The 500-acre motorsports complex that is Daytona International Speedway opened 60 years ago, with NASCAR’s first Daytona 500 taking place on February 22, 1959. But the history of racing at Daytona Beach goes back much further, to the beginnings of the 20th century, when automotive and racing pioneers (including Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford) used the hard-packed sand between the Ormand and Daytona beaches to look for the extreme limits of performance. Land-speed records were set in Florida as a record-run venue in the ’30s, long before the discovery of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The December 2018 RM Sotheby’s auction at the Petersen Automotive Museum made headlines for the $22 million paid for a ’56 Ferrari 290 MM—a race car with provenance that included such notable pilots as Juan Manual Fangio, Phil Hill and Stirling Moss. Parked just a few feet away from that historic prancing horse during the auction’s preview was another ’50s icon: a ’32 Ford known as the Lloyd Bakan coupe.

In this rare color photograph from the Petersen Publishing Company photo archive, Connie Swingle pulls the front wheels in Ed Pink’s Old Master Top Fuel dragster at the 1966 NHRA Winternationals.

After its humble beginnings in Dodger Stadium, the High Performance and Custom Trade Show changed venues for its second edition, moving to the spacious Anaheim Convention Center in January 1968. The exhibitor count grew from 100 or so the year before to nearly 150, their 200-plus tables taking up half of the convention center’s 100,000-sq.-ft. floor space.