Being an old fart almost 80 I have lots of tales to recall. I owned a circle track and a couple of the hobby stock cars ran no exhaust manifold at all, just straight out of the heads for the whole season. An interesting bit was that when standing in the infield on the dark side of the cars you could see the exhaust valves glow bright red while the driver had his foot in it and darken instantly when he backed off. Tale # 2: a fellow that owned a motorcycle shop across from my shop had a Nash Metropolitan with a 327 in it and the exhaust came straight out of the heads. I would go to work at about 3AM when we had lots of parts to vat (hot tank) as the heat was unbearable after about ten in the morning. I could hear him fire up the Metro at about 7:30 and drive it the dozen or so blocks to his shop. I guess the cops were more mellow back then.
