letter and signed photo, below, from Bill France Sr. (creator of NASCAR) to Harley J. Ea

It's a natural that the self-same artist behind the Daytona 500 Trophy -- Harley Earl -- also happens to be the the Father of the Corvette. Look at some family photos of customized Corvettes parked in Harley's driveway of his Florida home during the mid-1960s.

Even after all these years, most Earls still have a lust for automobiles. No doubt my auto passion stems back to the days when I was growing up around all the one-of-a-kind Harley Earl Corvettes GM specially built for him during the 1960s. Many great childhood memories consist of my grandfather, Harley Earl, being a larger than life role model. So, I suppose that's why I picked up an emphatic message, related to him, long ago: His life and work was the stuff legends are made out of.

Up until the day he died in April of 1969, Harley and his wife Sue had some of the greatest American cars in their driveway: Customized Corvettes specially designed by the Corvette creator. Take the Corvette brand name away from America's automotive lore and you'd have a big void in our nation's saga around modern auto history. Well, if Harley Earl had never designed cars for GM, there most certainly would never have been one Chevrolet Corvette built in the American automotive industry, let alone a 50^th Anniversary of Corvette to celebrate in June 2003 when nearly a million of these American roadsters had been built since 1953. 

No other car in the automotive world experience can match the astonishing long legacy of Corvette in being America’s only true sports car. Even before World War II, Harley always drove wicked hot experimental prototype cars that he and his advanced team specially minted. Sometimes it was a Buick or an Oldsmobile and later on...he only drove his special baby: Corvette. Pops, what we grandchildren called him, moved to Palm Beach in late 1958 and he and Sue thereafter primarily drove custom Corvettes as their primary means of transportation.

During the 1960s, Harley received royal treatment having special  "his and her" Corvettes delivered almost every year to the door of their home. The specifications for color, style, and engine size came directly from Harley and the reason he was treated this way had to do with the fact GM clearly recognized his enormous contributions to our American society and culture. So, his having a quiver of outrageously sexy one-of-a-kind Corvettes in his driveway, that was part of his consulting deal, was never a big issue. Not surprisingly, he started a new trend that many Corvette lovers would later follow...which is, having more than one Corvette in your driveway! All Harley's grandkids knew how his “little Corvette idea” was always used as a sexy enticement lure that GM used to sell and market all their products...it wasn’t just privy to Chevrolet’s line up.

It was a lucky experience to be able to witness the terrific view along with the roaring engines that came from Pop's driveway. Seeing the many different beauties gracefully glide off the roadway into the driveway allowed us kids to perform a common ritual—running our hands down their curvaceous shiny sides while these sunburst colored sports cars awaited their masters from within the house to come back out and reawaken them. Whereby, on occasion, you got to observe the high-octane launch of a gravel flying Vette peal out take place onto AIA's pavement! The warm sun drenched touch of these hot ticking Corvettes, back in the 1960s, was truly seductive.

When the two pictures directly above were taken in 1963, Semone (Bunkey) Knudsen was the General Manager of Chevrolet...he's wearing sunglasses and standing next to his son Peter Knudsen. Other GM engineers of this era, like Zora Arkus Duntov, would sometimes shuttle down advanced GM concept design/engineering blueprints of sports cars so the Father of the Corvette -- Harley Earl -- could then evaluate whether or not they would be suitable for GM putting them into mass production (Zora Duntov provided this information in a 1995 interview).