Lutherville Man Likes to Shake, Rattle and Roll... His Car

Brad Dudley’s car is dented, noisy, and smells like burning oil.

But that’s okay, because he plans to wreck it.

Dudley will be competing in the 2011 Arcadia Demolition Derby Series in Upperco, MD on Saturday. Arcadia’s volunteer fire department hosts the derby series every month in the spring through early fall, as a fundraiser for its  station. This is the third year Dudley has entered the derby to drive a clunker, artfully spray-painted this time in a green camouflage pattern with black and white teeth where the bumper used to be.

It’s a Geo Storm, or what’s left of one. Dudley stripped it of its glass windows, chrome, reflectors and anything plastic, in accordance with the derby’s safety rules. It’s his fourth car, so far, that he plans to drive into the ground during derby season.

The second car he drove, two years ago, was a favorite. It was an old Buick Century, painted with flames, that his son Blake dubbed "The Batmobile."

“Because it had so much bat poop on it,” said Blake, a fourth-grader at , cheerfully. “We sprayed some of that off, but most of it was still on.”

“That car I got out of a barn,” explained Dudley. He finds his cars at estate sales, which for Dudley, is all in a day’s work. He’s a local auctioneer and has been in the estate liquidation business for 25 years. When he sees a clunker he thinks has at least 20 miles still in it, he grabs it.

“The number-one criteria is that is still runs,” said Dudley. “Preferably something that obviously isn’t going to pass inspection, that no one’s really going to want, like a donation type kind of a car. All really I’m gonna get is a few laps out of it.”

Dudley’s first race was a nail-biter for his wife, Whitney, and Blake, when he rolled his Ford Escort after eight laps.

“He was riding around in a circle,” said Blake. “And there was a big clump of dirt—"

“A berm,” interjected Dudley.

“A berm,” said Blake, not missing a beat, “and he ran it, and flipped over. And he gave us a thumbs up, which actually was a thumbs down, because he was upside down."

Dudley shrugged it off.

“It was kind of a little scary when I was upside down, but it was no big deal," he said.

That was the end of the Ford Escort.

Blake and his Lutherville Timonium Rec Council football team had all signed their names on the car. Dudley is “Coach Brad” to the Lutherville-Timonium team, and his cool factor was upped significantly when the kids got wind of his derby hobby. He charged each kid a dollar to sign the car and donated the money to LTRC. Many of the kids turn out to watch him race each month of derby season.

Dudley does “roundies,” which is circle track racing. Referees count how many laps a car can finish in six minutes. Many cars, junkers on their last legs, don’t make it to the end. They take a fatal ding, or they flip like Dudley’s did, or they simply peter out. The referees drag the “carcasses”—Dudley’s word—off the track, and the race goes on.

The winners move on to the featured race, and the winners of that race walk away with roughly $300, usually enough to buy their next clunker.

They also get to compete in the derby championship race in October.

Dudley has big plans for this season, and even a back-up Honda waiting in the wings of his driveway, if the Geo doesn’t survive the season. He’s thinking about mounting a video camera to his dashboard. And he’s definitely getting T-shirts made with a slogan and his racing name on it: “Shake Rattle & Roll with Shinola Racing.”

You can’t say he doesn’t have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

He laughed at what his high school alma mater, McDonogh, might think of him now. “They’d be shocked that I was doing this,” said Dudley facetiously.

But for Dudley, it’s all fun.

“The guys who do this a lot are the guys who have garages and auto repair places,” he said. “I’m just a hobbyist.”

Click here to see the derby schedule for the 2011 season, which kicks off at 1 p.m. this Saturday, May 14, at 16020 Carnival Avenue. Dudley’s car is number 61.

Hopefully it’ll be the one that stays right-side up this time.

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