Ollen Bruton Smith (March 3, 1927 – June 22, 2022) was an American motorsports executive and businessman. He was best known as the owner of two public companies, Speedway Motorsports, Inc. (SMI) and Sonic Automotive. Smith held the positions of vice president and general manager of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and later was the chief executive officer (CEO) of both Speedway Motorsports and Sonic Automotive. He was an entrepreneur, race promoter, and businessman during the rise of stock car racing that began in the 1950s.
Smith was born and raised near Oakboro, North Carolina. In 1959, he and stock car racing driver Curtis Turner partnered to construct the Charlotte Motor Speedway, a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) banked racetrack in Concord, North Carolina. After the initial failure of the speedway, Smith went bankrupt, leading him to work in the car dealership business. After the success of his car dealership business, Smith bought back an interest in the speedway, eventually becoming its general manager in 1975. After a period of investing in businesses outside the auto-racing industry in the 1980s, Smith bought numerous tracks in the 1990s and 2000s, using the funds he had made after taking SMI public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995. Two years later, he incorporated Sonic Automotive, a chain of car dealerships, becoming CEO of both SMI and Sonic Automotive.
Smith is widely regarded as one of the most influential businessmen in auto racing and a polarizing figure in the industry. Throughout his time as a businessman, he was known as an extravagant spender and someone who cared about details. He used his wealth and power to turn racetracks owned by Speedway Motorsports into world-class facilities and to turn Sonic Automotive into one of the biggest car dealership businesses in the United States. Businessmen who worked under Smith, including Humpy Wheeler and Eddie Gossage, viewed Smith highly for his actions. He was embroiled in numerous legal battles and controversies, including his divorce with his only wife and his reaction to opposition of construction of a drag strip at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Smith is also regarded as one of the key people in a rivalry between Smith's SMI and the NASCAR-owned International Speedway Corporation (ISC), a rivalry that has existed since Smith's start as a race promoter in the late 1940s. The two companies, created by Smith and NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., respectively, have engaged in a series of tense exchanges and lawsuits that have affected NASCAR's legacy and popularity to this day.
Smith was born in Oakboro, North Carolina, on March 3, 1927, to James Lemuel Smith (1875–1958) and Mollie C. Smith (1887–1982). He was the youngest of nine children. The family lived a mile outside Oakboro, on a farming community.
Growing up on a farm meant Smith's family had a home and enough to eat, but despite working from "sunup to sundown", they had little money. Smith "never did like that", and by the age of nine had decided he would leave the farm. When he was 11, Smith began practicing with a home-made punching bag, and dreamed of becoming the middleweight champion of the world. Smith practiced boxing for five years before quitting. He also recalled that he had numerous "crazy ideas" as a child: he saw a movie in which a tycoon owned a train and saw another featuring James Cagney owning a trucking company, and for a while decided that he wanted to own a train and a trucking company.
Smith watched his first auto-racing event at the age of eight at the Charlotte Speedway. In 1946, Smith began selling used cars from his front yard, operating the business for about five years, according to The Charlotte News.
After graduating from Oakboro High School (now West Stanly High School) in 1944, he gained his first job in a hosiery mill. He bought his first race car at 17 for $700 ($12,802 when adjusted for inflation). He claimed that on one occasion during his brief racing career, he managed to beat Buck Baker and Joe Weatherly, both of whom are considered early NASCAR pioneers. However, Smith's mother opposed the idea of his racing, praying that Smith would stop. Smith, stating that he could not "fight [his] mom and God", ceased racing.
NSCRA and the beginnings of a rivalry with the France family
Smith began promoting stock-car events as a 17-year-old in Midland, North Carolina, in the middle of a cornfield he nicknamed the "Dust Bowl". In 1949, Smith took over the National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA), a league that had formed a year earlier in 1948 and was one of several fledgling stock-car sanctioning bodies that were direct competitors to NASCAR, which had been founded in the same year. Early in the year, Smith announced the creation of a new division called the "Strictly Stock" division, which utilized newer models of stock cars instead of older, modified cars. As a response, NASCAR president Bill France Sr. created his own "Strictly Stock" division, holding its first Strictly Stock event on the same day that the NSCRA was planning to hold their Strictly Stock race, on June 19, 1949. This event is considered by some NASCAR reporters and media members as the starting point of a rivalry between the Smith family and the France family, a rivalry that has grown since the creation of Speedway Motorsports and the International Speedway Corporation, founded by Bruton Smith and Bill France Sr., respectively.
In 1951, Smith took over the lease of the Charlotte Speedway from Buck Baker, Roby Combs, and Ike Kiser to promote races at the speedway. In the same year, France and Smith discussed merging their sanctioning bodies and came to a tentative agreement on the issue; however, Smith was drafted into the United States Army to fight in the Korean War in January 1951, becoming a paratrooper. When Smith returned to civilian life two years later, he found that poor leadership in his absence had caused the NSCRA to disband.
Promotional career after Korean War
After his honorable discharge in 1953, Smith returned to his parents' home in Concord, North Carolina, living with his mother. For most of the 1950s, he sold cars and promoted local short-track races throughout the Carolinas, including races in Concord, Shelby, and Piedmont. In a 1982 interview with The Charlotte Observer, the retired president of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, Humpy Wheeler, stated that he believed Smith had managed to turn stock-car racing into a more professional environment, forcing drivers to take publicity pictures wearing a suit and tie. Smith was also known to get into disagreements and, on occasion, fights with drivers over issues. According to Wheeler, Smith knew "he couldn't back down, because if [he] ever did, [he'd] might as well give them the keys to the place". By 1955, he had managed to earn $128,050 (adjusted for inflation$, 1,538,986) in one year from promoting races throughout the Carolinas.
Charlotte Motor Speedway, bankruptcy
By the late 1950s, stock-car racing's popularity had increased dramatically in the American Southeast. With newer, more modern facilities being built, such as Darlington Raceway, Smith partnered with Charlotte businessman John William Propst Jr. to plan construction of a $2 million racetrack. At the same time, Virginia stock-car racing driver and successful timber businessman Curtis Turner had begun collaborating with track officials across the Carolinas to build a speedway in northern Mecklenburg County. However, in 1958, Smith's deal with Propst fell through when Propst backed out of the partnership after suffering a heart attack, leading Smith to call Turner in hopes of his replacing Propst. After a few weeks of initial success, in a meeting at the Barringer Hotel, Turner refused to partner with Smith. Feeling betrayed and predicting that the city of Charlotte could support only one speedway, Smith proceeded to announce his intention to build a new speedway to rival Turner's. Knowing that Turner did not have enough funds to build his own speedway, compounded with the fact that Turner had struggled to sell the 300,000 shares needed for the racetrack, Smith pledged to sell 100,000 of the shares by himself and become the vice president of the speedway. Construction eventually started on the speedway in the summer of 1959 and was eventually completed in mid-June 1960, in time for the 1960 World 600 on June 19.