Growing up I remember AAA (American Automobile Association) as the group one could join to receive roadside assistance, receive maps and trip planners for a jaunt across the old U.S.A. and receive hotel rankings for hotels along the way. Little did I know that AAA was the most powerful race sanctioning body before the rise of NASCAR. Before there was a NASCAR, as stock car racing was trying to find its feet, AAA and its AAA Contest Board were the premier sanctioning organization for auto racing.
Admittedly, AAA sanctioned mostly open wheeled Indy cars and midgets and mostly catered to Northern and Midwestern elites. But, at different times AAA made forays into sanctioning stock car races especially as the sport became more popular. AAA was enough of a threat that as Big Bill France gained control of what would become NASCAR he prohibited drivers wanting to earn points in his organization from driving in rival Sam Nunis’ AAA sanctioned races.
The AAA Competition Board could never quite stomach a long-term commitment to stock car racing thinking this kind of racing was just for junk cars and wild drivers despite Nunis’ pleas to be more involved in stock car racing.
AAA ceased being a race sanctioning body in 1955. 1955 was a dark year in general for auto racing. That year during the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans in France, a car launched into the crowd at 150 miles per hour killing eighty people and wounding many more. Add to this the death earlier of Indy legend Bill Vukovich at that year’s Indy 500 and the drumbeats started across the U.S.A. calling for all a ban on all auto racing and it was more than AAA could stomach. AAA got out of sanctioning races for good in 1955.
With AAA out of the way, with Bruton Smith headed to war in Korea, Big Bill France had his opening to assert the newly formed NASCAR as the premier sanctioning body of stock car auto racing.
AAA meanwhile, went back to helping people with flat tires, providing maps, and rating hotels.
*Information for this post was gleaned from Neal Thompson’s Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR.