Have This With Your Coffee: Your Backfire News Round-Up for September 14

Rise and shine — here’s everything that ran on Backfire News yesterday, all in one place before you start scrolling for yourself.

1. Gary Myers Won 38 Times at the Madhouse. What He Built Off the Track Mattered More.

Gary Myers died September 10 at 76. Thirty-eight wins at Bowman Gray put him in the record books, but the people he built cars for have a lot more to say about the rest of it.

2. Luke McMillin Finally Won the Baja 400. The Fastest Two-Wheel-Drive Truck Finished 71 Minutes Later.

McMillin finally checked off the one SCORE race missing from his resume, and the quickest two-wheel-drive truck in the field crossed the line 71 minutes behind him. Polaris also found out what a $50,000 bounty costs when somebody actually collects.

3. Ford’s Billion-Dollar Louisville Paint Shop, Explained

The press release says “billion-dollar investment.” The state incentive filings and a 190-page air permit say what that money actually buys, and how many jobs come attached to it.

4. A Green Light, a Tree, and a McLaren in Two Pieces: Inside the Irvine Crash That Killed Two

Irvine police say a 2019 McLaren launched from a green light, clipped a curb and a tree, split in two and burned. The wreckage, the federal black-box rule and California’s speed statutes all have something to say about what happens next.

5. This Gordon Murray T.50’s VIN Confirms It’s Chassis 047 of 100 — RM Sotheby’s Wants $5.5 Million for It

RM Sotheby’s is moving one of the 100 V12 three-seaters privately, no gavel involved. At $5.5 million, the VIN, the spec sheet and the tax status are the parts worth reading twice.

6. Today in Automotive History: The Car That Killed Isadora Duncan Wasn’t the Bugatti Everyone Remembers

September 14, 1927: a long shawl, an open wire wheel, and a detail nearly a century of retellings still gets wrong. It was an Amilcar CGSS, not a Bugatti.

7. One Thing We’d Actually Buy: A Mid-Torque Impact Wrench, Not the 1,400 lb-ft Monster

The biggest cordless gun on the endcap is the wrong buy for almost everything you’ll do in your own driveway. Here’s the one that actually earns its spot in the box.

That’s the lineup — see you back here tomorrow.

About the Author

John Lloyd

Administrator

John Lloyd is a staff writer at Backfire News, where he writes about the messier, more entertaining side of the car world—celebrity rides, motorsports drama, and whatever weird automotive thing happened to blow up online that week. He's drawn to the spot where cars meet culture. One day that's breaking down why some celebrity just dropped a fortune on a hypercar; the next it's figuring out why a particular model is suddenly all over everyone's feed. He likes giving readers the context behind the headline, usually with a little attitude. The way John sees it, most people don't think of cars as just transportation. They're status symbols, money pits, lifelong obsessions, and occasionally pure chaos—and that's exactly the stuff worth writing about. You'll usually find him covering celebrity collections, viral car-culture moments, motorsports headlines, high-performance machines, and the trends moving the resale market.

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