Don Lyons is a dedicated collector and restorer of vintage, antique and specialty automobiles. Although he owns and manages the manufacturing company Lyons Industries Inc., he spends almost all of his free time reconstructing cars from his home in Dowagiac, Michigan.
Serving as a consultant during the filming of Super Speedway, Don Lyons also spent six years restoring the 1964 Dean Van Lines Special that appears in the film. Recovered from a chicken coop in Indiana, this roadster was built by Eddie Kuzma and driven by Mario Andretti at the beginning of his career. According to Lyons, it was the prettiest, most sophisticated and fastest roadster ever made. It was also the last.
Lyons remembers the restoration as a labour of love. " I bought the car out of a chicken coop on New Year's Day, 1990, and spent four years looking for parts and two years doing the actual restoration work. Now it goes like a bomb!"
Lyons has been working with old cars since the age of 14, when he and his father rebuilt a 1929 Packard. Since then, his hobby has become more complex and increasingly costly. Famous among the cars he has worked on is the 1951 Blue Crown Spark Plugs Special driven by Henry Banks. In 1952, Banks qualified the car at 135 miles per hour at the Indy 500. He has also restored the 1909 Stoddard-Dayton that ran in the 1909 race at the Indianapolis Speedway and the 1966 Gerhardt-Offy car driven by Jim Hurtubise at Indianapolis.
Of the more than 50 automobiles he has rebuilt, many are still owned and driven by Lyons, while others have been traded. Although several of the cars are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, Lyons refuses to have them locked away in storage. For him, they are meant to be driven.
