(FoxNews) – The 62nd running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday will mark the
start of a new era for NASCAR, following its landmark offseason acquisition
of International Speedway Corp.

NASCAR now owns the Daytona International Speedway, home of the
venerable season-opening race, as well as several other tracks included
in the $2 billion acquisition. While big changes related to the deal aren’t
expected until 2021, the transaction gives NASCAR unprecedented control
over its racing schedule as it reshapes its business to appeal to younger
fans.

“It makes a big difference,” NASCAR Chairman Jim France said of the merger.
“It gives us an opportunity to respond quicker to the changing environment
out here with the economy and all the things that are going on that impact motorsports. It was a major big step that we needed to make probably for
quite a while.”

NASCAR Chairman Jim France.

  
Ernie’s 1962 Chevrolet Corvair.

On January 13, 1962, Ernie Kovacs, a comedian who hosted his own
television shows during the 1950s and is said to have influenced such
TV hosts as Johnny Carson and David Letterman, died at the age of 42
after crashing his Chevrolet Corvair into a telephone pole in Los Angeles, California, while driving in a rainstorm. Kovacs, who often appeared on
camera with his trademark cigar, was found by police with an unlit cigar,
leading to speculation that he had been reaching for the cigar and lost
control of his vehicle. The Corvair was later made infamous by Ralph
Nader’s groundbreaking 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-
In Dangers of the American Automobile,” about unsafe practices in the
auto industry.

Ernest Edward Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962)

   
Kovacs as Poet Laureate Percy Dovetonsils.

(FoxNews) – Sean Kiernan may get as much as $4 million for a piece of 
Hollywood history that his father, Bob, acquired for just $3,500 and
refused to sell to Steve McQueen, the actor who drove it in the 1968
action film "Bullitt."

When the classic-car insurer Hagerty sent car expert Kevin Marti to
authenticate the vehicle, he couldn’t believe his eyes, according to a 
New York Times report: “Ninety-eight percent of the original car is
there,” Marti told Hagerty. “It’s an incredible artifact.”

Since ‘Bullitt’s’ release, the 1968 Highland Green Mustang has become
one of the best-known vehicles shown on the big screen. McQueen
himself even tracked down Bob Kiernan in 1977 and wrote him a letter
asking to buy the muscle car back, according to the Times.

“I would like very much to keep it in the family, in its original condition
as it was used in the film, rather than have it restored, which is simply
personal with me," McQueen wrote in the missive detailed by the Times
which reported that Bob Kiernan never wrote McQueen back.

Sean Kiernan of Nashville stands next to the Ford Mustang GT 390
driven by Steve McQueen in the cult classic film "Bullitt."

Steve McQueen, starring in the title role of "Bullitt," steps out of his
car after a pursuit through the hilly streets of San Francisco.

In one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States, autoworkers occupied
the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM’s workers; they also wanted to
make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish
a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that
would help protect assembly-line workers from injury. In all, the strike lasted
44 days.

General Motors’ workers celebrate the end of the historic Flint Sit-
Down Strike in 1937. As a result, 100,000 workers gained the right
to union representation.

TIM MAGUIRE

Jodie Foster in "Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, 1969.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 57 today.

Actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster has received
two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards,
two Golden Globe Awards, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award
along with a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for
her work as a director.

Foster began her professional career as a child model when
she was three years old, and she made her acting debut in
1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late
1960s and early 1970s (below).

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976).

    
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

October 14, 1991