WHEELER, Ind. — A former stock car driver, Mike Hollifield became a car builder, fabricator, dirt chassis expert and adviser to those in need of speed. Hollifield passed away on Sunday at the age of 70.
Part of the Northern Indiana “Hollifield Gang” that included his dad, Harve, uncles Bob and Roy, and cousin, John, Mike Hollifield had been around stock car racing all his life as his dad raced at tracks like Broadway Speedway, Illiana Motor Speedway and Rensselaer Speedway in the Hoosier State.
Mike Hollifield began his driving career as a teenager at the Broadway dirt oval around 1973. He was an on-again, off-again competitor on the dirt before taking on pavement racing on the Illiana half-mile in 1978, finishing fifth in the track’s sports stock division.
By 1980, Hollifield was back racing on the dirt at Broadway. In 1981, Hollifield, racing out of Lake Station, Ind., at the time won the first of six track championships at the track that had been renamed Southlake Speedway. He also competed at Rensselaer and at Illinois’ Kankakee Fairgrounds Speedway, where he won the track’s limited late model title in 1988.
His Firebird No. 78 carried him to a bunch of feature wins that season at Kankakee where he ended up with 18 career feature victories. Hollifield won one of the last feature races at Rensselaer in 1986 before the track closed for good.
Hollifield was also a two-time track champion at Shadyhill Speedway in Medaryville, Ind., winning the late model crown in 1984 and the modified title in 1995.
Racing super lates, limited late models and later modifieds, Hollifield scored one of his last feature wins in a modified at Southlake in 2000. Limiting his driving time, Hollifield began building his business, Buzzard Race Cars in Wheeler.
Whether it was late models, modifieds, I-Mods, street stocks – Mike Hollifield built a bunch of winners. He also did several rebuilds of former championship cars, including those wheeled by Jim O’Connor, Bill Davis and Dick Trickle. From bumper to bumper, Hollifield got it done.
