and looked good" when he had flown over it on training missions. Smokey's Garage Yunick ran "Smokey's Best Damn Garage in Town" at 957 N. Beach St in Daytona Beach, Florida from 1947, when he opened the garage repairing trucks, until 1987 when he closed it, claiming that there were no more good mechanics. The garage property was sold according to his estate plan in 2003. Most of the buildings were taken down a few years later, leaving only a single building that erupted in flames on April 25, 2011, at about 7 p.m. and was destroyed. There is nothing left today. Automobile racing When Yunick's reputation as a good mechanic spread through the town, Marshall Teague, a local stock car race team owner, invited him to join the team and Yunick accepted, despite being completely unfamiliar with stock car racing. He prepared a Hudson Hornet for driver Herb Thomas for the second running of the Southern 500 in Darlington, South Carolina, which won the race. Between 1958 and 1973, Yunick also participated in Indianapolis 500 racing, his car winning the 1960 race. His innovations here included the "Reverse Torque Special" of 1959, with the engine running in opposite rotation than normal, and the Hurst Floor Shifter Special, a car with the driver's capsule mounted as a "sidecar" in 1964. In 1962, one year after Art Malone set the world closed circuit record at Daytona in Bob Osiecki's Kurtis-Kraft Indy roadster with 2 inverted wings, Yunick mounted a single wing on Jim Rathmann's Simoniz Vista Special Watson Roadster. The wing, designed to increase downforce, allowed Rathmann to reach cornering speeds never before seen at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway but created so much drag that it caused the car to record slower lap times. The United States Automobile Club (USAC) immediately banned the use of wings but they soon began to appear on cars competing in Can-Am and Formula One and by 1972 USAC once again allowed their use. He also participated in drag racing. Yunick's racing career brought him into contact with representatives of the automotive industry, and he became Chevrolet's unofficial factory race team, as well as heading NASCAR efforts for Ford and Pontiac. Much of the high-performance development of the Chevrolet Small-Block engine involved Yunick in design, testing, or both. Yunick raced Chevrolets in 1955 and 1956, Fords in 1957 and 1958, and Pontiacs from 1959 through 1963.