Linden Airport — Ghost Tracks

Exactly one NASCAR Grand National race was ever held at Linden Airport, on a two-mile course laid out across the runways of a working airfield in New Jersey, and it produced a result the series has never repeated.

Forty-three cars started the International 100 on June 13, 1954. Roughly half the field was foreign iron: Jaguars, MGs, Austin-Healeys, a Porsche, a Morgan. Buck Baker put an Oldsmobile on the pole at a little over eighty miles an hour and traded the lead with Herb Thomas through the opening laps. Al Keller took it on the twenty-third of fifty laps in a Jaguar owned by the bandleader Paul Whiteman, and led the rest of the way. Four Jaguars finished in the top six.

It stands as the only win by a European marque in NASCAR's top division. Nothing foreign won again in the series until Toyota, more than fifty years later. The race never returned to Linden, and neither did NASCAR. The airport is still there, still working, still flying general aviation off a single runway.

Note: sources split on the exact count of foreign entries, between twenty and twenty-one of forty-three, so the figure is left approximate. Toyota won in NASCAR's top division in 2008, which is why the claim here is limited to European marques.