Smithsonian Magazine – The Crooked Road

Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains are known for their speed demons. The  moonshiners of old tore over country roads in 1940 Ford coupes, executing  180-degree “bootleg turns” and using bright lights to blind the revenue officers  shooting at their tires. Legend has it that many of Nascar’s original drivers  cut their teeth here, and modern stock car design is almost certainly indebted  to the “liquor cars” dreamed up in local garages, modified for speed and for  hauling brimful loads of “that good old mountain dew,” as the country song goes.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/A-Musical-Tour-Along-the-Crooked-Road.html#ixzz1W9EJE1z1

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