The Scoop
DAVE BOUCHE’S ’95 CHAMPIONSHIP MONTE CARLO IS GETTING RESTORED!
Posted on: Thursday February 17, 2022
The year was 1995. Bill Clinton was president. Dale Earnhardt was the defending NASCAR Winston Cup champion and Tim McGraw had the number one country song of the year with “I Like It, I Love It.”
In northeast Wisconsin that year Algoma’s Dave Bouche wheeled a Monte Carlo to a pair of well-earned street stock titles at third-mile clay ovals in Luxemburg and Sturgeon Bay.
Fast forward 27 years later. Bouche, now 50 and a topflight competitor in the rough-and-tumble IMCA stock car class. With the help from some friends Bouche was recently able to locate his old championship car laying out in the weeds in a Door County field.
Algoma, Wisconsin’s Dave Bouche is in Luxemburg Tri-Star Speedway’s victory lane in 1995. Bouche has unearthed this former championship race car and is in the process of restoring it. (Panske Ent. photo)
The car is in the process of being restored. “I just remember over the years I’d always said I still had that car,” Bouche recalled. “It was fast.”
When Bouche won a pair of titles the street stock division the feature field was a tough nut to crack. “It real tough,” Bouche recalled. “We’d get usually 40 street stocks at Luxemburg and a pretty stout field of 30 streets at Thunder Hill (Sturgeon Bay). And the toughest part was at Luxemburg you could only qualify into the feature through the heats. They ran semi-features which back then were not really last chance qualifiers. You’d win a trophy for a semi-feature win at that was it. No transfer to the main. I’ve even got a few of those trophies too. With all those cars there was no shame in not making the feature.”
Typical street stock feature fields in 1995 were 20 cars starting at Luxemburg while 16 was typically the number of feature cars that took the green flag for a feature at Sturgeon Bay.
In 1995 Bouche had tight point battles with drivers like Maribel’s Kerry Havlovetz, Little Suamico’s Steve Braunsdorf, Oshkosh’s Brian Drexler and Algoma’s Shawn Olson. “We even raced at Seymour Tri-Oval some Sundays and even some Wednesdays at the Expo in Manitowoc,” Bouche recalled. “If there was a race somewhere within reason we’d race it.”
So how did Bouche wind up with his old racer car? You could say modern day social media had an assist of sorts. “One of my old crew members and friends Larry Gilson saw this old race car for in a field up in Door County on Facebook marketplace,” Bouche said. “That was in November of 2020. It was free and Larry’s idea was maybe we go pick it up and salvage some parts from it.”
This is what was left of Dave Bouche’s abandoned Monte Carlo street stock discovered in a field in Door County.
Bouche carefully studied the pictures of the abandoned car through his phone. “It said Sign Wizard on the visor, and I found where it said Dave Bouche and Massart’s Auto Body on the car,” Bouche said. “I knew then that was my old race car. But she was in tough shape and needed a lot of work. There wasn’t much left to it. Much of the back end of the chassis was rotting away.”
So Bouche began retracing the steps of what happened to that championship Monte Carlo after the ’95 season. “We won the title the following year in ’96 down at Expo.” Bouche explained. “I had this bright idea then to move into the IMCA stock car class which I did. We sold that car to a buddy Tim “Torch” Gerdmann and lost touch of what happened to it after that. The last we can tell is that Amber Weidner ran that car in the bomber class in 2002 up in Sturgeon Bay.”
It was one of Bouche’s Algoma racing buddies – the late Brad Anderegg – who convinced Bouche he needed a new race car after the ’94 season. “Brad convinced me to build it and between him, Larry (Gilson) and Uncle Tony Bouche was built that race car,” Bouche recalled. “That’s why I’ve got a lot of sentimental value to it. Brad scaled it up for me and was a big reason I was fast with it.”
Algoma’s Dave Bouche has raced every year since 1990. At 50, he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The car had no spare parts and needed a lot of TLC to put it back together. “I was like ‘where the heck am I going to find a body for that?” Bouche said. “That’s when the racing community came together, and a ton of folks started chipping in parts for it.”
For starters Debbie Lemmens donated a ’77 Monte Carlo body. Shawn Olson donated a new tire while Dennis Weidner gave Bouche some tires and rims. Ryan Johnson provided a seat cover while “Donzo” Don Aregoni gave Bouche an older hobby stock motor he had laying around from 2001 and former stock car racer John Heinz even donated a bumper. “I was even able to scrounge up one of those old Gold Star feature winner stickers from Brad Anderegg’s old shop,” Bouche exclaimed.
Still short of parts for his racer, Bouche reached out to a co-worker at his place of employment Wire Tech in Sturgeon Bay. “I asked our accountant Jeff Ladwig (former racer) if he had anything left for those big old Monte Carlo’s his backyard,” Bouche said. “Sure enough he had a full roller Monte Carlo. “So, I bought that from him for some of the parts needed and at this point it appears I should have everything I need to restore this car.”
Bouche’s plans for the car are simply to show it off. “It will likely be a vintage race car,” Bouche explained. “We’ll likely drag it out and show it off on Hall of Fame nights at the track and stuff like that. I won’t be racing it. Right now John Sternard has it in his possession and he’s doing the body work on it.”
Many in the local racing community have contributed parts to Bouche in the restoration of his championship Monte Carlo.
In 1995 most race cars in Wisconsin were still getting hand painted versus the vinyl lettering which has been the normal for a more than a quarter century. “Ace (Eckola) at Sign Wizard hand painted this one and for the restoration Woody (Wodack) from Woody’s Signs has agreed to hand paint this one too,” Bouche said. “Woody hasn’t broken out the paint brushes in quite some time but it’s a project he’s very much looking forward to.”
While the championship Monte Carlo from 1995 will be strictly a “showboat” Bouche has no signs of slowing down racing in the class dubbed “too-tough-to-tame” – the IMCA stock cars. “I got hooked on this sport when I hot lapped John Gregorich’s car way back in 1987,” Bouche recalled. “I turned 50 last October and we’re gonna keep racing for a while. Tony (Bouche) is 63. He’s still racing too. I even got fitted for a street stock and you may see me wheel that from time to time. I’ll likely be the Jerry Muenster of this class. I mean Jerry won a modified feature last year and he’s 80! How cool is that?”