Vintage clothing has always been popular, but in the last few years the vintage craze has moved into the NASCAR garage area.
The likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Chase Elliott, Kasey Kahne and others have been seen wearing vintage racing shirts and hats from the racing’s bygone era. The shirts and hats, featuring stars of yesteryear, such as Bill Elliott, Davey Allison, Tim Richmond and Cale Yarborough, seem to be popping up more in the wardrobes of modern NASCAR drivers.
Where do these NASCAR stars go to find such incredible vintage apparel? They go to Team Penske employee Brent Wentz, the owner of a small vintage apparel business known as Dayz Gone By.
“I always ended up buying automobilia stuff, advertising, gas, oil, you know, stuff like that,” Wentz explained. “I never really had a big niche in the apparel stuff. Never really thought about it ever. You know, maybe I had one or two old hats. I always liked to collect old stuff from home. My local race tracks, local guys. That was it. I never thought it would be what it is today.”
Wentz and his family have a long history in auto racing. Wentz was born in 1981 and his father got bit by the racing bug in 1987. So from that point forward, Wentz spent much his free time watching his father race asphalt modifieds in Pennsylvania.
“I’ve always been involved in racing, always modified racing,” Wentz explained. “We never did any full fender stuff or anything like that.”
By 1999, Wentz decided it was time to pursue his own racing dream. He took a chance and moved to Harrisburg, N.C., in the hopes of landing a job with a race time. His start came with Innovative Motorsports in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. The team fielded cars for Mike McLaughlin and Hermie Sadler among others.
“I worked for nothing really,” Wentz said. “There were a lot of times that I went to the ATM and had, you know, a negative balance and just ate potato chips and junk just to get by.”
Slowly but surely, Wentz began getting better and better jobs. He eventually landed a job at Team Penske, preparing the Wood Brothers Racing cars that are assembled at the team’s Mooresville, N.C., facility.
“I’m a utility guy, kind of a fabricator slash mechanic slash babysitter,” Wentz joked. “If you have six people at the race track on your team, you want six versatile people. It’s better than having six guys with one guy that’s good at this and one guy that’s good at that.”
How did Wentz go from being a crew member to the guy NASCAR superstars go to for their vintage apparel fix? The way Wentz tells, it all started with a conversation with Team Penske driver Ryan Blaney.
“We just got done building our house and shop and he (Blaney) wanted to stop over and check it out,” Wentz explained. “I had probably a 12 by 12 cardboard box with a couple old (shirts). One was like a Troyer Race Cars t-shirt, maybe an old Daytona Int’l Speedway hat. Just miscellaneous old items in a box and he kind of sniffed out that box.
“He was wondering, ‘what are you doing with this?’ I was like, ‘Well, it’s just junk, you know, just junky shirts, junkie hats. He started sifting through it and he was like, ‘I’d like to buy it if you’re not doing anything with it.’ He said, ‘OK, so how much?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t going to sell it. You want to buy it, give me a number.’
“So he takes the whole box and he throws me some cash,” Wentz continued. “I just was like, ‘Oh yeah, cool. Money for junk.’ He left and he took his box of goodies and I counted the money and I thought to myself, ‘There’s actually a market for this kind of stuff.’ And I thought, well, maybe if I go out when I’m looking for antiques, I look for old NASCAR stuff and maybe people will buy it.”
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