The Family that Builds Together, Stays Together: The Whitneys
Here at Speedway Motors, we absolutely love seeing what our customers are building. We also love sharing those stories so that each builder and their lovingly crafted automotive creation gets a moment in the sun. Below is the story of a family with some pretty cool cars and some great stories. Check it out, then we want to hear from you. Share your car stories with us here for a chance to be featured!
Working on cars has a way of being a generational thing. Lots of hobbies and interests tend to be like that. Sports team loyalties, favorite places to visit on vacation. You get the idea. But there’s just something about cars that has a way of bringing a family together. And that’s exactly the case with the Whitney family, and they have a pretty impressive fleet to prove it.
Heath Whitney got his start with a dad in the towing business and an uncle with a junkyard. Cars were all around, and he was there to witness the late 70’s - early 80’s heyday of street racing and hot rodding around Lincoln, Nebraska. Like many of us, he grew up and grew a business and a family and cars were put on the back burner. Then, in 2021 Heath and wife Renae were at Vintage Torque Fest in Dubuque, Iowa and spotted a cool Model A sedan with that ever tempting “For Sale” sign in the window. They had been looking around for a hot rod that embodied the 50’s and 60’s era that they loved, and this one sure had the look. Any initial apprehension disappeared when Renae drove it. She was in love, and the car came home with them.
It was already a well-built hot rod, but they made some updates to make it their own. With the wire wheels and skinny tires that the car came with, Renae noted that it looked like an Amish buggy from the rear. Heath resisted the temptation to put a pair of ears on the top to represent the horse. Hilarious as that would have been, we approve of the whitewall slick and Rocket Wheel solution.
Other updates have included shocks, improvements to the dash, and some airbrushing and graphics. Why “Bad Choices,” you ask. When Heath texted a friend for advice on whether or not to buy the car, his only response was #badchoices. Respectfully, we disagree and think it was a fantastic choice, but at least the car got a name out of the deal.
We’re going to jump around a little bit here. Long before the Model A, son Destyn got bit by the bug at a very young age and started racing bikes and cage karts. By 8, he was running karts and a Jr. Dragster, and at 10 he was already in a full-size modified. The Whitney racing operation did not have an unlimited budget, so Destyn had to make the choice to sell off the karts and dragster to fund the modified. Since then he’s never looked back. His current ride is a Sport Mod that had previously qualified for the poll at the Super Nats driven by Ryan Gillmore. (The passing of Ryan’s father kept them from running the feature, and soon after car owner Taylor Musselman sold the car to the Whitneys.) Though it’s very early in his first season with the car, Destyn has already won a ”Hard Charger” award, racing from the very back of the pack to finish 11th in a feature. And as a cool connection to family history, the number “58” was also carried by Heath’s dad on his racecars back in the day.
The Nova belongs to Destyn as well. And just like the race cars, it’s taken a lot of hard work and sacrifice to end up with the cool cruiser you see in these pictures. And also like racing, he got an early start. After a summer working for dad and saving money, at age 14 Destyn became the proud owner of a rusty Nova that had been sitting in a family friend’s field for 30 years. Many 14-year-olds would have lacked the determination and skill to make much of the heap, but not Destyn. He got to work replacing lifters in the 6-cylinder and getting the car to run. He also replaced the rusty floors, upgraded the suspension with dropped spindles and a Speedway Motors disc brake kit, and added some smoothie steelies. After driving it around with the buzzin’ half dozen for a while, fellow members of the Kingsmen car club helped Destyn swap in the 350 from his old modified. It's the same engine that powered Destyn to a track championship in his E Mod, and it carried some extra emotional horsepower since it was purchased for the racing operation by Heath’s stepfather before he passed away. Just another example of how important that generational thing is to the Whitney family.
And that brings us to another cool driver, this one a ’57 Chevy owned by daughter Jaesa. After spending time helping out with her brother’s race cars, she wanted in on the action herself. In the years she had spent attending car shows with the family, Jaesa found herself in love with ’57 Chevys. After some searching, a car was located in Missouri and Heath and Jaesa drove down to look at it. The car ended up being a total rustbucket that no dad would let his 16-year-old daughter drive around in. On the drive home, the dejected pair got a call from Renae, who said that a clean looking 4-door had just popped up on ebay and it was located in Lincoln. This one ended up being a much better car, and like any shrewd car buyer, Jaesa offered the owner just a bit less than he was asking. His response? “How about you subtract $1000 dollars from that offer and use it to get the car back on the road?” The car world really is full of good people, isn’t it?
And “get it back on the road” is just what they did. With an oil change and some freshening, the Power Pack 283 that hadn’t run in 20 years fired right up. The rest of the car was brought up to speed with another Speedway Motors disc brake kit, dropped spindles, and new control arms.
We talked to Heath about his family’s impressive fleet, and he responded with pride and like a good steward of the hot rod hobby; “I can’t tell you how proud of a dad I am that both of my kids are into it. And to see it live on. Hopefully their kids will be into the same cars.” We hope so too.
