Bruton Smith, auto retail and racing pioneer, dies

Achievements in the racing planet also led Smith to rub elbows with stars. He when sold a Ford Mustang convertible to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Smith was outspoken and known for a couple tussles in the racing small business. One huge feud came in the early 2000s with the France family members, which controls NASCAR. Smith desired to secure one more race day for his Texas Motor Speedway, and lawful action commenced. At some point, Smith secured the dates, but he had to agree to buy a North Carolina racetrack from Worldwide Speedway Corp., a rival company managed by the France relatives.

These days, Speedway Motorsports owns and operates NASCAR tracks such as Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kentucky Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, Texas Motor Speedway and given that late 2021 Dover Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway. It also owns North Wilkesboro Speedway.

With race advertising and auto dealerships, Bruton Smith’s fortunes grew, and for several decades he was ranked between the top billionaires by Forbes. Prior to dropping from Forbes’ record of billionaires, he ranked 1,940th as not long ago as 2017.

Smith also launched Speedway Kid’s Charities in 1982, in memory of his youthful son, Bruton Cameron Smith, who died. Smith was chairman of the nonprofit’s board of officers. The Harmony, N.C., charity has donated much more than $60 million given that its inception to nonprofits that assistance children.

Smith was a mentor to his children and to other folks in the automobile small business.

Rick Hendrick, operator of Hendrick Motorsports and chairman and CEO of Hendrick Automotive Team, hailed Smith as “a visionary and a correct unique.”

Smith was on hand in 1983 at Town Chevrolet in Charlotte, when Hendrick announced plans to form a new NASCAR staff that would turn out to be Hendrick Motorsports. “He was a person you preferred on your facet mainly because he was tricky as nails and never ever backed down from a fight,” Hendrick stated Wednesday.

Jeff Dyke, now president of Sonic Automotive, recalled Smith’s calmness throughout the 2008-09 economic downturn and automotive downturn. Sonic’s sales dipped, the firm’s inventory price tag sunk under $1 a share and personal bankruptcy was reviewed as auditors doubted Sonic could carry on as a “going concern.”

“He in no way even blinked through that whole matter. It was just a nonevent for him,” Dyke instructed Automotive Information in 2018. “Regardless of whether guiding the scenes he was worried or whichever, you would by no means see that out of him. He was just so potent. For us, it gave us a lot of power, a good deal of self-assurance, a lot of courage, and we plowed by way of and arrived out the other side a cleaner, leaner company.”

In 2015, Smith verified that he experienced been identified with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and underwent surgical procedure to handle it. The subsequent year, he was inducted into the NASCAR Corridor of Fame.

Sonic Automotive ranks No. 7 on Automotive News’ most modern checklist of the top rated 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 103,486 new autos in 2021.

Leslie J. Allen contributed to this report.