Once upon a time, sailing wasn’t the only type of racing that was going on in town.
Before it became home to Precision Motor Werks, a building on Barnard Street was a race-car manufacturer that produced cars that were driven by Sam Posey, a future Motorsports Hall of Fame driver.
In the late ‘60s and early ’70s, Autodynamics Racing was a company ran by Marbleheader Ray Caldwell, primarily producing Formula Vee and Formula Ford chassis cars. Founded in 1964, the company was at one point the largest race-car manufacturer in the United States, according to the New England Racing Museum.
“Together with Sam Posey as Autodynamics factory driver, a broad array of winning race cars were welded together within steps of the tony Marblehead Harbor and its gleaming million-dollar sailboats,” the New England Racing Museum wrote on its Facebook page after a visit from Caldwell in 2017.
Building more than 1,400 cars in the span of six years from 1964 to 1970, Autodynamics won eight national championships. Caldwell himself was also a champion driver, winning the first ever Formula Vee national championship in 1964. That year, he was also named Sports Car Club of America Rookie Driver of the Year.
Whether it’s sailboats, cars, or other types of transportation, Marblehead has a rich competitive racing history, and the lesser-known duo of Caldwell and Posey is another example of a small town making huge waves across the country.