NASCAR
A Memorial to NASCAR History is No More, the Winston Cup Museum will be Missed
“My whole adult life is pretty much on these walls,” said NASCAR on FOX lead announcer Mike Joy. “My career started in radio and worked its way to television, where I still get to broadcast a big part of the Cup Series season.”
One of the most defining voices in NASCAR history, Joy was recounting the memories that surrounded him while standing inside the Winston Cup Museum on its final day in business.
“NASCAR in 1970 was pretty much a southeastern sport with one race in California. When RJ Reynolds took its entire marketing might and put it behind NASCAR, NASCAR became a huge flourishing national sport.”
The impact left on NASCAR by the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company is indelible and still felt 20 years after the final Winston Cup Series race. Another checkered flag fell far more recently, however, with the forced closure of the Winston Cup Museum in downtown Winston-Salem.
Opened in 2005 by longtime RJR marketing employee Will Spencer and his wife Christie, the Winston Cup Museum served to commemorate and celebrate the 33 years of history, personalities, and tales interwoven between big tobacco and stock car racing. The Museum was always a passion project, never having any affiliation with RJR, NASCAR, or any outside investors.
From Petty to Earnhardt to Gordon and Kenseth, the Winston Cup Museum depicted nearly two full generations of drivers and other influential NASCAR figures within its limited footprint. Spencer worked as a marketing agent with the Winston brand in NASCAR, specializing in show cars and displays promoting the longest serving title sponsor. Perhaps the coolest and most unique piece in the Museum’s collection was an authentic Dodge Charger Daytona built by Petty Enterprises and raced by Dave Marcis in 1969. Dressed up in Winston Cup promotional colors, the famous winged car still looked as menacing and fast as ever.
Threads left from the Winston Cup age are few and far between in 2023. Kevin Harvick was the last active driver who competed prior to 2003, and he retired at the end of this season. The Winston Cup Museum was not merely a time capsule for NASCAR history, it was one of the very few physical connections remaining in Winston-Salem. The only active drivers to call this area home are Austin and Ty Dillon.
Aside from cars and other memorabilia pieces detailing numerous racing legends, the Winston Cup Museum served as one of the last remnants of this era well into the 2020s. The Winston Cup Series was forced to end by the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement strictly limiting vice advertising. The final Winston Cup race was the 2003 Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Bobby Labonte went to victory lane that day while Matt Kenseth was crowned champion.
Fast forward almost exactly 20 years later, and the Winston Cup Museum was forced to close down due to ongoing legal battles with the Winston’s new parent company, ITG Brands. These issues came to a head during the 2023 NASCAR All-Star Race weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway. A popup museum location selling ‘Winston’ branded apparel drew the ire of higher ups at ITG, thus triggering three separate lawsuits over the rights to market the cigarette name.
“One of the things that I think I’ll miss more than anything is the guest book,” Spencer said at the Museum’s ‘Final Lap’ event on December 16. “Everybody would write their comments, and those are really what the Museum was about, preserving the modern era. I think I’ll miss that the most.”
“I started in 1984 working for RJR, and I got to meet all my childhood heroes including Richard Petty. I was 11 years old when I went to my first NASCAR race at Rockingham. So the preservation to me, a fourth generation in Winston-Salem, was almost instilled in me. I always took what I saved or what got outdated with no idea that any museum was ever going to happen. It’s a bittersweet day but it’s nice to see hundreds or maybe a thousand people here. That’s pretty amazing and makes me feel good about what I did.”
Drivers, broadcasters, officials, media members, and fans alike all descended upon the Winston Cup Museum over the past several weeks. If there is any silver lining to the closing, it’s that the Museum went out with a bang by hosting thousands of people.
The physical space and the impressive collection under one roof may no longer be reality. The Museum will survive in another aspect however, as a newly announced social-media based platform. ‘Win Cup Museum’ will tell stories and help preserve the same history with assistance from a few notable racing content creators. The brick-and-mortar structure may sadly be a thing of the past, but the larger mission statement does live onward in a 21st-century fashion.
“It’s really great that the Spencers and other like-minded people that used to work for RJ Reynolds are still involved in trying to preserve this history,” Joy said. “I smile every time I see the picture of Ralph Seagraves, who was the first head of sports marketing at RJ Reynolds. At the annual NASCAR banquet, which Winston paid for, Ralph would always get up at the end of the night and make a very short speech: ‘We’re glad you’re here, looking forward to next season,’ and then the other most important words in auto racing: ‘the bar will remain open!’ That was Ralph and his approach to things.”
As a Winston-Salem native myself, it was especially tough to see a hometown connection to my favorite sport dwindle away and be forcibly terminated. I made an effort to be present at the Final Lap event, having the ability to say I was there for the Winston Cup Museum’s last hurrah. The future is uncertain for fans in coming years or decades with how well the Winston Cup Series is remembered and recorded. It will be a personal mission of mine to keep this 33 year time period ever-present in NASCAR’s modern age.
Written by Peter Stratta
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