DIALED IN
Show-Stopping Show Car
W
How lifelong Ford fan Gary Varney turned a former Glidden
display car into a race winner By Van Abernethy
hen it comes to cars that
make a lasting impression, few
have ever impacted Gary Varney
the way his 1985 Ford Thunderbird
did, and to this day he’ll never for-
get the first time he ever laid eyes on the car. It
all started back in 1996 when he and a buddy
were at a race car auction in Indianapolis.
An older gentleman named Paul Brown, better
known as “Racer Brown” noticed that Varney was
buying a lot of Cleveland parts, so he approached
Gary and told him that he had Cleveland stuff in
great abundance. “He says to us, ‘I’ve got a garage
full of Cleveland parts...stuff you wouldn’t believe,
and I’ll make you guys a package deal,’” Varney
remembers Brown saying.
Intrigued, Varney and his friend struck out to
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to take a peek inside
Racer Brown’s garage, arriving at roughly 3 o’clock
in the morning. Mr. Brown greeted them warmly
April 2020
despite the obscene hour upon which they arrived.
“He came walking out with a cane to meet us, a
real nice fellow,” recalls Varney.
Varney was busy marveling at Brown’s Cleveland
parts collection, when suddenly, in true barn-find
fashion, he got a glimpse of a Bob Glidden-tribute
Thunderbird sitting on jack stands, with a Ford
Probe parked beside it. The Thunderbird was an
identical replica of Glidden’s 1985 car, which fea-
tured the Chief Auto Parts/7-Eleven paint scheme
with Motorcraft decals on the quarter panels.
Varney got goosebumps at the very sight of
the car and immediately began asking questions.
Turns out, the car was built by Tennessee’s Rich-
ard Boling Race Cars as a promotional piece for a
Ford dealership located near Atlanta, where the
car was actually on display in their showroom
for several years throughout the mid-1980s, back
when Glidden was setting the world on fire within
the ranks of NHRA Pro Stock.
DragIllustrated.com
| D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | 59