From its origins in the 1930s as a sport for Southern outlaws, stock car racing grew throughout the twentieth century to become one of the nation's most popular sports. Nearly twenty million people attended stock car races in 2001. Drivers like Jeff Gordon (1971–), Richard Petty (1938–), and Dale Earnhardt (1951–2001) had become household names. Stock car racing's television (see entry under 1940s—TV and Radio in volume 3) ratings were topped only by the National Football League (see entry under 1920s—Sports and Games in volume 2). Early in the sport's history, the cars were "stock," meaning that they were not modified from the cars that could be bought at a dealer. Stock car racing takes its name from those unaltered cars. True stock cars still race today, but in the bigger races the cars have been modified so that they scarcely resemble their street-legal cousins.

Stock car legend...