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Vito LoPiccolo
Inducted into the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.
Vito was the voice of Motor City Motorsports and had been for over 20
years. He has been involved in auto racing for 55 years, primarily in the
Detroit area. Vito was wounded in World War II and when he arrived back
home, he immediately began attending races at Motor City Speedway.
LoPiccolo became a police officer and part of his duties was to pull over
speeding drivers. He eventually pulled over Bill Stone and they became life
time friends. He read an article in National Speed Sport News written by Bob
Lewis of Grand Rapids. Bob had mentioned in his column that fan clubs were
sprouting up all over the nation and wasn’t it a shame that Michigan did not
have one.
Vito began corresponding with Lewis and shortly after, Vito and his wife
Barbara, Bob and Norma Lewis, Willis and Marion Flokstra met on September
25, 1965 and formed the Michigan Automobile Racing Fan Club. Vito was the
first president of the club and eagerly began to recruit racing fans for the
club. In the first year, membership grew to a couple of hundred people. For
the first 11 years, Vito was president of the club. He recruited people like
Gordon Johncock, and that helped get other people interested.
After Johnny White was seriously injured and paralyzed from a vicious racing
accident, LoPiccolo pushed to hold a fundraiser for White. The fundraiser
was very successful and helped Johnny White financially. The Fan Club grew
to 1,000 members and they had racers at their banquet like Bobby Unser, Dan
Gurney, Poncho Carter and Johnny Parsons from the Indy car set.
Around 1976, Vito stepped down as president of the Fan Club. He then took up
the job of public relations director. In 1977, Vito and Bill Richardson
started the first auto racing television program. It was called Motor City
Motorsports, and it aired on WGPR TV 62.
In the late seventies, Vito was invited to the groundbreaking ceremonies at
Michigan International Speedway. He worked public relations for the track
for the next eleven years.
In the eighties, Vito began his radio show also called Motor City
Motorsports. He says that
his favorite Detroit area race drivers were Joy Fair, John Anderson, and Ray Nece.
Vito has received an award from the Michigan Racing Scene as media celebrity of
the year in 2003.
Send mail to
Allan
E. Brown
with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2006 Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame
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