In a sea of plastic trophies with corporate logos and uninspiring hunks of metal, Martinsville Speedway is an outlier that boasts what many consider the most unique and coolest trophy in NASCAR. Since 1964, winners at the short track are awarded a Ridgeway grandfather clock. However, the tradition might be entering murky waters.
Clock manufacturer Howard Miller recently announced it will shut down after nearly a century of operation. Ridgeway Clocks, who produces the ones that appear in Martinsville‘s Victory Lane, is one of the company’s subsidiaries.
Howard J. Miller, the president and CEO of the family-owned business, cited a “convergence of market influences beyond our control” such as a poor housing market and tariffs as reasons for the company’s struggles.
Grandfather clocks, given their size and place in a home, are inherently tied to the former while tariffs—a contentious topic since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office—impact the import of parts used in each clock. A good chunk of components in the clocks come from China, which has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s trade war.
“Our business has been directly impacted by tariffs that have increased the cost of essential components unavailable domestically and driven specialty suppliers out of business, making it unsustainable for us to continue our operations,” Miller explained.
In a last-ditch effort, Miller said the company will try to “entertain offers from an interested buyer” but has not had success in finding anyone. Consequently, if Ridgeway goes the way of the dodo too, Martinsville will have to look elsewhere for a new manufacturer.
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Such a market won’t be easy to find. As Miller mentioned, demand for grandfather clocks has declined over the years because concerns about housing lead to less incentive to buy furniture. Howard Miller and Ridgeway are also among the world’s largest grandfather clockmakers, meaning a successor will be filling two pairs of massive shoes.
While easy to be pessimistic, NASCAR commentator Mike Joy and Martinsville president Clay Campbell want everyone to keep the faith.
“[W]e will find something just as good, I’m sure,” Campbell texted Joy.
Regardless of whomever takes over, Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes they keep it simple and don’t try to add their own touch. Earnhardt won his own clock at the 2014 Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500.
“Whomever makes the next version better make them exactly like the previous versions,” tweeted Earnhardt. “Don’t get cute and fuck this up.”
History of the Martinsville clock
Ridgeway began life in 1926, coincidentally the same year as Howard Miller, as the Gravely Furniture Company. The company was headquartered just a few miles away from Martinsville Speedway.
Wanting to support a local business while doing something to make his track stand out from others on the NASCAR schedule, Martinsville founder H. Clay Earles reached out to Gravely to produce a clock as a trophy. The 1964 Old Dominion 500 on 24 September marked the début of the grandfather clock trophy, which was won by Fred Lorenzen. Lorenzen’s car owner Glen Wood, whose family runs Wood Brothers Racing, also got a clock with a personalised plaque that commended him “for performance and cooperation at Martinsville Speedway.”
The clocks the winner received were smaller than the actual grandfather clocks, and were officially dubbed “Lady Lexington Grandmother Clocks” by Ridgeway. For convenience and to spare everyone the annoyance of clarifying, Martinsville and Ridgeway were content with calling them “grandfather clocks” anyway.
“I first got the idea when the late Curtis Turner was talking about all the trophies he had won,” Earles explained in April 1977. “He had so many that he finally had to start storing them and even giving them away. Let’s face it, trophies are beautiful and the drivers like them, but a big winner soon finds himself with a house full of dust collectors and no real place to put them. So I felt that we should do something a little different and award a clock. We have an engraved plaque put on each clock just like the one that normally would go on a trophy.
“Now, our winners have something they are proud to display in their homes and something they can really use. I figure these clocks will be passed on down from generation to generation. Can you imagine someone like Richard’s great-great grandson telling his friends, ‘Yep, that belonged to my great-great grandaddy. He was a heck of a race driver and he won that at Martinsville Speedway way back in 1977.'”
The Richard in question, Richard Petty, has 15 wins at Martinsville. Three of his victories came before 1964, meaning he’s earned 12 clocks throughout his career. He collected so many that by the time he got a ninth clock for winning the 1970 Old Dominion 500, he decided to give it to one of his crewmen since there was no more space in his house. By the time he hit double-digit clocks, he was basically giving them away to his friends and family or placing them wherever he had space in his house. After adding clock number 11 in 1975, Petty jokingly asked Earle if he had a “catalogue so I can pick out something different,” and was otherwise going to stash it in his bathroom.
“We got ’em all over the place,” Petty quipped in 1980, a year after getting his 12th and final. “We got a couple or three at the house, a couple at Daddy’s (Lee Petty) place, a couple at (brother) Maurice’s and Dale (Inman, crew chief) has one or two. My in-laws have one. Just about everyone I know has one.”
Gravely was bought out by Pulaski Furniture Corporation in 1985, though the partnership with Martinsville continued. It also remained even after Ridgeway was acquired by Howard Miller in 2004.
Martinsville clocks are awarded to all winners regardless of series. Denny Hamlin has the most among active Cup Series drivers with six, including winning the most recent one in March.
